I'm currently engaged in learning how to read the Hebrew Bible in an attempt to discover the earliest reasoning behind the Scriptures.

I'm at a very early stage indeed and very much a novice but instantly I have become fascinated by the different interpretation of some passages in the Koine Greek translation from the original Aramaic.

As I'm still at an early stage perhaps I could start with Genesis. The original Hebrew word is bereshiyt meaning summit but was translated into beginning by the Greeks. This might sound trivial to the casual observer but as one particular Hebrew Bible scholar has pointed out that because the contemporary Aramaic speakers at that time had an entirely different notion of space and time to ourselves the translation as "beginning' might prove problematic. This particular scholar preferred the translation as "summit" and considers it to denote transcendence rather than first cause.

I only mention this because it's becoming increasingly clear to me how difficult it is to rely upon the word by word accuracy of a series of documents which have been translated into Latin, then English and by now into just about every other language on Earth.

Is there no room for questioning the literal meaning of an admittedly great work which has been subjected to so much human interpretation?