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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] Deut 5, 17 -20

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  • From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
  • To: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • Cc: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Deut 5, 17 -20
  • Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 01:47:50 -0800

On 22/03/2004 19:51, Yigal Levin wrote:

...

The Jewish tradition of numbering the verses follows the "lower" marks -
according to this, commandments 6-9 are combined into one verse, no. 17. So
yes, that means that in Jewish Bibles, Deut. 5 has a total of 30 verses,
while in English Bibles (and I assume in most Christian traditions) the same
chapter has 33 verses. The BHS, while printing both sets of marks, follows
the Christian tradition in numbering the verses.


The BHS and other Christian editions of the Hebrew Bible consistently do NOT follow the versification of English Bibles. Rather they follow the verse divisions of the Hebrew text as indicated by the sof pasuq signs, as found in old MSS such as Leningradensis (although MSS do differ slightly in positioning of sof pasuq). In Deuteronomy 5 commandments 6-9 are numbered as separate verses because there are sof pasuq signs between each of them. It would appear that BHS is following one of the ancient Jewish traditions of dividing the text. The other tradition is indicated by verse numbers in parentheses, at least in this chapter.

By the way, there are lots of places in which the Jewish and Christian
traditions of numbering verses and dividing chapters differ. In many of the
Psalms, the English does not count the "superscription" (things like "To the
musician, a psalm of David") as a real verse, and starts numbering from
after, while the Jewish tradition does. So, for example, Ps. 42 has 12
verses in Hebrew, and only 11 in English (in this case, for some reason, BHS
follows the Hebrew).


I think it would be much better here to distinguish Hebrew and English traditions of verse numbering. As far as I know all Hebrew texts follow the Hebrew verse numbering system, and there are differences only in the Ten Commandments. The English system is significantly different in quite a few places, although apart from the Psalms titles most of these differences are in chapter divisions rather than verse divisions.

The English system is used in a number of other languages, of course. But in several European languages a slightly different system is used based on the Latin Vulgate. The system used in the Greek LXX is different again. The Russian system follows the LXX in the Psalms, which means that most psalm numbers (chapter numbes, not verse numbers) are one different from the Hebrew and English numbers, but following the English elsewhere with some variations.

I have a Hebrew-English Bible printed by "The Society for Distributing
Hebrew Scriptures" in England, which has a "Jewish" MT for the Hebrew, and
the King James for the English, which makes it very convenient to compare
and make sure that I'm giving the "correct" citations. If you want, I'll
give you their address (the have a US address as well).


A few years ago I compiled a comparative chart of Hebrew, English and Russian verse numbers for the whole Hebrew Bible (and it also covers the smaller number of differences in the New Testament). The Hebrew numbers are as in BHS. You may download this chart from http://www.qaya.org/academic/bibletranslation/Eng-Rus-Heb%20Verse%20Numbers.zip, a zipped Word document.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/





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