The Pill Tanakh: Hebrew-English Jewish Scriputres, Volume III - The Writings

The Hebrew-English Jewish Scriptures, Volume 3 - The Writings.

This book comprises the section known as the Writings, containing 13 books in the exact order as contained in the Leningrad Codex itself: 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Psalms, Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemia.

What makes The Pill Tanakh different?

1) The Hebrew and English are side-by-side, on facing pages, with matching verses; there is no run-over of the more verbose English to another page!

2) Each new book starts with an image from the photo-facsimile Leningrad Codex of the page that the first verse of the book begins.

3) The Hebrew and English texts have been altered to conform to the actual Leningrad Codex, most notably in the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.

4) Hebrew letters designate verse numbering; the Hebrew numbering uses a natural rendering for numbers 15 and 16. I substitute yud-he for 15 and yud-vav for 16 instead of tet-vav and tet-zayin.

5) Additionally, I have altered some English verses to better represent the Hebrew text in several places. For example, I changed the over 5,000 instances where the title 'the Lord God' appears, replacing it with 'Yehovah', the transliteration of the Hebrew.

6) In the margin of a line in the actual Leningrad Codex, there are words added that rabbis refer to as 'Qere' (what is to be read). These words were intended to replace a matching word in the written text, known as 'Ketiv' (what is written). Other Jewish publications force the reading of the 'Qere' in lieu of the 'Ketiv, ' obscuring the originally written text; some versions place the 'Ketiv' in brackets while others place it in the margin outside the line! In The Pill Tanakh, I relegate those 1,110 'Qere additions' to small footnote notations in the Hebrew text, so that the reading is natural just as the Masoretic scribes intended. Moreover, I have found few instances where the 'Qere' is actually correct, but there are many instances that are blatantly wrong!

Again, this is Volume 3 - The Writings, the third part of a three volume set of Torah, Prophets and Writings, which make up the entire Jewish Scriptures.

KeywordsHebrew-English Jewish Scriptures based upon the Leningrad Codex; the oldest extant Jewish Scriptures;Hebrew-English Bible; Volume 2 - The Prophets.