Category Archives: History MB

Israelites Required to Live in Booths for Seven Days during the Feast of Tabernacles

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What were the “booths” that the Israelites were required to live in during the Feast of Tabernacles, as commanded in Leviticus 23? And what was the point of such a strange command?

In William Tyndale’s translation, as it was taken into the 1537 Matthew Bible, Leviticus 23 reads as follows (gently updated):

Leviticus 33-34 & 39-43; the Israelites required to live in booths for seven days:

33And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, 34Speak to the children of Israel and say: The fifteenth day of the same seventh month shall be the Feast of Tabernacles, seven days unto the Lord. …

39Moreover, in the fifteenth day of the seventh month, after you have gathered in the fruits of the land, you shall keep holy day unto the Lord seven days long. The first day shall be a day of rest, and the eighth day shall be a day of rest. 40And you shall take for yourselves the first day, the fruits of goodly trees, and the branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and shall rejoice before the Lord seven days. 41And you shall keep it holy day unto the Lord seven days in the year. And it shall be a law forever unto your children after you, that you keep that feast in the seventh month. 42And you shall dwell in booths seven days: all that are Israelites born, shall dwell in booths, 43that your children after you may know how that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: for I am the Lord your God.

A clue to understanding this passage lies in the former meanings of two words: “booth” and “tabernacle.”

The meaning of the word “booth”

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), from the 13th century until Tyndale translated the books of Moses, the primary meaning of the word “booth” was

A temporary dwelling covered with boughs of trees or other slight materials.[1]

We may be 100% certain that this was how William Tyndale used the word, because in a table of definitions appended to his 1530 Pentateuch he wrote that “booth” meant “a house made of boughs.”[2]

The meaning of the word “tabernacle”

Interestingly, the word “tabernacle” also once meant, not only a tent, but also a temporary dwelling made of branches or boughs.[3] Understanding this, the Leviticus passage most naturally indicates that the Israelites were required to gather branches, boughs, and willows (v40), and proceed to make booths of them to dwell in for seven days (v42.) The seven days of living in these booths was meant to be a time of rejoicing and enjoying the fruits of the trees (v40), as well as an occasion to remember and show how the Israelites lived in temporary shelters after they first departed from Egypt (v43).

The booths of the Israelites: branches, boughs, and willows from the brook

One of the quotations given under the OED definition of “booth” speaks of “temporary booths, made of intertwisted palm, olive…and willows from the brook.” This sounds very much like the booths that the Israelites were required to construct and dwell in while they celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles.

But some commentators distinguish the branches, boughs, and willows referred to in verse 40 from the materials that the Israelites were to use for building their booths. They say that the boughs and branches were to be taken into the temple and waved before the Lord. Bible commentator Matthew Henry observes that this is how the Jews interpreted the passage. However, he suggests these verses may refer to using branches and boughs both in praise and worship and for the construction of booths. In the context, this makes good sense. Henry wrote,

The Jews make the taking of the branches to be a distinct ceremony from the making of the booths. It is said, indeed (Nehemiah 8:15), that they made their booths of the branches of trees, which they might do, and yet use that further expression of joy, the carrying of palm branches in their hands, which appears to have been a token of triumph upon other occasions (John 12:13 ), and is alluded to, Revelation 7:9. The eighth day some make a distinct feast of itself, but it is called (John 7:37) that great day of the feast; It was the day on which they returned from their booths to settle again in their own houses. They were to rejoice before the Lord during all the time of the feast. (Emphasis original)[4]

In any event, the Israelite people were certainly required to gather boughs and branches together to make their booths, in which they were to live and sleep and rejoice for seven whole days. Thus the Feast of Tabernacles might also be called, in a paraphrase, the Feast of Houses Made with Boughs. Sometimes it is called the Feast of Booths.

Modern-day Jews build a booth for the Feast of Tabernacles, or Succoth as they often call it.

Ruth Magnusson Davis, April 2022

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Interested in other words used in the Bible? One of the most important — because the whole New Testament revolves around it — is the word “sin” in such phrases as “Christ was made sin for us.” This was a Hebrew idiom, and it meant that Christ was made a sin offering for us. William Tyndale taught this in notes in his New Testament. In the Matthew Bible, John Rogers used the same notes. See our blog post on this important topic here

Baruch House published the world’s only history of the Matthew Bible, in two volumes. Check it out on Amazon:  The Story of the Matthew Bible, Part 1.

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ENDNOTES:

[1] Oxford English Dictionary online (OED), sv booth, noun. Entry 1.a. This meaning of “booth” continued to be current for another 300 years or so, after which time it fell out of use.

[2] See David Daniell’s modern-spelling edition of Tyndale’s Old Testament at page 90.

[3] OED, sv.tabernacle, noun. Entry 1.a. It also meant a tent, which is how we usually understand it in biblical context.

[4] Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary, Genesis to Deuteronomy (McLean, Virginia: MacDonald Publishing Company, undated edition marked “Revised and Corrected”), 540.

KW  Israelites required to live in booths for seven days

Luther vs. Calvin on the New Covenant

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When it came to the New Covenant, John Calvin contradicted Martin Luther on the fundamentals. They cannot both be right. Quotations from both men are set out below, so readers can see and judge for themselves.

When Martin Luther taught about the New Covenant, he extolled its newness and uniqueness. In the quotation below, he referred to it as a “testament,” emphasizing its likeness to a last will and testament. A last will and testament is a document by which a man gives his possessions freely to his heirs (Gal. 3), and which is made irrevocable by the testator’s death. Luther also taught that the Old Testament was a temporary covenant, and that it is now “disannulled” – that is, cancelled, abolished, obsolete. I emphasize these points so that when we get to Calvin, the difference will be clear.

The New Covenant, Luther explained, is Christ’s own promise to us:

Luther: [Christ] made a promise or solemn vow, which we are to believe and thereby come to righteousness and salvation. This promise is the words just cited, where Christ says, “This is the cup of the New Testament.” These we shall now examine.

Not every vow is called a testament, but only a last irrevocable will of one who is about to die, whereby he bequeaths his goods, allotted and assigned to be distributed to whom he will…. And so that little word ‘testament’ is a short summary of all God’s wonders and grace, fulfilled in Christ.

Christ also distinguishes this testament from others and says that it is a new and everlasting testament, in his own blood, for the forgiveness of sins; whereby he disannuls the Old Testament. For the little word ‘new’ makes the testament of Moses obsolete and worthless, one that is no longer in effect. The Old Testament was a promise made through Moses to the people of Israel … a temporal testament …

But Christ, the true paschal lamb (1Co. 5:7), is an eternal divine Person, who dies to ratify the New Testament. Therefore the testament and the possessions therein bequeathed are eternal and abiding. And that is what he means when he contrasts this testament with the other. “A new testament,” he says, so that the other may become obsolete (Heb. 8:13) and no longer be in effect.[1]

William Tyndale agreed with Luther. He taught:

Tyndale: The New Testament is as much as to say a new covenant. The Old Testament is an old temporal covenant made between God and the carnal children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, otherwise called Israel, upon the deeds and the observing of a temporal law. Where the reward of the keeping is temporal life and prosperity in the land of Canaan, and the breaking is rewarded with temporal death and punishment. But the New Testament is an everlasting covenant made unto the children of God through faith in Christ, upon the deservings of Christ. Where eternal life is promised to all that believe, and death to all that are unbelieving.[2]

But against Luther and Tyndale, John Calvin taught that the Old (Mosaic) Covenant was not temporary, not abolished, not obsolete. He also, as will be seen, taught that the New Covenant was not really or substantially new. He said the covenant God made with Abraham precluded anything new, and that the Abrahamic covenant was the real enduring covenant. What need was there then for the covenant that Jesus came to inaugurate? In fact, said Calvin, the Lord came merely to confirm the Abrahamic covenant. Calvin taught that both the Old and New Covenants were merely confirmations of the Abrahamic covenant, and the only difference between them was as to the form and way of teaching.

Below are Calvin’s own words:

Calvin: Now, as to the new covenant, it is not so called because it is contrary to the first covenant, for God is never inconsistent with himself, nor is he unlike himself. He then who once made a covenant with his chosen people had not changed his purpose, as though he had forgotten his faithfulness. It then follows, that the first covenant was inviolable; besides, he had already made his covenant with Abraham, and the Law was a confirmation of that covenant. As then the Law depended on that covenant which God made with his servant Abraham, it follows that God could never have made a new, that is, a contrary or a different covenant…. God has never made any other covenant than that which he made formerly with Abraham, and at length confirmed by the hand of Moses. This subject might be more fully handled; but it is enough briefly to shew, that the covenant which God made at first is perpetual.

Let us now see why he promises to the people a new covenant. It being new, no doubt refers to what they call the form; and the form, or manner, regards not words only, but first Christ, then the grace of the Holy Spirit, and the whole external way of teaching. But the substance remains the same. By substance I understand the doctrine; for God in the Gospel brings forward nothing but what the Law contains. We hence see that God has so spoken from the beginning, that he has not changed, no not a syllable, with regard to the substance of the doctrine. For he has included in the Law the rule of a perfect life, and has also shown what is the way of salvation, and by types and figures led the people to Christ, so that the remission of sin is there clearly made manifest, and whatever is necessary to be known.[3] (Emphasis added)

So Calvin said the Old (Mosaic) Covenant was not really a new thing in its time, and likewise the New Covenant was not really new. Both were just new-ish ways of confirming the Abrahamic covenant, to which God would always be faithful. Christ was a different “external way of teaching” doctrine to the Jews, as well as to the Gentiles who would also be brought into the Church. On this new foundation, Calvin developed his gospel. A few points to note about his teaching:

(1) Calvin emphasized “God’s covenant with Abraham.” The covenant that Luther emphasized was the one given by Jesus. Calvin’s different treatment undermines the primacy of the New Covenant and the agency of Christ.

(2) Calvin said Christ ratified the Abrahamic covenant, not his own, a re-emphasis which also deflects from Christ’s covenant.

(3) Calvin reinterpreted both the means and purpose of this ratification. When Luther used the word ‘ratify,’ he meant chiefly that Jesus died in order to make his covenant irrevocable and eternal. When Calvin used it, he meant that Jesus appeared in order to ratify doctrine and be a new external way of teaching.

In conclusion, Calvin made the Abrahamic covenant to be an overarching covenant that later covenants only confirmed. This meant that the New Covenant could scarcely be so called, because Christ came not to do a new thing, but to manifest or confirm the old. Thus Calvin taught a different covenant. Further, his new doctrine informed all the notes and commentaries, and even several Scripture revisions, in the Geneva Bible. His doctrine is the basis of so-called “Covenantal Theology.” It has a ring of truth, but when it comes down to it, it cannot be harmonized with Reformation doctrine. Part 2 of The Story of the Matthew Bible looks at some of the issues more closely.

In the meantime, I have written a slightly longer (5 ½ pages) paper comparing the Matthew Bible, which agrees with Luther, and the Geneva Bible, which reflected Calvin’s doctrine, which is posted here on Academia.edu.

Endnotes:

[1] Martin Luther, “Treatise on New Testament,” Luther’s Works, Vol. 35, 84-85.

[2] “WT to Reader,” Tyndale’s 1534 New Testament, 8-9.

[3] John Calvin, Commentary on Jeremiah 31 at biblehub.com. Accessed during February 2019.

 

Tyndale: Don’t Tamper with My Translation and Call It a “Diligent Correction”

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William Tyndale was a humble man. He always wanted to do better and he welcomed sound criticism. But he had a message for people who took his translations, changed them, and then promoted their work as a “diligent correction.” With a moment’s thought, we will realize that to do such a thing to another man’s work, no matter what it might be, is the height of effrontery and offense. But when it came to God’s word, which Tyndale loved as gold, and over which he laboured painstakingly to make true and faithful, he had every right to be indignant.

There were a few offenders, and they are discussed in Part 2 of The Story of the Matthew Bible. Here is a brief review of just two instances of people unilaterally, without permission, taking and changing Tyndale’s work.

George Joye

George Joye was a scholar who had an interest in bible translation. In the 1530s, he was employed as a proofreader and corrector for a printer in Antwerp when that printer happened to be working on a new edition of Tyndale’s New Testament.  Without Tyndale’s knowledge or consent, Joye revised the text. In particular, he changed the word ‘resurrection,’ because he had his own unique ideas about it. At the close of the book was the statement:

Here endeth the new Testament diligently ouersene and corrected, and prynted now agayn at Antwerpe … In the yere of oure Lord m.cccc. and xxxiiij. in August.[1]

Tyndale complained:

[Some]one brought me a copy and shewed me so many places, in such wise altered, that I was astonished and wondered not a little what fury had driven him to make such change and to call it a diligent correction. For throughout Matthew, Mark and Luke perpetually: and oft in the Acts, and sometimes in John and also in Hebrews, where he findeth this word ‘resurrection,’ he changeth it into ‘the life after this life,’ or ‘very life,’ and such like, as one that abhorred the name of the resurrection. …[2]

Tyndale did not want people taking and changing his work to suit their own ideas.

William Whittingham and the Geneva Bible

The Geneva Bible was the work of Puritans living in Geneva during the Marian exile, after Tyndale’s death. The English Puritan William Whittingham first revised Tyndale’s New Testament in 1557, and then the whole Bible followed in 1560. In their preface to the whole Bible, the Geneva revisers claimed, among other things, to have received a new, clear revelation of light from God. Further, though Coverdale and Tyndale were of the same generation, the revisers characterized their work as “from the infancy of those times” and as needing greatly to be “perused and reformed” – that is, reviewed and corrected by them:

Preface, 1560 Geneva Bible: We thought that we should bestow our labours and study in nothing which could be more acceptable to God and conformable to his Church than in the translating of the Holy Scriptures into our native tongue; the which thing, albeit that divers heretofore have endeavoured to achieve [i.e. Tyndale and Coverdale], yet considering the infancy of those times and imperfect knowledge of the tongues, in respect of this ripe age and clear light which God hath now revealed, the translations required greatly to be perused and reformed.[3]

The Puritans then went on to revise the Scriptures and promote it as a corrected Bible.

Tyndale: Play fair

Tyndale protested that if anyone want to make a Bible, he should translate it for himself. It is not right, he said, to take another man’s work, change it, and promote the revised work as a correction:

It is lawful for who will to translate and show his mind, though a thousand had translated before him. But it is not lawful (thinketh me) nor yet expedient for the edifying of the unity of the faith of Christ, that whosoever desires should by his own authority take another man’s translation, and put out and in, and change at pleasure, and call it a correction.[4]

Many are the difficulties caused by proceeding like this, aside from the offense to the original author. But for Tyndale, the greatest risk was falsifying God’s word. If the text itself is “corrected” to support a false opinion of the “corrector,” there is no way for the sheep to find the truth:

If the text is left uncorrupted, it will purge herself of all manner false glosses, however subtly they be feigned, as a seething pot casteth up her scum. But if the false gloss is made [to be] the text “diligently overseen and corrected”, how then shall we correct false doctrine and defend Christ’s flock from false opinions ?[5]

Don’t touch my translations, he said. Leave them alone. Or if they must steal and change it, then they should call it their own and put their own names to it, and leave him out of it.

But did Tyndale request that his work be corrected?

Four years before the Joye fiasco, Tyndale wrote words that have been misused to justify later revisions. He said in the preface to his 1530 Pentateuch,

Notwithstanding yet I submit this book, and all others that I have either made or translated, or shall in time to come (if it be God’s will that I shall further labour in his harvest), to all who submit themselves to the word of God, to be corrected of [by] them, yea and moreover to be disallowed and also burnt, if it seem worthy when they have examined it with the Hebrew, so that [provided] they first put forth of their own translating another that is more correct.[6]

People have seized on these words to argue that Tyndale would have welcomed the Geneva and KJV “corrections.” But this overlooks his last sentence. Let them correct as they will, he says, but by means of their own translation – and, furthermore, don’t cast his aside until theirs is done. So, Tyndale did not want men tampering with his work.

The silver lining

Truth be told, there are only two true “diligent corrections” of Tyndale’s New Testament. Those are the two he performed himself, one in 1534 and the other in 1535. However, it was no doubt in the providence of God that Tyndale’s work furnished the base of the major English Bibles. Computer studies have shown that over 83% of the KJV New Testament is straight Tyndale. We may thank the Lord for not answering Tyndale’s prayer, however much we know that he would regret many of the changes made. His voice was largely preserved, especially in the New Testament, and has been greatly used by the Holy Spirit.

However, it cannot be said that Tyndale wanted his work to be corrected this way.

To learn about Tyndale’s work with the Scriptures, and the many unauthorized changes that have been made to his translations read The Story of the Matthew Bible, now in 2 Parts.

 

© Ruth Magnusson Davis, October 2018. Minimal revisions June 2021.

Endnotes:

[1] Herbert’s Catalogue of Printed Bibles, page 6.

[2] 2nd foreword to Tyndale’s 1534 New Testament, modern spelling edition by David Daniell, page 13.

[3] Preface to the 1560 Geneva Bible. Reproduced in 1599 Geneva Bible, modern spelling Tolle Lege edition, beginning at p. xxvii.

[4] Tyndale, 2nd foreword, 1534, pages 13-14.

[5] Ibid, page 14.

[6] Tyndale, “W.T. to the Reader,” 1530 Pentateuch, David Daniell’s modern spelling edition, pages 5-6.

Obsolete English and punctuation may be silently updated in quotations from the early 16th century.