Isaac Edward Salkinson
Born in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania, to a Jewish family, Salkinson received a traditional education deeply immersed in Talmud and the Hebrew Scriptures. He converted to Christianity in 1849 and became a Presbyterian minister in Scotland.
Before turning to Scripture, Salkinson was already known for a remarkable literary gift: he translated Milton's Paradise Lost and Shakespeare's Othello and Romeo and Juliet into Biblical Hebrew — not modern Hebrew, but the classical language of the Prophets. These translations earned him recognition as one of the finest Hebrew prose stylists of his century.
His Hebrew New Testament was his life's work. He died in 1883 before completing it. Christian David Ginsburg (1831–1914), the celebrated Masoretic scholar whose critical edition of the Hebrew Bible remains a standard reference, completed and edited the translation. It was published posthumously in 1886 by the British and Foreign Bible Society.
Translation Philosophy
Salkinson was not converting Greek words into Hebrew words. He was asking a deeper question: What would this have sounded like if the apostles had been writing in the language of Moses and Isaiah from the beginning?
The result is a New Testament that reads like native Hebrew literature — echoing Old Testament phrasing, covenant language, and prophetic cadence. Where the Greek says one thing, Salkinson reaches for the Hebrew passage it echoes and lets the Old Testament do the talking.
Ezekiel Margoliouth
Born in Poland to a prominent Jewish rabbinic family, Ezekiel Margoliouth converted to Christianity and became an Anglican clergyman. He served as lecturer in post-Biblical Jewish literature at Oxford University and published scholarly works on Judaism and early Christianity.
His Hebrew New Testament translation stands apart for one striking feature: full cantillation marks (taamim) and vocalization (nikud). Margoliouth treated the New Testament text with the same scribal reverence given to the Torah and Prophets — assigning the traditional musical and syntactic marks that govern how the text is chanted and parsed.
No other Hebrew New Testament has this. The cantillation marks are not ornamental. They encode decisions about emphasis, clause structure, and rhetorical weight — the kind of information that governs how a reader understands where God's answer to Paul pauses, builds, and arrives.
Translation Philosophy
Margoliouth worked as a careful translator. He examined each Greek sentence, identified the closest Hebrew word for each concept, and constructed faithful, precise renderings. His Hebrew can be reverse-engineered back into the Greek with remarkable accuracy. Where the Greek says "sufficient," Margoliouth writes "sufficient." Where it says "weakness," he picks the Hebrew word that means exactly that.
How They Differ
Margoliouth is a translator. He looks at the Greek sentence, finds the closest Hebrew word for each concept, and lays them down carefully. When the original says "sufficient," he writes "enough." When it says "weakness," he picks a word that means weakness. When it says the power "tents over" someone, he uses the Hebrew word for God's dwelling presence. Everything is precise, accurate, and faithful to the source. You could reverse-engineer his Hebrew back into the Greek and land very close to where you started.
Salkinson is a poet. He's not converting Greek words into Hebrew words — he's asking a deeper question: what would this have sounded like if Paul had been writing in the language of Moses and Isaiah from the beginning?
So where Margoliouth says God's grace is "enough for you," Salkinson says it is "abundant for you" — because in the Old Testament, when God describes His own lovingkindness, He doesn't talk about bare minimum. He talks about overflow. Salkinson is echoing the moment at Sinai when God declared His own character to Moses.
Where Margoliouth picks a straightforward word for "weakness," Salkinson writes something closer to "those who have utterly no strength" — a phrase that feels like it walked out of Isaiah.
And the most striking difference comes at the end. Margoliouth says the Anointed One's power "dwells in me" — which is theologically clean and correct. But Salkinson says the Anointed One's power "is found in me." That's a completely different picture. Dwelling means something moves in. Being found means something was already there and the suffering stripped away everything that was hiding it. You don't attract the power by being weak — you uncover it.
Margoliouth gives you an accurate translation. Salkinson gives you a man who has lived inside the Hebrew scriptures his whole life, hearing Paul's words and saying, "Yes — and here is where they come from."
Side by Side — 2 Corinthians 12:9
God's answer to Paul's plea. Three words changed; three different theologies revealed.
Key Differences
- Grace: Margoliouth — דַּי לְךָ חַסְדִּי (dai l'kha chasdi — "sufficient for you is my grace"). Salkinson — חַסְדִּי רַב־לְךָ (chasdi rav-l'kha — "my grace is abundant for you"). Sufficient vs. overflow.
- Weakness: Margoliouth uses רִפְיוֹן (rifyon — weakness, feebleness). Salkinson uses לְאֵין אוֹנִים (l'ein onim — "to those utterly without strength") — a phrase that echoes Isaiah's language.
- Power: Margoliouth — תִּשְׁכּוֹן (tishkon — "will dwell"), from the root שכן (shakhan), the Shekinah root — God's tabernacle presence. Salkinson — תִּמָּצֵא (timatze — "will be found"), from מצא — to discover, to uncover what was already there.
Why Both Translations Matter
Margoliouth serves the student who needs precision — who wants to trace each Greek concept through its Hebrew cognate, who needs a rendering faithful enough to reverse-engineer back to the source. His cantillation marks add another layer: the syntactic and rhetorical structure of each clause, encoded in the same scribal system used for the Torah.
Salkinson serves the student who needs depth — who wants to hear the Old Testament echoes behind the New Testament words, who understands that the apostles thought in Hebrew before they wrote in Greek. His translation doesn't just render the text; it reveals its roots.
Together, they bracket the full range of Hebrew expression for the New Testament. One gives you what the Greek says. The other gives you where it comes from. BiblicalTools.org is the only platform offering both in an interactive reader.
For Scholars & Researchers
Salkinson-Ginsburg: Published 1886 by the British and Foreign Bible Society. Vocalized with nikud (vowel points), no cantillation marks.
Margoliouth: Full nikud and taamim (cantillation marks) — the only cantillated Hebrew New Testament ever produced.
Coverage: Both translations cover the complete New Testament — 27 books, 7,948 verses. Both are freely available in the Bible Reader.