The Jewish Study Bible: Second Edition

The (now) first Jewish Study Bible (JSB) was a major breakthrough in establishing a critical, yet faithful, study system for the Jewish canon (for Protestants, the Old Testament). It brought to the table both modern research as well as rabbinical sayings, easily competing with other critical study bibles not only for attention but for depth and clarity. It has been my go-to bible for much of my study in the Jewish Scriptures. Not bad for an "experiment" (as the editors call the first edition) and a winner of the National Jewish Book Award (2004). With the second edition (again edited by Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler), what was good before is now great. I simply have no other words to describe it.The barebones of the JSB has remained the same. The Jewish Publication Society (JPS) 1985 translation has remained the same. The introductions to the books of bible are virtually unchanged, but the notes have been revised. According to the second edition's preface, "over one-third" is new. This means we have updated scholarship, new voices, and more importantly in this last category, new voices that include women and Israeli scholars. In the first edition, some essays are simply revised essays from the New Oxford Annotated Bible, but in this one, the editors sought completely new essays on the same topics while asking for revisions of previous ones. Likewise, new essays are added — such as the additions of "Reading Biblical Narrative" and "Reading Biblical Law" to the stand alone essay of "Reading Biblical Poetry."One new essay of note is "Gender in the Bible"(2177–84) by Marc Zvi Brettler. Brettler is a co-editor of the volume, the Dora Golding Professor at Brandeis University, and the author of numerous scholarly works examining the Jewish Scriptures (including serving as co-editor on Amy Jill Levine's The Jewish Annotated New Testament, also by Oxford). He notes the difference between "gender" ("enacted") and "sex" ("biological"). No doubt this differentiation will concern some, but Brettler is able to show easily why it needs to be. Even a woman can share the (en)action of a man (masculinity) — and the bible's idea of masculinity often changes based on perspective. In once sense, masculine means warrior while in another time, masculine meant a devoted student. "The diversity of models should not be surprising, since the Bible is a complex work with multiple perspectives on many issues."When it comes to specific roles, Brettler breaks down the language to show that while ancient Israel and Judaism was indeed male-centric, it was not exactly patriarchal. Nor was it homogenous. Women did have specific roles, but in some portions of Scripture, women shared in roles usually thought to be the sole domain of men (for instance, Brettler points out the Nazarites and prophets). This doesn't mean Brettler is a wild-eyed liberal, nor given to exaggeration of Scripture. His attention to the verse rather than later culturally influenced readings is made readily apparent when he explores the masculinity of God. He does, in all fairness, give time to scholars who disagree with him, but in the end maintains the explicitness of the bible. "Gender is central to one's identity and should be immediately evident. Males should act and look like males, and females should act and look like females, and both genders should worship a masculine God" (2184). This section in particular is prefaced with a warning that "all religions...change over time" (2182). We are not told what to think, only what the facts are in determining how we think.Each essay is based on solid scholarship that remains within the biblical realm. Of note, Jon Levinson's introduction to Bere's*** (Genesis) ends with, "if J, E, P, and various equally anonymous sources and redactors are its human authors, nothing ensures that God is not its ultimate Author" (10).My only issue with the bible is the cover. I am going to heavily use this one and I am fearful I will damage the white hardcover. JSB1 had a dust jacket and rough, dark colored cover. JSB2 lacks the dust jacket (thankfully) but has a white glossy cover. The quality of the book, however, is one that will last over time. The pages are thin (use an India marker) but so are most bible pages. (If this bothers you, note there is a kindle version.) JSB2 is set up a lot like JSB1, with the text in the upper portion, next to the spin, surrounded on the left/right and on the bottom by notes. Also included are the JPS 1985 translator's notes. Throughout the various books, you will find charts and smaller maps to help guide the reader in understanding what is happening in the text and notes. Also include are full color maps like you would find in other bibles. This is a scholar's bible, but it is a adherent's book as well.I have looked, but in vain, for a better study bible for those interested in engaging the Jewish Scriptures as Jewish. Granted, the Christian writings are mentioned, as are the rabbinical sages and both alongside critical scholarship. It does not exclude ecumenical inquiry, but it is the most useful when one is trying to determine how one portion of the text is seen by Jews. This is a great benefit, to be sure, to Christians and Muslims, scholars and theologians, if they are going to interpret the "Old Testament" as a Jewish document first. It is an intellectually stimulating study bible that must be on the desk of every serious student of Scripture.

I held back from submitting a review until I had worked my way through this hefty volume (or rather, its original material, as I was very familiar with the translation), so I might as well address some of the issues raised in the meantime.At least some of the earlier reviewers seem originally to have been under the impression that the base text of this commentary was the Jewish Publication Society translation of 1917 (and not happy to find out that it wasn't). That translation (JPS or JPSV for short) was itself a de facto revision of the British Revised Version of 1885, carried out under the direction of (and largely the work of) Max L. Margolis, a distinguished critical scholar. (He had a known distaste for organized religion, which probably helped him ignore objections from some of his supposed colleagues in the Rabbinate.) It *was* the base text in the Soncino Bible Commentary, and the second edition of the Hertz Pentateuch, used in Synagogues for decades, and for a series of commentaries on specific books, published by the JPS itself. The Old JPS "Holy Scriptures" in its black-bound small format was for me, as for many other Jewish readers in the United States (and elsewhere), the primary introduction to the Bible. (For further details, the essay on Jewish Bible translations in the present volume may be consulted.)The 1917 text was reprinted in larger format in 1955, with what may be called (out of courtesy) a "distinctive" orange binding, but a very attractive blue dust jacket. It retained the original title of "The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic text: A new translation with the aid of previous versions and with constant consultation of Jewish authorities," although it wasn't "new." Both versions often can can be found used. A version based on this re-set printing can be consulted on-line, as "A Hebrew - English Bible According to the Masoretic Text and the JPS 1917 Edition" from Mechon Mamre. (The Hebrew text offered there is not presented to either traditional or modern critical standards, but is suitable for most purposes.)"The Jewish Study Bible" is, in fact, based on the *replacement* for this familiar version, published between 1962 and 1982, often known as the New Jewish Publication Society Version (NJPSV). The Old JPS version, however, was reprinted for some time, fortunately for those who found the NJPSV gratingly modern, or just bland and rather abstract in its choice of words. It is important to keep the two versions distinct, however, as they were carried out following different principles of translation, and have very a different "feel".The New Translation (now a few decades old) differs dramatically in using modern, instead of modified King James Version, English, in both vocabulary and, more radically, in sentence structure. With its various revisions in 1985 and subsequently, it has the advantage of nearly a century of additional scholarship, especially in archeology and ancient languages. Instead of being stamped with the influence of one strong-minded scholar, it was hammered out by committees of scholars, including representatives of the (modern) Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform movements. The NJPSV has served as the basis of Reform and Conservative one-volume Torah commentaries, of a JPS five-volume Torah commentary, and of JPS commentaries on various books which are appearing at intervals. The whole translation is also available facing a very beautiful Hebrew text, with selected Masoretic (traditional textual) notes.Although some sections (Genesis, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others) were first published separately, the translation mainly appeared in three volumes of Torah (Five Books of Moses), Nevi'im (Prophets -- the main historical books and the "writing Prophets"), and Ketuvim (Writings -- everything else, including Ruth, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Lamentations, and Daniel, classed as historical or prophetic by Christians). This is the Jewish canon, known by the acronym of T-N-Kh. Officially, the complete edition is known as "Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text," with the Hebrew-English editions known as "JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh" (and variations, which may require a little searching on Amazon). NJPSV is still the common abbreviation, however.Although the translation has been challenged at many points on technical grounds -- with the translators themselves joining in -- Emanuel Tov's "Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible" (1992) singled it out for its fidelity to the received text (any departures are clearly identified), and independence of earlier translations, adding, rather more boldly, that "its exegesis is reliable." Beyond its reception in Jewish circles, the NJPSV seems to have influenced the "New Revised Standard Version" of 1990, whether as a model, or because the translation committees had an overlapping membership.There are other recent Jewish translations, complete or in progress, some from resolutely Orthodox perspectives, others, like Richard Elliott Friedman's, embracing Higher Critical analysis. A major attempt, by Everett Fox, to follow the Hebrew text as closely as possible while still being intelligible as English, differs quite radically from the NJPSV in style, although often in agreement on the meaning where they both depart from familiar phrasing; it is appearing in installments as "The Schocken Bible."The present commentary, covering the whole Jewish Biblical canon, aims to place the Jewish Bible, as a Jewish text, in the context of modern information, and modern critical theories of various kinds. It is, logically enough, based on what is now the mostly widely used *modern* Jewish English translation.Obviously, this project will not please those who want to think of the Hebrew text as a revelation dictated to human secretaries, and satisfactorily explained by the great medieval commentators and their latter-day synthesizers, whose views need only be copied (selectively). However, the team which has prepared this commentary, like the team of translators, is extremely aware of Jewish issues, and the kinds of questions Jewish readers are likely to have, even if it does not attempt to give Orthodox answers. (For example, Jonathan Klawans' essay on "Concepts of Purity in the Bible" manages to be clear, accurate, insightful, and probably useful to novice Bible readers -- with a good vocabulary or dictionary -- in a mere seven pages; but it is not a guide to observance of traditional Jewish practices.)In addition to the annotations to the Biblical text, which are themselves of considerable value, there are excellent essays offerings surveys of scholarship from various points of view, of which those under the heading "Jewish Interpretations of the Bible" might well be read first by those with a limited familiarity with this enormous subject, and can probably be read profitably by advanced students as well.The results are at times strikingly different from those found in the other Oxford Annotated Bibles, and in other one-volume commentaries, such as the avowedly ecumenical "HarperCollins Study Bible." A typical example of the difference in emphasis in the three volumes is the commentary to the second chapter of "Ezra," which in this case includes information, not found in the others, on early Rabbinic understanding of the extent of Ezra's status and authority as a non-prophetic interpreter of Torah, seen as foreshadowing their own. (Rather as a commentary on "Acts" might note its use in controversies over the organization of the Church.)However, even besides material such as maps and portions of essays from the recent "New Oxford Annotated Bible: Third Edition," there is also a very high degree of similarity in the information in the notes, due to the large amount of commonly received linguistic and material (archeological and other) information with which modern scholarship is conducted. (And perhaps to the presence of Jewish contributors to the other projects, including some whose work is also found in the present commentary.)(The "Oxford Annotated Bible" series was based on the mainly American Revised Standard Version, and more recently on the New Revised Standard Version. Confusingly, there is also a 1992 "Oxford Study Bible," edited by Katherine Doob Sakenfeld, which is based on the Revised English Bible of 1989, a version of the New English Bible of 1970, which had a Study Edition in 1976. The recent editions of these "Annotated" and "Study" Bibles have, I think, only one contributor in common.)Although those looking for an Orthodox Jewish approach are likely to be disappointed, if not outraged, traditional Jewish understandings of the text are drawn upon, to a considerably greater degree than in other general commentaries, and some, at least, of the Jewish liturgical uses of Biblical passages are identified, either in essays, or in notes to the passages in their original contexts. As I am sure will be true of every reader with a wide background in Biblical studies, I have a number of points with which I disagree. But I am enormously impressed by the enterprise as a whole.