People wonder - How can we say we are right when there are over two billion Christians and only about 13 million of us?
There are MANY MANY answers to this question. Here is a thought:
The two basic texts of their cannon are the "Old Testament" and the "New Testament". The "Old Testament" is written in Hebrew while the New is written in Greek.
How many Christians can read these texts in the original? Faaaaarrrrrr less than one percent. A fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent. Understand the Tanach in the original? They don't even know the aleph beis!!
Everybody knows that when reading a translation, the original is ALWAYS corrupted. Every language has its own rhythms, meanings, concepts etc. etc. which CANNOT be translated into any other language.
There is an old story of the Yid who translated Shakespeare into Yiddish and wrote on the cover - . שייקספיר - איבערגעזעסט און פארבעסערט
"Shakespeare - Translated and improved." Hardly:-).
Let us take one word we have been discussing in recent shiurim. ויכולו as inויכולו השמים והארץ וכל צבאם. What does the word ויכולו mean? It can mean to "end", it can mean to "destroy", it relates to the word כלי - utensil, and כלי - amount, and to כלות as in כלות נפש - yearning. So what does it mean here and how do all of the meanings relate?
Or take the first word in the Torah - בראשית. It is simply translated "In the beginning". But the word used is בראשית which when scrambled comes out ירא בשת and ירא שבת and אש ברית and ברא שית [created 6] and SOOOO MUCH MORE which has been expounded from this word. How much Torah has been said just from the fact that the Torah started with a Beis?!! All they have is a relatively quite pathetic "In the beginning".
Moreover, they lack the oral law - תורה שבעל פה. So what do they make of it when the Torah says that we must keep Shabbos. What is Shabbos? The Torah never tells us.... The Torah says to slaughter and animal כאשר ציויתי - as I commanded. Where? To whom? Only WE have the answer to that question.
Or in this weeks parsha - Miraim spoke about Moshe taking a black woman - אשה כושית. What did she say? NO indication in the text. Next thing you know- she has tzaraas. What did she say? Only those who are privy to תורה שבעל פה know the answer to that question. Everyone else is in the dark [in the "black?"].
My POINT is that - there might be 2 billion of them but most of them don't have the foggiest idea what their very own primary texts are saying.
As for us - GET TO KNOW OUR TEXTS!!! Thank you HaRav HaGaon R' Artscroll Shlita but we should be meeting our texts directly and not with a shadchan at every date who tells us what the "girl" is saying without actually hearing it for ourselves. So much is lost in translation. It is not for naught that three days of darkness came down to the world when the Torah was translated into Greek and it was as bad [in the words of Chazal] as the day THE LUCHOS WERE SHATTERED!!!
I don't want to have a wife who only speaks Chinese and we need a translator to communicate. I want to hear things directly from her. The same from the Torah. Become fluent [if you are not already] in Hebrew and Aramiac!!:-).
