J-M's History Corner

This is not about the modern cultural war between the belief that gender is binary and genetic and cannot change and the belief that gender is fluid and can be changed.  It is instead the controversial subject of Adam’s gender at creation – and a couple of other related subjects. You might be thinking, “Well, Adam was created a male, wasn’t he?  Problem solved.”  Not quite.  As we shall see from the Hebrew grammar, while Adam was not created female, he was not created male, either.  Dr A Nyland, a language scholar, explains in an endnote of her book Complete Books of Enoch: 1 Enoch (First Book of Enoch, 2 Enoch (Secrets of Enoch), 3 Enoch (Hebrew Book of Enoch) : Adam, the first human.  Adam is a word which simply means “human.”  The above statement demonstrates the confusion between the English language and the original languages of Scripture.  The verse actually reads, “God created adam (the word for the race of human beings) in ...

I have embarked on a quest to translate the entire Bible into English.  Or, more accurately, revise and correct previous translations in light of the Hebrew word meaning and ancient manuscripts.  It is (currently) called the Restored English Translation (RET).  This translation preserves all of the Hebrew names.  It also includes the Aleph Tavs   את – the revelation of Yeshua ha’Mashiach (Jesus the Christ) throughout the Tanakh (Old Testament).  More info on the ongoing project will be posted later.  A glossary is at the end of the chapter. The following is my RET translation of Beresheet (Genesis) chapter 1.  You will notice some differences from traditional translations – particularly when our Creator commands creation into existence.  Most English translations say that God (whose Hebrew title is ELOHIM) said, “Let there be…”  In fact, if you look up the Hebrew words, the more accurate translation is “And ELOHIM [God...