Talk:1 Maccabees

I Maccabees is a member of Category:Old Testament Apocrypha. Category:Old Testament Apocrypha is a member of Category:Jewish texts. There is therefore no need for I Maccabees to be a member of Category:Jewish texts directly. (It's also a document, and a religious text, but it doesn't need to belong to Category:Documents or Category:Religious texts directly either.) Quadell (talk) 14:01, Jun 10, 2004 (UTC)

"Old Testament" not a Not a Jewish name

It is offensive to Jews to refer to those books as the "Old Testament" (that is a category for Christians maybe), to Jews and to many others they are known as the Hebrew Bible or the Torah and Tanakh. Thus they can go DIRECTLY into Jewish texts as well.IZAK 07:58, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

IZAK, most readers are unaware of Tanakh but understand Old Testament. At any rate, the whole concept of apocrypha is foreign to Judaism anyway. JFW | T@lk 08:52, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

JFW: I realize what you say very well. However, since Wiki itself goes out of its way to point out that Jews prefer Hebrew Bible over "Old anything" why not try to bring the point home. As I see it that for the sake of clarity, all articles will have to be re-created so that they make clear the way different religions see things, the problem of course is that Christianity sits on so much Category:Jewish texts yet nevertheless ways must be found to point to the differences so that people know that we are dealing with different religions completely. IZAK 10:20, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

As far as I know, there is no unbiased way to refer to the Old Testament/Tanakh. Christians don't like to use the term "Tanakh", and Jews don't like the term "Old Testament". But it's the same collection of books. There are a couple of different ways of dealing with this problem.

1. We could have a Category:Tanakh books separate from a Category:Old Testament books. Both categories would have the same articles in them, and each book (e.g. Genesis) would belong to both categories. Category:Old Testament books would belong to Category:Biblical books, which would belong to Category:Christian texts. Category:Tanakh books would belong to Category:Jewish texts. The advantage is that it would be accurate and inoffensive. The disadvantage is that it would be redundant.
2. We could have a single category, either called Category:Tanakh books or Category:Old Testament books, and the category itself would explain that the collection can be called by either name. Each book would only belong to that single category. That category would be a member of both Category:Biblical books and Category:Jewish texts. The advantage is that this is simpler and more concise. The disadvantage is that Christians generally aren't familiar with the term Tanakh, and Jews (understandably) don't like the implication that their law is outdated.

This would all be simpler if there were a NPOV way of refering to the collection, but I don't know of one. I would prefer option 2, but I would be okay with option 1. Is this a debate that should be somewhere else? Perhaps Talk:Categorization? Quadell (talk) 13:42, Jun 11, 2004 (UTC)

• Quadell: By the way, with regards to your comment above that "But it's the same collection of books", you should note that, that statement is NOT true. For those Jews who are fluent in the Hebrew language the word Tanakh perfectly describes how they are reading and understanding the texts in the Hebrew original with all its shades and nuances. Whereas the vast majority of Christians are reading a work in translation full of errors and inadequate transmission of the notions and concepts contained within the original Hebrew words of the Bible which cannot be "captured" or "conveyed" and thus lose their true meaning/s for those reading the words in translation. So "the same collection of books" it is NOT. IZAK 09:04, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Interlinear translations?

Are there any works in print that reproduce Hebrew text with a literal English translation? If not, what are my options for reading 1 and 2 Maccabees in their entirety in a form as close to the original as possible?--StAkAr Karnak 03:55, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sadly, the original text of 1 Maccabees hasn't survived till our times, we have only the Septuagint version. 2 Maccabees has been written in Greek. If you don't mind reading Greek rather than Hebrew, there is a number of interlinear translations of the Septuagint available (also online). -- Naive cynic 23:08, Nov 11, 2004 (UTC)