Call this a review of a recent article I noticed in the Biblical Archeological Review, "The Puzzling Doorways of Solomon's Temple" by Madeleine Mumcuoglu and Yosef Garfinkel, BAR July/August 2015, pp. 35-41.
This is not something that I had been waiting with baited breath to find out about, but sometimes there is a serendipity effect when you are idly reading something over breakfast.
The authors, field archeologists working at the site Khirbet Qelyala in Israel, based on evidence from their dig site, believe they have an explanation for a strange reference in 1 Kings 6:31. Essentially, according to many current translations,
"The Bible tells us that the doors of the inner shrine of Solomon's Temple had five mezuzot (singular mezuzah) [and] whatever they were the Bible is not referring to the little parchment texts in a case on the doorposts of Jewish houses that are called mezuzot. The word mezuzah is often defined as doorposts."...
A few paragraphs down the authors note the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible and Jewish Publication Society translation provide the same footnote to the sentence, describing the inner shrine gate with its 5 mezuzot: "Meaning of Hebrew uncertain."
To sum up the authors' findings, their excavations at the above site provided a subscale limestone model of a door with five recessed interlocking door frames. This could have been a model of the Solomon temple doorway or one of a similar building. In fact it appears that a number of doorways at shrines in the United Kingdom (Israel-Judah rather than Brits, etc.) displayed this feature - and there is a high likelihood that this is what the original Hebrew passage in 1 Kings is meant to convey. Yet somehow, even among distinguished Hebrew scholars, this has been a test of ingenuity to explain.
To illustrate the problem the authors provide us with translations from five widely read Biblical translations, four of which I am somewhat familiar with - and I will presume that all take line by line translation as a serious undertaking. So here goes:
New American Standard Bible:
"For the entrance of the inner sanctuary he made doors of olive wood, the lintel and 5-sided doorposts."
New American Bible:
At the entrance of the sanctuary, doors of olive wood were made, the doorframes had beveled doorposts."
New Jerusalem Bible:
He made the door of the Debir with uprights of wild olive wood and door jambs with 5 indented sections.
Jewish Publication Society Bible:
And for the entrance of the sanctuary he made doors of olive wood, the doorposts within the frame having five angles.
Keter Crown Bible:
For the entrance of the inner sanctuary he made olive wood doors with 5 sided door frames.
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A couple of these look fairly close. "Five indented sections" from the NJB must have been a J. R. R. Tolkien insight, but I have a bias.
And I suppose other people do too.
But this inspired me to look at what was written under divine guidance in the NWT of the 1980s, the one that was perfect but has been recently improved. Are you ready?
New World Translation:
"And the entrance of the innermost room he made with doors of oil-tree wood: side pillars, door posts [and - the parentheses theirs, not mine] a fifth."
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Beside the valiant attempt to explain what the 5 was all about and bracketing an "and" [waw] which may not have been there, I also noticed the reference to "oil-tree wood", I haven't studied much Hebrew, and I would probably obtain a faster explanation for what's going on there by pointing it to out to others who have rather than continuing my homework. But I have done some study of Semitic languages overall. Modern Arabic which has so many common elements in vocabulary and constructions with Hebrew. It think it has something to say about "olive" and "oil". To wit, you might just wonder if the writer of Popeye comic strips could have helped the 1984 Revision tea, that rendered this from the original languages.
In Arabic "oil" is "zayt".
In Arabic "olive oil" is "zayt zaytu:un". Oil of olive or olives, in other words. So in Hebrew, do you suppose....?
So what we actually had in the NWT were someone's incomplete notes in an effort toward that rendering.
Post script - so to speak:
Interesting to note as well, that in Jeremiah, 8:8, scribes are "secretaries" and in NT ( e.g., Luke 20:19) scribes are scribes, When I think of the NWT, I think of Jeremiah 8:8.