Bible and Interpretation

The new translation of the New Testament in Hebrew is available online. The webpage of the Bible Society in Israel gives the possibility to read or to listen to it.

 We publish here two sites that are very useful for easy access to the Scriptures.

An interesting article was published on the site “Jewish Studies for Christians”, written by Dr. Eli Lizorkin-Eyzenberg. We publish it here with the permission of the author.

In these days, the seventh week of Easter, we are reading in the daily liturgy at mass verses from Psalm 68. This is an occasion to make known a new book in Hebrew that has been recently published and deals extensively with this psalm.

New Israeli research argues that for many pupils Biblical Hebrew is incomprehensible and constitutes a foreign language for the new generation of native Hebrew speakers. A survey of the research was published on the Ynet site on December 21, written by Tomer Walmer.

This Sunday, 27th Sunday of the year, we hear Jesus' parable of the vineyard (Matthew 21:33-43). In a commentary of Father Tom Rossica, he insists that we avoid an anti-Jewish reading of the parable. Thanks to T. of the Haifa kehilla for sending us the commentary, published on ZENIT.

Father Michel Remaud, a member of the Jerusalem kehilla and director of the Christian Institute for Jewish Studies and Hebrew Literature in Jerusalem, has written an article about the Christian traditional terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” and the attempt to find substitutes for them.

The December 24, 2010 (Christmas eve in the Christian world) edition of "HaAretz" daily newspaper includes an interesting article about the parallel between King Solomon, son of David, and Jesus Christ, son of David, written by the Israeli historian Yaacov Shavit. We publish the link to the article.

Father David recommends the new book that was recently published by renown Israeli author, Yochi Brandes.

The well known Israeli author Yoram Kaniuk published an article about Hebrew in the weekend supplement of HaAretz newspaper on April 2, 2010. We publish it here because of its interest for us as Hebrew speakers.

Father Michel Remaud, director of the Albert Decoutray Institute and long time member of the Hebrew-speaking community in Jerusalem, was extensively quoted by ZENIT, the Catholic news agency, on why YHWH is not used in the Catholic liturgy.

The foundation of the heritage shared by the Jewish people and the Church is in the Scriptures of the Jewish people dating from before the coming of Jesus Christ. However, one can note that there are certain books that are to be found in the collection of Christian Scriptures that are not within the Jewish TaNaKh.

The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) initiated a new epoch in Biblical interpretation. An important series of official documents have redefined the importance of the Bible in the Church. Of particular interest is the insistence of the Church on the unity of the Scriptures the Church calls the Bible – composed of the writings shared with the Jewish people with the those written by the early believers in Jesus. Biblical interpretation in the Church has always implied a relationship with Jews and their reading of the Scriptures Jews and Christians share.

Brother Yohanan Elihai, a pioneer of the kehillot, wrote an article after the consecration of Jean-Baptiste Gourion as the first bishop in the kehilla. We publish this article (written in November 2004) here to mark the tenth anniversary of Gourion’s consecration as bishop in 2003.

Sister Agnes Tichit, a friend in Paris, has sent us an article explaining what are the Biblical languages.