The Talmud (Megillah 9a) tells us a surprising story. A powerful king, Ptolemy, once placed 72 Jewish scholars in solitary confinement to translate the Hebrew scriptures into Greek; solitary confinement would presumably prevent them from collusion on adjustments to the text. Nonetheless, the story goes, they all made the same changes, motivated by divine inspiration.

The Letter of Aristeas may be another version of the same event.

The first change they made was to the first clause of the Torah. Instead of translating בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים with the verb before its subject, which could mean “In the beginning he/it made God,” they changed the order of the words to “In the beginning God made.” This would avoid confusion between Jewish and Greek theology, for the Jews believe that the Creator owed nothing to any other creator, whereas the Greeks (if Plato represents their theology well in the Timaeus) thought that the Creator first formed an agent who created everything we can see.

In the list of unclean animals in Lev. 11, they didn’t translate the Hebrew word אַרְנֶבֶת as “hare” (Lev 11:6) because that would have been the name of Ptolemy’s wife. They wouldn’t want to offend the king by including his wife in a list of unclean animals!

What I find most interesting in the story is that the Talmud thinks the translation divinely inspired. While in one sense God’s word is immutable, the physical marks and sounds which contain it–the physical “word”–must change to meet changing circumstances.

Experts in the Klingon language know that the warlike Klingon culture would find little solace in the idea that God “is my shepherd,” for Klingons would not want to be compared to sheep.

The traditional text of the Torah contains a large number of variations. Perhaps these are traces of different ancient originals, too highly regarded to be ignored. Or perhaps they are healthy reminders that God’s message cannot be squeezed within the limits of human language, and every person who claims to be following “God’s word” should remember that the language which dresses the message–the contemporary interpretation of the eternal message–may have to change as culture and language change.