A Handbook on Isaiah (Textual Criticism and the Translator, V. 1)

Rating:
Summary: Don't read the Book of Isaiah without this
Review: This is the first volume in a series designed to help translators and readers of the Old Testament. The author has compared many translations of Isaiah, into English, French, German and other European languages. Whenever these translations differ in their interpretation of a passage and the author considers that this is due to translators' disagreements about the original Hebrew text of Isaiah, he discusses the merits of the different implied textual variants. Thus this book is essential reading for anyone puzzled by the differences between the Authorised (King James) Version and more recent translations, or between two modern translations. There are two sorts of omission, however. He only refers to passages where he thinks that there is genuine uncertainty about the text, so he omits the famous debate about whether a virgin or a young woman will have a baby, presumably taking this to be a problem in interpretation not textual criticism. Also, he ignores places where there are interesting variants in the Septuagint or Dead Sea Scrolls but all of the translations he has consulted agree with the Massoretic text. Despite these omissions, this is a very worthwhile book and future volumes in the series will be welcome.

Rating:
Summary: Don't read the Book of Isaiah without this
Review: This is the first volume in a series designed to help translators and readers of the Old Testament. The author has compared many translations of Isaiah, into English, French, German and other European languages. Whenever these translations differ in their interpretation of a passage and the author considers that this is due to translators' disagreements about the original Hebrew text of Isaiah, he discusses the merits of the different implied textual variants. Thus this book is essential reading for anyone puzzled by the differences between the Authorised (King James) Version and more recent translations, or between two modern translations. There are two sorts of omission, however. He only refers to passages where he thinks that there is genuine uncertainty about the text, so he omits the famous debate about whether a virgin or a young woman will have a baby, presumably taking this to be a problem in interpretation not textual criticism. Also, he ignores places where there are interesting variants in the Septuagint or Dead Sea Scrolls but all of the translations he has consulted agree with the Massoretic text. Despite these omissions, this is a very worthwhile book and future volumes in the series will be welcome.