The Mechanical Translation is the vision and work of Jeff A. Benner, founder of the AHRC. It is his desire to create a unique translation for those who want to dig deeper into the Hebraicness of the Tenach (Old Testament).

Most all English translations of Genesis 1:24 are translated as, "And God said, ;Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind...'" Now compare that with Genesis 2:7 which is usually translated as "...and the man became a living soul (some translations have 'being')." I have often heard it debated that only man has a soul, but not animals. This theological assumption can be supported by the two verses quoted above, but not in the Hebrew. The phrase "living creature," from the first verse, and "living soul," in the second verse, are identical in the Hebrew--nephesh hhayah. If this phrase was translated the same way in both verses, the theological idea that only man has a soul (nephesh) would never have been proposed.

This change in the way Hebrew words are translated does not end with only one or two different translations, but the list goes on. The Hebrew word nephesh is translated as soul, life, person, mind, heart, creature, body, dead, desire, man, appetite, lust, thing, self, beast, pleasure, ghost, breath and will in the King James Version. The King James Version also translates the Hebrew word hhayah as live, life, beast, alive, creature, running, living, raw, springing, old, quick, lifetime, troop, appetite, lively, congregation, company and maintenance. The King James Version is not alone in this style of translation, as all translations are similar. If one wishes to do a serious study of the Bible, and does not know Hebrew, how is one to sort through this conglomeration of word translations?

The Mechanical Translation will provide a consistent translation, where each Hebrew word, prefix and suffix are translated exactly the same way every time. This will provide the student of the Bible with a very Hebraic look at the Bible without knowing Hebrew. When the same word is found in two different verses it will be known that they are the same word and problems such as identified above will disappear. This translation will also translate the Hebrew words into English in the same order as they are in Hebrew, but without understanding Hebrew sentence structure the translation will not make complete sense. For this reason a second translation, called the Revised Mechanical Translation, is provided which uses the same English words to translate the Hebrew but will re-arrange the words so that they can be understood by English readers.

Even though each Hebrew word is translated exactly the same way every time with an English word or phrase, the English words will not be sufficient for understanding the meaning of the Hebrew words. For this reason, the Mechanical Translation will be accompanied by a dictionary that will allow the student to look up each English word, or phrase, to learn the meaning of the word from an Hebraic perspective. The dictionary will also provide the identification number for that word in the "Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible".

Also provided with the translation is a concordance so that any one word can be found throughout the text. This is an invaluable tool when doing word studies as the context of a word in its various uses is helpful in understanding its meaning.