Job A New Translation Edward L. Greenstein

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Format:: Hardback
Publication date:: 22 Oct 2019
ISBN:: 9780300162349
Imprint:: Yale University Press
Dimensions:: 248 pages: 210 x 140 x 22mm
Sales territories:: world

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This revelatory new translation of Job by one of the world’s leading biblical scholars will reshape the way we read this canonical text

The book of Job has often been called the greatest poem ever written. The book, in Edward Greenstein’s characterization, is “a Wunderkind, a genius emerging out of the confluence of two literary streams” which “dazzles like Shakespeare with unrivaled vocabulary and a penchant for linguistic innovation.” Despite the text’s literary prestige and cultural prominence, no English translation has come close to conveying the proper sense of the original. The book has consequently been misunderstood in innumerable details and in its main themes.

Edward Greenstein’s new translation of Job is the culmination of decades of intensive research and painstaking philological and literary analysis, offering a major reinterpretation of this canonical text. Through his beautifully rendered translation and insightful introduction and commentary, Greenstein presents a new perspective: Job, he shows, was defiant of God until the end. The book is more about speaking truth to power than the problem of unjust suffering.

Edward L. Greenstein is professor emeritus of Bible at Bar-Ilan University and a prolific, world-renowned scholar in many areas of biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies.

“A bold new English translation”—Adam Kirsch, Wall Street Journal

“Provocative . . . intriguing . . . Taken as a work of literature in its own right, Greenstein’s translation is engaging and unusual, at times even strangely sublime.”—Nathan Goldman, Bookforum

Winner of the 2020 EMET Prize in the Humanities, in the area of Biblical research, sponsored by the A.M.N. Foundation for the Advancement of Science, Art, and Culture in Israel

"Greenstein's Job offers the rarest combination of talents: a philologist's determination to hunt down the meaning of every word and a poetic delight in language and making the text sing."—James Kugel

“A masterful translation, new, bold, and often startling, by one of the great masters of this masterpiece of world literature. Greenstein's Job offers authoritative guidance to a book whose profundities and conundrums continue to challenge.”—Peter Machinist, Harvard University

“Grounded in deep literary sensitivity and decades of meticulous philological scholarship, Greenstein’s translation of Job brings us closer to the sublime text and uncompromising spirit of this great and challenging biblical book than anyone has previously done.”—Everett Fox, Clark University

“A singular achievement by one of the foremost Biblical linguists, who deftly renders the rhetorical and verbal genius of 'Job'. The translation speaks to the contemporary ear while retaining the original's sinewy structure.”—Michael Fishbane, University of Chicago

“An immense pleasure for the reader, this novel translation recreates the flavor of the ancient Hebrew poetical text in its original setting. It is perhaps the first Job translation to free itself from traditional interpretations and it reflects the author’s decades of thorough research.”—Emanuel Tov, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem