Francis Werner

I have mentioned Julia E. Smith as a Bible translator of the 19th century who had provided the most literal, or word for word, translation of the Hebrew Bible available until recently.

Last year the Ancient Roots Hebrew Bible appeared. Francis Werner was inspired through her own Bible study and by Beth Moore to provide a "translinear" translation of the Hebrew Bible. She writes,

The Translinear method was born from a detailed scientific analysis of several bible versions. A portion of the analysis can be found in the Compare Bible Versions section of this website. (I have published the analysis of 20 bible versions under the Truth in Translation series. Truth in Translation: Accuracy and Surprising Bias in the Old Testament is now available on this website.) The reason we need resources like cross-references and Interlinear bibles is because none of the bibles that have been published to date are close enough to the original language. They have extra words, are missing many unique words, and were not utilizing English consistently with the original language.

So all the classic bible study tools are needed to find out what the ancient text really said.But what would happen if all the all the ancient words matched the English language 100% of the time? You wouldn’t need a cross reference column. You wouldn’t need to compare them in an Interlinear bible. You wouldn’t need to double check the original word in a concordance.

The highest compliment I've received so far is from a Hebrew professor in town: "This would be very beneficial for our students, mainly because they will be able to tell much more than the usual translation gives them concerning some of the features of the original languages without having to know those languages." And I didn't even bribe him.

Put on the "magic glasses" and see the Old Testament exactly the way it was written. Transport yourself to the Ancient Roots of the original language with the most exact methodology ever published for completeness and consistency. Join me and enjoy the outpouring of insights.

You can browse this Bible here. Werner has also reviewed other study Bibles on Amazon. For an academic review of her accomplishment I recommend this commentary. Her book Truth in Translation has also received singularly negative reviews.

However, she has provided a view into the Hebrew roots of words and if one wants to find more about the poetic language and imagery of Hebrew, this reveals something of the language to non-Hebrew readers. Here is the Babel story from the Ancient Hebrew roots Bible,

All the land was of one lip and of one word. As they were journeying east, they found a canyon in the land of Central-Iraq and they dwelled there. They had brick for stone and had bitumen for clay. Man said to neighbor, "Brick whitens by burning it thus on a pyre." They said, "Thus we will build a city and a tower with its head in heaven to make our name. Otherwise we will scatter over the face of the all the land." Yahweh descended to see the city and the tower which the sons of Adam built. Yahweh said, "Behold, one people, all with one lip, all began to do this! Now none are protected from their plotting which they do.

It has a close resemblance to Julia Smith's version. It is an odd thing really. I have seen some people invent the most impossible interpretations of the Bible from using interlinear's like Werner's. But the truth is that even among those who claim to know the original languages well enough, one sometimes comes across oddities. I recommend using this Bible in combination with your favourite translation, perhaps the NRSV.

In my view the Ancient Roots Hebrew Bible is one more tool, and does not replace learning Hebrew, but realistically who has time. It also reflects the desire of women to participate in the creation of meaning around the sacred text. Perhaps if more women were included in the academy women might not produce translations which so singularly lack endorsement.

Francis Werner must be listed as a woman bible translator.

babble from Babel:11

A post which I linked to previously has disappeared so I must redo some thinking here. I did not save the post so I can only provide some small insight into what was written.

The only part that remains in my memory is the story of Moses in the bulrushes. There are too many similarities to the Babel theme for me to let this one fall by the wayside.

Instead of providing the Hebrew and Greek this time, I will provide some literal translations and compare them. The first is Julia E. Smith's translation of the Hebrew Bible, the second is a literal translation of the Septuagint, and the third is the Douay Rheims translation of the Latin Vulgate.

And she will not be able able any more to hide him, and she will take for him an ark of bulrush and will pitch it with bitumen and pitch, and she will put in it the child, and will put it in the sedge by the lip of the river. Julia E. Smith's translation of the Hebrew.

But when they could hide it no longer, its mother took a basket and plastered it with a mix of pitch and tar and she put the child in it and placed it in the marsh beside the river. New English Translation of the Septuagint.

And when she could hide him no longer, she took a basket made of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and pitch: and put the little babe therein, and laid him in the sedges by the river’s brink, Douay-Rheims

Once again the term for "lip" goes completely untranslated in the Greek, while in most English translations one can read "brink" or "bank." In fact, the Greek word for "lip" cheilos can mean "brink" or "rim" but here the translators of the LXX simply did not translate the Hebrew with any term at all. The reader falls on empty space.

While the word itself refers simply to the lip, it was also used to refer to the womb. By leaving out the Greek word cheilos as a translation for the Hebrew word for "lip." a feminine metaphor was lost. It was not until Julia Smith made her literal translation from the Hebrew that this term was finally translated into English.

I am arguing here for the participation of women in the enterprise of Bible translation, as a means to engage with the full range of semantic and poetic content of the original writings. While "lip" represents the womb, or women as life-generating agents; the "lip" also represents one of the points of articulation for language, one that is essential for generating meaning.

babble from Babel 8

Genesis 11:4

And they said Come on!
let us build for ourselves a city,
and a tower with its head in the heavens,
so let us make for ourselves a name,
- lest we be scattered abroad
over the face of all the earth. Rotherham

And they will say, Come,
we will build to us a city,
and a tower, its head to the heavens;
and we will make to us a name,
lest we shall be dispensed
over the face of the earth. Julia Smith

Dixerunt itaque, Agite
aedificemus nobis civitatem & turrim,
cuius caput centingat caelum, atq;
ita faciamus nobis nomen;
ne forte dispergamur
super faciem universae terrae. Pagnini

et dixerunt venite
faciamus nobis civitatem
et turrem cuius culmen pertingat ad caelum
et celebremus nomen nostrum
antequam dividamur in universas terras. Vulgate

It is striking that both Smith and Rotherham retain the terms "head" and "face." The tower has a "head" and the earth has a "face." These are not translated into the Latin of the Vulgate but do find a place in Pagnini's Latin translation. Pagnini is known for a more literal rendering of the Hebrew than Jerome. Jerome's translation must be considered to be of the dynamic equivalent type for this passage.

Whatever your views on translation, it is good to know these names, Pagnini, Rotherham and Smith. They are the heroes of transparency and word for word translation. They have a sense of the sound and flow of the language. They are not just translating meaning, but metaphor and imagery, alliteration and assonance.

babble from Babel 7

Here is the story of the tower from Julia Smith's Bible. HT Kurk I love the rhythm and minimalism. Its transparent to the Hebrew for the most part.

1. And all the earth shall be one lip, and the same words.
2. And it shall be in their removing from the east they shall find a valley in the land of Shinar; and they shall dwell there.
3. And they shall say a man to his neighbour, Come, we will make bricks, and we will burn to a burning, and brick shall be to them for stone, and potter's clay shall be to them for potter's clay.
4. And they will say, Come, we will build to us a city, and a tower, its head to the heavens; and we will make to us a name, lest we shall be dispensed over the face of the earth.
5. And Jehovah will come down to see the city, and the tower which the sons of men built.
6. And Jehovan will say, Behold, the people one, and one lip to them all and this they begin to do; and now it will not be restrained from them all which they shall imagine to do.
7. Come, we will come down and mix their lip that they shall not hear a man the lip of his neighbor.
8. And Jehovah will disperse them from thence over the face of all the earth; and they will cease to build the city.
9. Therefore its name was called confusion, for there Jehovah confounded the lip of all the earth; and from thence Jehovah dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

Its right and proper that a woman would translate the Hebrew word for lip with the English one. While lip in Hebrew is one common way to talk about language, along with tongue, it does not usually appear in English. The lip came to represent the feminine, receptivity and passivity.

It is a very odd thing, but in one of the additions to the Sefer Yetsira, the Book of Creation, which is a treatise on language and creation, the five places of articulation are described. One would expect that the lip would appear as one of the places. But in this masculinist text, all the places of articuation are represented by the tongue. The lip is not mentioned. Clearly from other parts of the text, the tongue was related to circumcision - it was a parallel organ of generation.

Here is the passage from Peter Hayman's translation, page 93,

The twenty-two letters are the foundation: three primary letters, seven double (letters), and twelve simple (letters). They are carved out by the voice, hewn out in the air, fixed in the mouth in five positions: Aleph, Het, He, Ayin, Bet, Waw, Mem, Pe, Gimel, Yod, Kaph, Qof, Dalet, Tet, Lamed, Nun, Taw, Zayin, Samek, Sade, Resh, Shin, They are bound to the tip of the tongue as the flame to the burning coal.

Aleph, He, Het, Ayin are pronounced at the back of tongue and in the throat.

Bet, Waw, Mem, Pe are pronounced between the teeth and by the tip of the tongue.

Gimel, Yod, Kaph, Qof, are cut off a third of the way up the tongue.

Dalet, Tet, Lamed, Nun, Taw, are pronounced by tip of the tongue with the voice.

Zayin, Samech, Sade, Resh, Shin (are pronounced) between the teeth with the tongue relaxed.

Notice the complete lack of any reference to the lips and the assignment of all articulation to the tongue. While the circumcised organ has agency in creating new life; the tongue, or language, has agency in the creation of the world. In this book the world is created by language, a masculine form of energy having agency. Only the tongue articulates language and not the lips.

And why does the lip not appear in the Sefer Yetsira? I don't know, but its absence is peculiar. Is the feminine imagery absent on purpose?

The point is that the lips are a necessary location of articulation for language. The lips are no more passive than the tongue. Just as the tongue has agency, so do the lips. The lips are a different, complementary point of articulation. They are not a passive receptacle. Nor is the womb.

The feminine image of vessels for sefirot, now prevalent in Kabalah, does not appear in the Sefer Yetsira. It is a book which morphed over time, both in Hebrew and in its many interpretations. While the masculine imagery is deliberate in at least one of the additions to this book, it may be absent in other versions. I offer only some remarks on the oddity of the absence of the lips from this book.

We need a world which accepts and lauds the agency and creativity of women alongside the agency and creativity of men. We need both the masculine and the feminine voice to create our world in the image of God. This is the meaning of the Sefer Yetsira, for this reader, that as we articulate language we create meaning, we create the world we live in. It is the language given us by God, to both men and women, to people of all races. If we listen only to one voice, we lack a full understanding of what is being said. It is as if we were listening to someone talk with only the tongue and no lips, or only the lips and no tongue.

Francis Siewart

Many thanks to El Shaddai for mentioning Francis Siewart of the Amplified Bible.

The story of the Amplified Bible is a remarkable story of faith, hope, and love. It's the story of a woman, a foundation, a committee, and a publisher. Commitment, energy, enthusiasm, and giftedness--these are the words that paint the picture, the picture of the making of a translation.

Frances Siewert (Litt. B., B.D., M.A., Litt. D.) was a woman with an intense dedication to the study of the Bible. It was Mrs. Siewert (1881-1967) who laid the foundation of the Amplified Bible, devoting her life to a familiarity with the Bible, with the Hebrew and Greek languages, and with the cultural and archaeological background of Biblical times, which would result in the publication of this unique translation.

Remembered by The Lockman Foundation for her long life of tireless devotion to God, her expertise in the Greek language, and for her impressive knowledge concerning Scripture, Mrs. Frances Siewert went home to be with the Lord late Wednesday night, March 29, 1967. As the official Research Secretary of the Amplified Bibleproject, Mrs. Siewert displayed her tremendous passion for the Lord. This passion shown brightly throughout her monumental task of laying the translation foundation for the Amplified Bible.

Born in 1881, Mrs. Siewert (Litt. B., B.D., M.A., Litt. D.) dedicated her life to the intensive study of the Scriptures as well as to the cultural and archaeological background of biblical times. When asked by The Lockman Foundation in 1956 to recount, in her own words, her long journey as a Christian, Mrs. Siewert submitted the following amazing list concerning her life as a Christian to that point:

At six years of age knew scores of hymns and Bible verses.
At ten passed an oral examination on the Catechism.
At fifteen entered the academy of Pacific University, deeply religious atmosphere, compulsory Bible study.
At seventeen was meeting regularly with classmates to help them prepare for their Bible lessons.
At eighteen entered Willamette University. Elected president of the Y.W.C.A. under intensely spiritual stimulus. Elected editor of the Willamette Collegian by unanimous vote of all factions of the student body. (With no Bible in Willamette’s curriculum, she started a campaign to have it introduced, which authorities honored and was graduated at barely twenty with the degree of Bachelor of Literature, "cum laude.")
At twenty-two married a minister, who was a brilliant Greek student.
At twenty-four began helping ministers with their public written work, religious authors and editors with their manuscripts, writing stories for Sunday School material, some to be translated into German. Later, articles for such periodicals as the Sunday School Times.
At twenty-nine received Master of Arts degree from Willamette University. Thesis subject, "The Effect of the Bible on English Language."
At thirty-two received bachelor of divinity degree from Schuylkill Seminary (to which the credits had been transferred to make the graduation of a woman possible).
At thirty-three teaching Bible to girls and women on campus at the University of Washington, downtown in Seattle from city’s high schools and factories.
At thirty-six teaching young people and teachers of Bible in Denver, Colorado.
At forty teaching Bible daily in Clay County High School, Kansas, sixteen communities represented. In constant demand for Bible lectures at clubs, conventions, and in organized classes -- 254 such talks in one year. In meantime, completed seventeen reading courses at University of Indiana, and earned considerable credit in Psychology and teacher training at Kansas State College. Studied all of the courses pertinent to Bible teaching.
In 1940 left a widow. Devoted full time to biblical research for ministers and religious writers.
From 1952 to the present (1956) devoted time entirely to the translation task now in hand, with the work of the Gospel of John, which preceded it.

For all her immense educational preparation and thorough knowledge of Scripture, Mrs. Siewert always remained a humble servant of the Lord. In correspondence dated Sept. 8, 1954 to The Lockman Foundation President and Founder, F. Dewey Lockman, she stated, "Every day, almost, I find myself bubbling with the thrill of discovering some shade of meaning in the original Greek that had never been evident to me before. I have averaged 4 hours a day of serious Bible study since 1914, when I was already a theological seminary graduate, and yet I am finding daily evidence of the fact that there are countless Scripture passages which have been obscure to me until now."

Helen Spurrell

Many thanks to El Shaddai Edwards, Rick Mansfield and David Reimer for the ongoing success of this series on women Bible translators. Rick mentioned Helen Spurrell in a comment on El Shaddai's blog. I will be getting to Frances Siewert soon.

In Multipurpose Tools for Bible Study by F. Danker, page 188, we can read,

The nineteenth century saw a number of noncommittee type versions of the Bible, but the most noteworthy is a version of the Old Testament, published in 1885, whose claim fo fame was obscured by the prestige of the RV, which apeared in the same year.

At the age of fifty, Helen Spurrell, already accomplished in music, painting, and sculpture, decided to learn Hebrew with a view to translating the Bible of Israel. using the unpointed Hebrew text as her base, "she made free use," observes Pope, "of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Septuagint version, substituting their readings for that of the Hebrew text in a number of passages ... She printed her text in paragraphs, not in verses, with the poetical passages laid out as poetry - devices that had just been adopted in the Revised Version.

Here is the only excerpt that I can find from her translation, Psalm 119:150-151,

"When designing pursuers approached me, who are far from thy law;
then Thou, O Jehovah, wast near, with all thy faithful commandments..." Surrell

They draw nigh that follow after mischief: they are far from thy law.
Thou art near, O LORD; and all thy commandments are truth. KJV

To get some sense of her theology we can read,

In her translation of the Old Testament Scriptures, Helen Spurrell expressed the following wish for all who should read her translation: "May very many exclaim, as the translator has often done when studying numerous passages in the original, I have found the Messiah!"

She is also mentioned in the introduction to Let Her Speak for Herself by Marion Taylor and Heather Weir. Anyone interested in women in biblical scholarship will find this book fascinating reading.

Annie Cressman

A couple of years ago I blogged about Annie Cressman on the BBB. Here is another post about her.

I had not heard of Annie Cressman before so it was with delight that I discovered that she was a Mennonite farm girl, born in Elmira, Ontario, Canada. In 1935 she was reading a copy of The Pentcostal Testimony when she noticed a report by Sophie Nygaard, a Liberian missionary. Annie realized that this was God calling her to Liberia, West Africa.

As a missionary of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, she devoted her life to Liberia, studying the Tchien dialect, translating scripture and teaching the Bible. While teaching in an English language Bible School in Liberia in the 1950's, she realized that she was having to spend too much time explaining the basic meaning of the text.

Cressman then started preparing passages in an easier form of English. The gospel of Mark was first published by Full Gospel Publishing in Toronto, Canada in 1959 and the whole New Testament was published in 1969 as the New Testment in Worldwide English.

Amazingly the vocabulary is made up of only 1,500 words plus names - much fewer than any other simple English edition. "Each word and phrase has been carefully checked to give true understanding in different countries and regions." The Worldwide English New Testament is now available as a Palm Bible or Pocket PC

Cressman is also the author of The Pastor, "meant to help pastors understand their calling and responsibility in a better way."

While Cressman's Bible in Worldwide English BWE, is not a translation but a paraphrase, it represents a paradigm shift in Bible versions. I will write more about this Bible version next.

Helen Barrett Montgomery

Biography: American Baptist Missions Author and Promoter

Montgomery translated the Centenary Translation of the New Testament and was the first woman president of an American Denomination, the Northern Baptist Convention in 1920.

Helen Barrett, 1862-1934, was born in Kingsville, Ohio, the eldest of three children of Adoniram Judson Barrett and Emily B. Barrows. She graduated from Wellesley College and Brown University, where she majored in classical literature. For a time she taught school in Philadelphia; in 1887 she married William A. Montgomery and the couple moved to Rochester, New York, where William Montgomery became a successful automobile industrialist.

In Rochester Helen Montgomery became active in civic and educational affairs. She advocated a women’s college at the University of Rochester and became the first woman elected to the city school board. She also became interested in overseas missions work and was much in demand as a platform speaker and writer.

In 1914 she was elected the first president of the national Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. With her close friend Lucy W. Peabody, Montgomery joined the Central Committee on the United Study of Foreign Missions and wrote widely for the development of cooperative women’s missionary work. In 1910 she wrote Western Women in Eastern Lands, which sold over 100,000 copies; that same year she toured the United States on behalf of the International Jubilee of Women’s Missions, delivering almost 200 speeches. In 1913, in response to an invitation to attend the Edinburgh Continuation Committee meeting in The Hague, she and Lucy Peabody toured Europe, the Middle East, India, and the Far East, assessing the conditions of women’s education. Everywhere she visited she spoke boldly on behalf of Christian schools and the training of women teachers. Seven Christian schools in the Far East were started or strengthened as a result of the tour. At the conclusion of the trip, Montgomery and Peabody advocated the establishing of an annual day of world prayer to unite women of the world and emphasize their issues; the federation of Women’s Boards of Foreign Missions adopted this timely suggestion, which eventually became the World Day of Prayer.

In 1920, Montgomery was elected the first woman president of an American denomination, the Northern Baptist Convention. In this role she advocated the Baptist principle of “soul liberty” against a rising tide of fundamentalism and urged that priority be placed on the missionary task of the church rather than on divisive theological issues. Her greatest literary achievement was the Centenary Translation of the New Testament (1924), the first New Testament translation by a woman scholar. The sales derived from this translation went directly to mission projects supported by Northern Baptists.

This blogger calls her one of the most influential Christians you have never heard of.

Jane Aitken

Jane Aitken (1764-1832), is a significant historical figure for several reasons. One of the first American female printers, Jane Aitken was also a bookseller, bookbinder, businesswoman, and employer during the early nineteenth century, a time when the independence of women was actively discouraged.

According to printing historian Leona Hudak, almost nothing is known of Jane Aitken’s personal life and work. She was the daughter of Robert Aitken, a printer, bookbinder, and bookseller who emigrated from Paisley, Scotland to Philadelphia in 1769. Her father had the distinction of publishing the first complete English-language Bible printed in America and the only one ever authorized and approved by Congress. Jane’s own unique contribution to American printing history was the first American translation of the Bible, published in four octavo volumes in 1808.

The Bible that Aitken published was historic for more than one reason. It was the first English translation of the Septuagint.

Charles Thomson was the Secretary to the United States Congress from 1774 to 1789, when he resigned to pursue his scholarly interests. Thomson was fascinated with the early Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and the Greek translation of the Old Testament called the “Septuagint”. He produced the first translation of the Septuagint into English, and the first new modern-English translation of the New Testament in the western hemisphere. Charles Thomson spent twenty years perfecting his translation, and then he sought a publisher

The publisher he found was the daughter of the famous Robert Aitken, who had produced the first English Bible printed in America in 1782. Her name was Jane Aitken. On September 12, 1808, in Philadelphia, Jane Aitken published Charles Thomson’s translation of the Bible into modern English in four volumes, making her the first woman to ever print a Bible, and the first publisher of a modern-English Bible since the King James version of two centuries earlier.

PS She is not a woman bible translator but she best fits this series.

Julia Evelina Smith

Update: Here is a longish article about Julia Smith in French that I will take time to finish reading soon.

I'm fine so I am going to post a few passages on women and Bible translation. About time, eh? Here is Julia E. Smith,

Julia Smith's translation of the Bible stands out unique among all translations. It is the only one ever made by a woman, and the only one, it appears, ever made by man or woman without help.

Wyclif, "the morning star of the Reformation," made a translation from the Vulgate, assisted by Nicholas of Hereford. He was not sufficiently familiar with Hebrew and Greek to translate from those tongues.

Coverdale's translation was not done alone. In his dedication to the king he says he has humbly followed his interpreters and that under correction. Tyndale, in his translation, had the assistance of Frye, of William Roye, and also of Miles Coverdale.

Julia Smith translated the whole Bible absolutely alone, without consultation with any one. And this not once, but five times--twice from the Hebrew, twice from the Greek and once from the Latin. Literalness was one end she kept constantly in view, though this does not work so well with the Hebrew tenses. But she did not mind that. Frequently her wording is an improvement, or brings one closer to the original than the common translation.

Thus in I. Corinthians viii, 1, of the King James translation, we have: "Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth." Julia Smith version: "Knowledge puffs up and love builds the house." She uses "love" in place of "charity" every time. And her translation was made nearly forty years before the revised version of our day, which also does the same.

Tyndale, in his translation nearly three hundred and seventy-five years ago, made the same translation of this word; but Julia Smith did not know that and never saw his translation. This word "charity" was one of the words that Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, charged Tyndale with mistranslating.

The other two words were "priest'' and "church," Tyndale calling priests "seniors," and church, "congregation." Both Julia Smith and the revised version call them priests and church. And he gives the word, "Life" for "Eve" "And Adam will call his wife's name Life, for she was the mother of all living."

And here is a book about her,

Working in isolation on a Connecticut farm, Julia Smith (1792–1886) translated the Bible into English. She was the only woman to translate the entire Bible, but her work has been alternately ignored or disparaged by subsequent biblical scholars. This is in part because no English translation other than the King James Version attracted significant attention until the appearance of the Revised Standard Version in 1952.

In With Her Own Eyes, Emily Sampson argues that Smith’s work anticipated trends followed by later, usually male, translators and that she deserves recognition as a pioneering and influential biblical scholar in her own right. Smith was the daughter of a preacher and lawyer and a mother who wrote poetry and studied linguistics, mathematics, and astronomy.

When William Miller’s predictions of the end of the world failed, she began translating for herself from the original languages. Trained in Greek and Latin, Smith taught herself Hebrew and ultimately produced five translations. In 1876 Smith published a very literal translation at her own expense. She hoped not only that her Bible would reveal additions made to the King James Version but that her work would help bolster the case that women were, in many respects, the equal of men.

Sampson also details Smith’s striking personal history. She and her four sisters were seen as eccentrics in the small town of Glastonbury. They were active in the abolitionist movement in the decades before the Civil War and later in the temperance and women’s suffrage movements. Smith attended the first meeting of the Association of the Advancement of Women, and she and her sister Abby became famous in Connecticut for their refusal to pay taxes until given the right to vote in town meetings.

A comprehensive look at the intellectual, social, and political circles of Julia Smith, With Her Own Eyes is a singular portrait of one of the most remarkable autodidacts in the history of American intellectual life.

Emily Sampson teaches in the Humanities Department at Cuyamaca College in California.