More than one biblical scholar has urged people to attempt to read the Bible with “fresh eyes.”
The problem is that it’s tough to do that.
Everett Fox has scholars praising his translation of the first five books of Moses for its technical merits, but it really shines in its ability to display the “foreign-ness” of this literature, which comes to us from across the millennia and the other side of the cultural spectrum.
Familiar names are rendered in their Hebrew – YHWH and Moshe; Avraham, Yaakov and Yosef.
The structure of the original Hebrew is retained. For example:
“They said to Moshe:
is it because there are no graves in Egypt
that you have taken us out to die in the wilderness?
What is this that you have done, bringing us out of Egypt?
Is this not the very word that we spoke to you in Egypt,
saying: Let us alone, that we may serve Egypt!
Indeed better for us serving Egypt
than our dying in the wilderness!”
Excellent linguistic commentary is added:
“God made the dome*
and separated the waters that were below the dome from
the waters that were above the dome
It was so.
God called the dome: Heaven!
(*dome: Hebrew, raki’a, literally a beaten sheet of metal.)”
This translation offers a unique opportunity for those without knowledge of Hebrew to catch a glimpse of the language’s beauty and glean insight.
This book was once over $100 but was recently made available as a paperback for under $20 from vendors such as Amazon.com.
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