Customer Reviews

A Mechanical Translation of the Book of Genesis: The Hebrew Text Literally Translated Word for Word

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To benefit from this book you really have to know some Hebrew. If you are familiar with English translations of Genesis and you think you know some Hebrew (that's my situation) then this book will introduce you to the huge gulf between ancient Hebrew and modern English. I find this subject very interesting.
The book is good for study and for keeping handy for when you read a passage in a (translated) Bible. This book by Benner will show you what the translator HAS ADDED and that wasn't in the original Hebrew.

One thing that I have enjoyed and admired with Jeff Benner's work is that he takes the extra step in the understanding of Biblical materials. This book is a great example of that. While one may interepret such material(s) in a more traditional approach, Benner spends more time dissecting the words utilized for a deeper understanding of the narrative.

The way in which the book has been structured is to present the material a single verse at a time. First you have the Masoretic reading of the verse and just below it follows the mechanical translation and a grammatically restructured interpretation based off of the mechanical one. This book serves as a great tool for the student in the field of Biblical Hebrew.

I happened to be preparing a curriculum for a class when this book arrived. I found it to be immediately valuable to confirm to me that the 'spirit' hovering over the face of the deep in Genesis 1:2 was mechanically translated 'wind'. This will be an even greater tool if it is added to the translations available for search in the various e-programs.

To all who wish to learn the pure language of the Hebrew and to the Saints of God (Elohim), I encourage you to read Jeff Benner's A Mechanical Translation of The Book Of Genesis: The Hebrew Text Literally Translated Word for Word. It is a must read for Biblical students. Reading this book will give you the feeling that you are meeting with God (Elohim) on the mountain to listen to and learn the sweet WORDs of God (Elohim). Although I am not finshed with the book yet because I've just bought it, already I have went to another level in the Knowledge of the Word of God (Elohim). I literally hate to put it down and when I go to bed, it is on my mind and I can't wait to wake up to study it some more. I can go on and on about this book but you just have to buy it and study it for yourself and if you don't, you are losing out and that would be a shame.

After you read this book, please follow it up with Jeff Benner's Mechanical Translation of The Book of Exodus.
Ardree

This book gives you a completely different understanding of Genesis. It will blow your mind. It's great. Absolutely great. Jeff Benner is an awesome author as well. He really knows his stuff.

helpful for someone who has not studied Hebrew language in a more indepth study of Old Testament

"The Mechanical Translation is a new and unique style of translation that will reveal the Hebrew behind the English by translating the text very literally and faithfully to the original Hebrew text." So claims the author/publisher's blurb. However, what he describes has been around for centuries: interlinear translation.

Some parts of the Septuagint (ca. 3rd-2nd centuries B.C.) show signs of having originated this way. A Jew named Aquila produced a painfully literal Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures in the 2nd century A.D. Codex Sangallensis, a 9th century Greek manuscript of the NT, has Latin interlinear glosses. Several interlinear editions of the NT have been published in the last two centuries, as well as at least two interlinear OT's (Kohlenberger's Interlinear NIV Hebrew-English Old Testament and Green's idiosyncratic The Interlinear Bible: Hebrew-Greek-English). Jay P. Green has as his marginal version virtually the same text as his interlinear text. If memory serves, he actually published a NT with just his interlinear text and called it the King James II version.

On his website, the author makes the following claim about this book: "The Mechanical Translation will provide a consistent translation where each Hebrew word, prefix and suffix are translated exactly the same way every time." Has he been inspired by the "concordant" translation of Robert Young, first published in 1863 under the title "Young's Literal Translation"? Though Young had no computers available, he did set out to produce as mechanically uniform a translation as he could. Others have published works of a similar nature in the 20th century.

Thus, Jeff Benner's method is hardly new. And when I consider the level of scholarship displayed in his "Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible," I shudder to think of the sorts of things he may have included in his allegedly "literal" translation of Genesis.