"katysails" wrote in message
...
I'm curious, where can I get a copy of the "original" version?

The Torah...the first 5 books of the Bible....the Hebrew is much different
than the translation and has been much edited to suit the politics of
following generations....


Yes, of course anyone interested in the earliest version of the writings goes to
the original Hebrew, considered essentially unmodified for about 2500 years.
Unfortunately, a small number of the words have lost their meanings over the
years and translators have to guess at the meanings. The most accurate English
transplantation is the JPS Tanakh (the Hebrew acronym for the Old Testament)
though the KJV is still the most poetic.

There is a form of biblical study called the "Documentary Hypothesis" that tries
to unravel the actual authors of the various parts of the Torah. The basic idea
is that the southern kingdom, Judah had their bible, written by an author
designation "J" because they referred to God as "Jehovah," and the northern
kingdom had their version, called "E" for "Elohim." There is much "politics"
contained in the various parts, for instance, in J Jacob gives his birthright to
Judah, but in E, Joseph gets the double portion, and Jacob overrides Joseph's
wish that Manasseh should be favored by declaring that Ephraim will be greater.
Ephraim happened to contain the capital of the northern kingdom, and was the
tribe of the northern king. When the northern kingdom was conquered and
refugees streamed south, J and E got combined in a way the was not complimentary
to the Priests, so they wrote their own version, P, which includes the famous
"First Creation" in Genesis, half of the Noah story, "updates" on lots of the JE
stories, plus all the stuff about sacrifices. D (Deuteronomy) got added on
later, as part of the historical books that follow the Torah. This all got
combined by the "redactor," R, possibly Ezra, about 500 BCE.

Anyone interested in this stuff should read "Who Wrote the Bible?" by Richard
Elliott Freidman.

BTW, none of this is the "original version" Vito is claiming knowledge of - I'm
still waiting for that.