A Brief History of the Salkinson-Ginsburg Hebrew New Testament

For some time the Hebrew New Testamant produced by Salkinson and completed by Ginsburg was known as the Salkinson-Ginsburg New Testament. It is Copyrighted by The Society for Distributing Hebrew Scriptures (SDHS). Light for Israel is a USA distribution depot for SDHS. This edition we offer has been edited to correspond to the Greek Textus Receptus by the Revd. Dr. Eri S. Gabe in 2000. It has been offered to Jewish readers worldwide since 1940 by the Society in gratitude for the great debt that Christians owe the Jewish people. A short history of the translators follows.

The great work of producing a Hebrew New Testament from the Greek was first undertaken by Isaac Salkinson. The exact date of Salkinson's birth is not known. It is assumed to be around the year 1820. He was born in Vilna, which was the Lithuanian capital until Lithuania was anexed to Russia in 1795. The population was largely Jewish. Little is known of Salkinson's family background. His father died when he was four years old, and his mother died a few years later. It is not known who took care of him after he was orphaned. It is known that his strictly orthodox parents wanted him to become a rabbi.

Salkinson determined to emigrate to America in order to enter a rabbinical seminary. He went first to London where he was brought into contact with Christians who shared with him the gospel. Salkinson began to compare the record of Jesus' life with Old Testament prophecies and was convinced that the Jesus of the New Testament was the Messiah promised in the Old Testament. Salkinson became a Hebrew Christian and entered the London College of the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Jews. He greatly distinguished himself as a linguist. At the age of four he was already able to read the T'nach in the original Hebrew, and throughout his life he exercised his linguistic gifts, especially in the translation of standard works into Hebrew.

Salkinson's greatest work was his Hebrew translation of the Greek New Testament under the title Ha 'Brith-ha'Chadashah (The New Covenant). Of the translation, Dr. Salkinson wrote, "I undertook the work with delight ... I felt then how great a necessity there was for a version in idiomatic Hebrew." The translation was undertaken for the British Society in 1881. Unfortunately, Dr. Salkinson died in 1883 before the work of translation was completely finished. Dr. C.D. Ginsburg completed the work and published it in Vienna in 1886.

Dr. Ginsburg was himself a Hebrew Massoretic scholar. He was born in Warsaw, Poland, on December 25th, 1821. At the age of 25 he became a Hebrew Christian and worked for the London Society for the Promotion of Christianity Among the Jews. In 1863, at age 42, he devoted his life entirely to literary work. His greatest work was his Massoretic studies. The outcome of Dr. Ginsburg's studies was the publication of the Hebrew text of the T'nach, with his translation of Elias Levita's Massoreth ha-Massoreth and Jacob ben Hayim's Introduction to the Rabbinic Bible. Please see the article on the history of the Hebrew text for complete details.

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