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How Translations Conceal the Bible's Original Meaning
by Joel M. Hoffman
An authoritative account of significant mistranslations in the Bible—and how new methods give readers their first glimpse into what the Bible really means
And God Said uncovers the often inaccurate or misleading English translations of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament that quotes from it. Sometimes the familiar English is just misleading. Other times, the mistakes are more substantial. But the errors are widespread, including:
Hoffman sheds light on the original intention of the text, uniting the topics of religion, language, and linguistics to offer the first modern understanding since the Bible was written.
"Attentive readers will find this book to be valuable for properly understanding the Bible." - Publishers Weekly
"A wise and important book, and a lot of fun to read." - Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People
"Hoffman is wise and gentle as he exhibits the issue of distortion by way of translation. Short of all readers learning Hebrew, Hoffman’s work is the best gift for a careful reader of a text that defies easy contemporary rendering." - Walter Brueggemann, author of The Prophetic Imagination
"[Hoffman] unites Biblical scholarship and translation theory, embracing modern science and modern linguistics, to help us understand what the Prophets and our forebears were doing and how they wrote. He retrieves what the Bible really was and what it can be for us now." - The Very Reverend James A. Kowalski, The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine
This information about And God Said was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Joel M. Hoffman Ph.D., is the author of In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language and is the chief translator for the 10- volume series, My People’s Prayer Book (winner of the National Jewish Book Award) and for My People’s Passover Haggadah. He writes a biweekly column on Hebrew for The Jerusalem Post. He has held faculty appointments at Brandeis University and at Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion, and serves as Director of Education at Temple Israel of Northern Westchester.
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