Multi-platform, electronic edition of masoretic text of the Holy Scriptures place next to classic Jewish translation. It combines the most authoritative electronic edition of Hebrew Bible -- based on the Leningrad Codex and complete with cantillation marks, vocalization and verse numbers, -- together with the Jewish translation which has much to recommend to both students and scholars of Hebrew Bible. Tanakh is prepared in Adobe PDF format so it can be used online as well as offline on any computing device supporting PDF files.

About Hebrew text

Using Michigan-Claremont ASCII text, the initial Hebrew version of this Tanakh was created by Varda Graphics in 1998 to match the primary textual witness, the so-called Leningrad Codex, and indirectly Biblia Hebraica Stutgartensia (BHS) which bases itself on it.

Since then the text has significantly evolved by incorporating thousands of corrections suggested to Varda Graphics' by its own employees, editors of the United Bible Society, David Stein--during Varda Graphics' typesetting of the JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh,--and, more recently, by computer-comparison done by the late Rabbi Mordechai Breuer during his work on Keter Yerushalaim (these results have been only partially incorporated so far as the work on them continues). During its preparation, the Hebrew text was reformatted in line with requirements of the Jewish law.

Originally published in 1917 by the Jewish Publication Society of Philadelphia, this translation is used here because:

• it is a great translation which that is sensitive to Jewish tradition
• it has been used in many important Chumashim, Sidurim, and other Jewish-interest books
• it follows the accepted among Jews sequence of Biblical books
• it is in public domain and thus is available to be used in a great variety of ways
• it is very literal in its approach and is thus can often be more useful than idiomatic translations which often hide more than reveal the multiplicity of possible meanings embedded in the original text
• it is using a form of English which, while a bit archaic, actually provides more grammatical forms to reflect Hebrew

From translators: ". . . A translation destined for the people can follow only one text, and that must be the traditional. Nevertheless a translator is not a transcriber of the text. His principal function is to make the Hebrew intelligible. Faithful though he must be to the Hebrew idiom, he will nevertheless be forced by the genius of the English language to use circumlocution, to add a word or two, to alter the sequence of words, and the like. In general, our rule has been that, where the word or words added are implied in the Hebrew construction, no device is used to mark the addition; where, on the other hand, the addition is not at once to be inferred from the original wording and yet seems necessary for the understanding, it has been enclosed in brackets. Naturally opinion will differ as to what may be deemed an addition warranted by the Hebrew construction and what may not, but as intelligibility was the principal aim, the Editors have felt justified in making their additions, sparingly it is true, but nevertheless as often as the occasion required.