Dr Paul Allen

There is a Hebrew word that we transliterate as tan, with the feminine form tannah, which refers to jackals. It occurs, for instance, in Malachi 1:3, where God declares that, according to the NIV,  “Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.”  That is straightforward, and it makes excellent sense in the context. But here is the problem. From the same root, there is also another word, 'tannin', which usually means a regular snake or serpent but can also signify a monster, sea serpent, or sea monster.  The word is used in this sense on multiple occasions to refer to the mighty monsters of the deep seas, probably implying whales. But it also looks as if it might conceivably be a plural for tan, jackal.  On several occasions in the Hebrew Bible, the words are confused, even by translators who should have known better, and that confusion has left a long shadow in English readings. On multiple occa...

The Bibliotheca Laurentiana at Florence is a repository for ancient writing. It contains a vast collection of more than 11,000 manuscripts and 4,500 early printed books. None is more precious than the fine volume labeled  Codex Amiatinus . This is the most celebrated of the myriad manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate Bible and an important witness to the history of the Christian church. It is the fifth of the twenty-five objects through which we are tracing the history of Christianity. As the Christian church grew and matured and moved beyond its infancy, early believers had to grapple with many theological questions and controversies. Creeds and councils were convened. Debates raged. Every Christian turned to the Bible to support his beliefs and yet a foundational question remained: What was the Bible? Codex Amiatinus is an important part of the answer. In 382, Pope Damascus I concluded that the church was in desperate need of a new translation of the S...