The Hebrew Bible is full of wordplay, making it difficult to decide when to transliterate a word. The most common reason scholars transliterate Hebrew is that they refer to proper nouns. Diving and understanding the meaning of the place name can enhance our understanding of the Biblical World and Worldview.
What Is Transliteration?
Transliteration takes the letters from one language (in this case, Hebrew) and puts them into another while trying to preserve pronunciation as best as possible. This presents challenges when languages like Hebrew have different sounds than English.
One of the sounds in Hebrew that’s hard to carry over in English is the kh sound. It appears in words like chesed (steadfast love, lovingkindness) and sounds like phlegm coming out the back of the throat.
It’s important to remember that spoken Hebrew doesn’t typically have some vowels written out in the text. Short vowels were only added to written Hebrew after the writing of the New Testament. Rabbis known as the Masoretes added these vowel markings to the Hebrew Bible.
How Do We Know How The Hebrew Transliterations Are Pronounced?
Thanks to their vowel markings, which go above and below the letters to show which vowels to pronounce, the Masoretes made Hebrew readable to outsiders. The Masoretic text is the most complete Hebrew manuscript of the Hebrew Bible and is the main way the Bible is translated from Hebrew to English.
This is similar to Arabic speakers who added the vowel marks into the Quran so that everyone could read it. However, the Masoretes began this process several hundred years before Muslims did.
How Does the Hebrew Transliteration Work?
One important thing to understand about Hebrew is that words have simpler forms known as roots. The roots are three or four letters. These roots can tell Hebrew readers what the word refers to and help them see what it might mean, even if they’ve never encountered it before. This also occurs in other Semitic languages like Arabic.
Transliteration also happened throughout the New Testament, from Hebrew to Greek. This resulted in some interesting results when the Greek New Testament was translated into English. For example, the name translated as James in our English Bibles is Iacobus in the original Greek. This is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Name found in our Bibles today as Jacob.
Why are some Hebrew words Transliterated?
Sometimes Hebrew scholars still don’t translate a word because it’s referring to a proper name, like a place or a person. One example is Meribah, whose root word is rib, which means contention. Meribah obtained its name when Moses contended with God at that location, striking the rock instead of speaking to it.
Other times words are transliterated because their exact meaning is uncertain. One example of these words is Seraphim, which according to Strong’s Dictionary means “burning ones.” In Isaiah, this word refers to heavenly beings with six wings, yet in Numbers, it refers to poisonous snakes.
There are three distinct possibilities here. First, giant winged poisonous snakes surrounded God’s throne in Isaiah’s vision. Second, the angels surrounding God’s throne room attacked the Israelites. A third option is that this word has two different definitions depending on the context and the time of the writing. The third option is the most straightforward, but the first two are also valid.
How Do Bible Scholars Select Which Hebrew to Transliterate?
Sometimes, as in the case of place names, it is clear that the word should be transliterated because it refers to a specific place. One example of this is Bethel. It would be confusing to write “house of God” every time Bethel shows up in the Bible. Sometimes it refers to the temple or tabernacle, in which case it is translated. When referring to the city of Bethel, where Jacob saw the kingdom of God, it makes more sense to transliterate the word instead.
Another class of words that are transliterated is names. Names have a specific meaning, but they are not usually translated. For example, Abraham means “Father of many nations.” This makes sense to transliterate because it would be too wordy otherwise. However it causes us to miss the wordplay at work whenever the father of many nations complains about not having any children.
What Role Does Wordplay Play in Hebrew Transliteration?
The Hebrew Language is full of wordplay that is sadly missed because of the transliteration practices. A good example of this comes from James Moffat’s translation of Micah 1:10-16:
“Tell it not in Tellington!
Wail not in Wailing!
Dust Manor will eat dirt,
Dressy Town flee naked.
Safefold will not save,
Wallchester’s walls are down,
A bitter dose drinks Bitterton.”
The translation of this passage shows how much wordplay can be missed when translated. It does make sense to transliterate the place names, but it’s also important to do a word study of some words because it can enhance the experience of the language.
The minor prophets have some of the most advanced Hebrew wordplay that many modern readers sometimes miss.
What is a Word Study and How Can It Help Understand Hebrew Transliteration?
A word study is looking at a word in a passage of scripture. One thing that can be helpful is looking at the Bible in the interlinear. Interlinear Bibles show the original languages in one line, the English translation below. Then the words can be more deeply investigated using a Bible dictionary like Strong’s. This dictionary also has the root words of every word, enabling readers to discover the original language without needing to speak it.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do a word study:
1. Choose a verse: For this example, Hosea 2:16, “And in that day declares the LORD, you will call me ‘my husband’ no longer will you call me ‘my master.”
2. Next, look up the verse in multiple translations to see how other translations chose to make the verse. This helps a lot in our case because the word for “master” in this chapter is actually the word Baal. The ESV chose to transliterate Baal to highlight Israel’s idolatry. The NIV, meanwhile, chose to highlight the wordplay Hosea was making in this verse.
3. Choose a word of significance from that verse. For this, we’ll go with “master” because it actually translates as Baal. This word contains the most historical context and is significant because it is defined in contrast to Yahweh, the Tetragrammaton. Choose unfamiliar words.
4. Look up Baal in a Biblical dictionary. From this, we can see that Baal is another way of saying “lord.” This shows us a wordplay between “lord” and “master” that actually shows up in the ESV translation.
5. It also helps to investigate the cultural context of a word or Proper name like Baal. Baal was a fertility god of the Sidonians. Worshippers slept with cultic prostitutes and believed he would answer their adoration by bringing rain. The information gives fresh insight into why the drought in 1 Kings 18 is so significant.
What are Some Resources for Diving Deeper Into Hebrew Transliteration?
The BibleStudyTools.com Interlinear Bible is a great place to look at transliterated Hebrew Words.
Strong’s Hebrew Dictionary will make for an interesting deep dive into Hebrew Transliteration.
The NET Bible also contains many valuable notes about the Hebrew definitions and reasons for translators’ selections of whether to translate or transliterate.
Photo Credit: © Getty Images/Volodymyr Konko
Ben Reichert works with college students in New Zealand. He graduated from Iowa State in 2019 with degrees in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and agronomy. He is passionate about church history, theology, and having people walk with Jesus. When not working or writing you can find him running or hiking in the beautiful New Zealand Bush.
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