The New Testament: A Translation by David Bentley HartMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I've always thought the profession of Translator should be more respected when dealing with (a translation of) the Bible. All too many interpretations are taken from commonly accepted faulty translations, and yet very few people are actually qualified to translate ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek from the original/oldest sources.
Obviously I'm not one of the those people, so I can't really judge the accuracy of Hart's translations, but at least it is something he takes very seriously. His introductory and concluding chapters detail this. In this translation, he endeavors to not only provide an accurate translation (dealing with words like "spirit", "fornication", "eternity", etc.), but also tries to convey the voice of the original text (when it was erudite, when more coarse, when not necessarily written by a native speaker, etc.).
The result is very interesting indeed. Plus it gave me a chance to revisit the New Testament, which, like it or leave it, is one of the main canonical texts of our age.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment