Description: Two millennia of time, translation, and interpretation mean that what we read and understand in English today is often very different from what the Hebrew would have meant to the Bible's authors and earliest readers. This book recovers those original meanings and explores their relevance for today.
Brief description:
Joel S. Baden is professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School. He is the author of, among other books, The Composition of the Pentateuch (Yale, 2012), The Historical David (HarperOne, 2013), and The Book of Exodus: A Biography (Princeton, 2019).
Review Quotes:
Joel Baden's Lost in Translation is not critical of translations or translators but acknowledges that certain things are inevitably lost in the interchange between a translator's choices and a reader's receptivity. His brief essays on Hebrew words are marvelous examples of expert counsel for modern readers, whichever translation they prefer. --J. Andrew Dearman, Fuller Theological Seminary
Lost in Translation is an accessible and fascinating introduction to some of the most significant--and also most misunderstood--words in the Bible. With humor, wit, and scholarly insight, Baden breathes life into the dusty, dry cadence of the translated Bible and illuminates an ancient context that seems at once so different from and so similar to our own. This book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to recapture the meanings of important Hebrew words as the ancient biblical authors would have understood them. --Brennan Breed, Columbia Theological Seminary