Genesis 1-11: A New Old Translation for Readers, Scholars, and Translators

by John F. Hobbins, Samuel L. Bray

This translation of Genesis 1-11 follows the Hebrew text closely and leaves in what many translations leave out: physicality, ambiguity, repetition, even puns. Bray and Hobbins also draw deeply from the long history of Jewish and Christian interpretation. Their translation and notes offer the reader wisdom and delight.

Genres: Theology, Biblical Studies, Christian, Religion

326 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[David Shane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I review this having read just "To the Reader", the actual translation, and "To the Persistent Reader", but not the 150 pages of notes on the translation that follows! So, this is a translation of Genesis 1-11. It's fun to read... and that's part of the point. Probably most of us today prefer what might be called a "word for word" translation, often contrasted with a "thought for thought" translation... these translators are here to remind you that even a word for word translation can lose a lot. The *form* of a text matters, and their translation is at pains to reproduce the form of the Hebrew, not just the words and their meaning.

So, for example, puns that are made in the Hebrew language will not naturally exist in an English translation, and so are here marked by italics, and I do like that convention. There is a "physicality" to the Hebrew that modern translators often try to "clean up" - they didn't try to clean it up. So you get "green shoots" instead of "vegetation", "rose up against" instead of "attacked", and so on. Where the Hebrew uses the same word root, they try to use the same word in English so the parallelism is obvious - so in Genesis 6, flesh "ruined its way upon the Earth" so God will "ruin all flesh", (where other translators might have replaced one with "destroy" because it sounds more natural in English). They repeat a pattern found in the King James translation where the text was designed to be spoken well and understood if heard, and so in lists you get "and... and... and...", whereas the list might just be offset with commas if someone was only going to read it on paper.

More could be said, but an enjoyable and quick read, that also prompts you to think about all the considerations that matter when writing a translation.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up because I know one of the authors (Sam Bray) through law school connections. It fit into some of the Old Testament reading I've been doing, and I was curious to see what a law professor would have to say about Genesis.

As the title indicates, this is a translation of Genesis chapters 1-11. It contains a short introduction to its translation approach, and then the translation itself is ~20 pages. It then spends ~200 pages discussing in detail issues that came up in the translation, the bulk of which is a verse by verse (and often word by word) analysis of particularly tricky issues. Most of that analysis identifies an ambiguity or challenge in the original Hebrew text, reviews how various English translations have tackled the issue over time, and then explains the approach taken in this translation.

I really enjoyed the book. But it is, honestly, not at all what I expected. There's very little directly-theological content (although a lot of interesting insights come in from considerations of how a word choice in a verse of Genesis echoes or anticipates later parts of the Bible). The translation itself seemed fine, but I can't imagine many people buying the book just to get yet another take on just the first 11 chapters of the Bible.

The real target audience would be anyone interested in getting a better understanding of the translator's craft, and particularly the challenges introduced in translating an ancient text like the Bible.

For example, in the Tower of Babel episode, the text explains that the people made bricks to build the tower, and that God then mixed up their languages. The typical translation says that God "confounded" or "confused" their tongues. The commentary explains that the Hebrew word used actually has a culinary connotation for the mixing of flour and oil; so this translation attempts to retain that connotation by saying that God "scrambled" their tongues. The commentary also points out that the Hebrew word rendered as "scrambled" inverts the letter order of the Hebrew word rendered as "bricks." Thus, the Hebrew has wordplay showing that God's "scrambling" of language reverses the making of "bricks" for the tower. But there is no eloquent way to retain this wordplay in the English.

The commentary is 200+ pages at about that level of word-by-word detail, but the writing is crisp and engaging. Although the authors use a fair amount of technical language terminology (e.g., "ethical dative"), they always explain the meaning in context. The book is thorough but accessible.

I don't think I could recommend this as "Bible study," unless you have a particular scholarly interest in Genesis 1-11. For me, it served mostly as a meditation on the enormous difficulty of the translator's task. Seeing the raw number of issues that arise in this small snippet of the Bible (let alone how tricky some of them are) gives me a new appreciation for folks like Robert Alter who have made translating the text their life's work.

[Michael Schmid · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great study including a very literal translation of Genesis 1-11 and an excellent explanation of the translation choices and other possibilities. The authors' argument for literal translation goes against modern efforts to make a translation more readable in English, but the authors do very well to point out how much of the original contents, meanings, references and allusions get lost when this is done. Very insightful and interesting!!

[Becker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the art of translation is not really in my wheelhouse, I loved having my ear to the door as I heard from those who are both skilled and passionate about their work. The translation itself is brilliant. It’s much more fun to read aloud than any version I have on my shelf (NASB, NIV, ESV, CSB). It will surprise you at times and cause you to think new thoughts about a very old text. The remainder of the book is like a commentary, but focused more on explaining their rationale for translation choices rather than commenting of the meaning of the text itself. Who would have known that it is preferable to read “to plow it” aloud, rather than reading “to till it,” because of the repetition of the “t” sound? These guys have done excellent work on this project. It is a super fun read and I highly recommend it.

[Anson Cassel Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

This muscular translation of the first eleven chapters of Genesis (and a bit more) is aimed only indirectly at Bible students and apologists. Its most appreciative audience will be readers who like to think hard about the multiplicity of necessary choices that must be made when translating from one language to another—especially when the text to be translated was written in a vastly different culture a few millennia ago.

The book is agreeably and approachably written, and I learned a lot from its 136 pages of “Notes.” But I don’t think I’d care to read the entire Old Testament in so angular a style, one that even includes deliberately introduced archaic English spellings (like childe and brynge).

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and so interesting to see the nuance and decision making that goes into a translation. The commentary and notes are absolutely where the gold is in this book. I'll be returning to this book for reference again and again.

[Amy Renfro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writing was somewhat over my head and difficult to understand. I felt that it broke down the different translations and how they applied. I felt I got more from the Enduring Word commentary or Baker Commentary on Genesis. Maybe I’m missing the point?

[Joshua Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish some of the word choices were less archaic, but generally this follows the muscularity and immediacy of the Hebrew text. The notes are comprehensive lucid.