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In a message dated 12/16/2004 11:40:56 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I have to say that James Henderson's point about there being no differences, etc., seems to me undermined by the fact that he refers to the text in a way previously unfamiliar to me as the Ten Words rather than the Ten Commandments. Also, I assume that he doesn't literally mean "set out in full ... precisely as they are" -- as that would be in some language other than English. Well, I appreciate your dilemma.
I stand open to correction but it is my understanding that in the Hebrew the Ten Commandments are called, "aseret dev'rote" a phrase that translates literally as THE TEN WORDS. So that, in fact, as these "commands" are literally, The Ten Words. At least as received by Moses for the Children of Israel.
And while it is obviously true that they were not rendered first in English, and that no translation ever perfectly accomplishes what the untranslated original aspires to, the reference to "set out in full . . . precisely as they are" can apply to the stones as rendered on the mount, to the hebraic texts as they now exist, or to the translations of the texts into any of the hundreds of languages into which the texts have been rendered. And I do mean, precisely as they are, in any of the varied translations that exist, so long as those translations are accurately made. And I understand that the originals no longer exist and were written in a language other than English.
This point, Professor Tushnet -- of Chaldean Hebrew versus King James versus Douay-Rheims -- is at the level of petty or lower.
Jim Henderson
Senior Counsel
ACLJ
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