The old adage is that reading something in translation is like kissing a beautiful woman through a veil.
In the case of the Hebrew Bible, this is actually not true: reading it in translation is like kissing a drawing of a beautiful woman recreated by a police sketch artist based on someone’s description…
This is why, on the rare occasion when I sit in a church during a service and the priest / pastor / minister talks about a passage in the Bible (especially the Hebrew Bible), I feel that everyone is so far removed from the original text that I get unbearably frustrated and have to leave…
For the rest of my answer, I refer the Hon. Member to my reply to the question, What are the advantages of reading the Bible in Hebrew instead of a translation?
(Originally written in reply to a question at Quora.com)
