Theos-Talk Archives (April 1998 Message tt00055)

Dr. A.M.Bain wrote:

> The Shema, in the original Hebrew, does not say "the lord is One".
> Sorry. It says, literally, YHWH ACHAD, which as near as can
> *accurately* be translated, comes out as "That Which Is is Unity."

 What is accurate? It's actually YY AChD, the former being an abbreviation for
the tetragrammaton (YHVH), which, in turn, is an abbreviation for the now lost
13-letter name of God only used once a year by the High Priest. It is usually
translated as "the Lord", probably given the common form of referring to God,
"Hashem", or "the name". Literally translated, it means "The Lord One". The entire
sentence translates literally to: Listen Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord One.
Now, given Hebrew grammar, the word "is" is implied. It seems that a lot of
translators are unaware of Hebrew grammatical rules. For example, in the New
Testament, many Hebrew phrases are given in the future tense. Which is strange,
because there is no future tense in Hebrew. The imperfect tense doubles as the
future tense, and can be easily determined by context. The phrases used in the New
Testament are universally quoted out of context.

 This of course ignores the fact that we can only rely on the exact content of
the Old Testament from the time of the Mazorites...

 Bart Lidofsky