The New Covenant: Commonly Called the New Testament: The Four Gospels and Apocalypse

Rating:
Summary: a superb achievement
Review: Review of Willis Barnstone, The New Covenant.

Willis Barnstone is a poet, and also renowned for his translations of Classical Greek poetry. Now he has tried his hand at translating the New Testament, which he calls The New Covenant, which is an exact translation of its Greek title: Kaine diatheke.
He presents this foundational book of Christianity in a way that does full justice to its deep poetical qualities. Substantial parts of the Old Testament have long been recognised as verse rather than prose, and many translations have taken account of this. Barnstone goes much farther. In his New Covenant, which contains the four Gospels and the Apocalypse, but not the Acts and the Letters, he renders in free verse all the passages purporting to be Jesus's words -- for instance, the Sermon on the Mount. Similarly for the words of John the Baptist, and the whole of the Apocalypse (The Revelation of John). Many readers, like me, will find that the familiar texts appear in a new light.

Barnstone's aim is to create in his English readers the same impression as the original Greek does to the Greek-speaking ones. Most of the many Jews in the cities of Egypt and Asia minor had at that time Greek as their mother tongue.
One essential feature of Barnstone's translation of the New Covenant is to render all names of persons and places in its Hebrew or Aramaic form: Jesus (Greek Iesous) as Jeshua, Jerusalem as Yerushalayim.. He underlines that the New Covenant is a Jewish book. Jesus was of course a Jew, and so were most of the early Christians. They were an integral part of the Jewish community, by now spread over most of the Eastern Mediterranean area. Contrasting Jews and Christians was a propagandist trick of later writers, who were eager to distance themselves from other Jew .Thus they planted the seeds of Christian anti-semitism. I think Barnstone has taken the right decision on this point.
The book also contains a Foreword of some 20 p ages, and an afterword of 120., where Barnstone places his translation in the wider context of Biblical studies. Further, the book has footnotes explaining obscurities and various points of translation. But they are never obtrusive.
In his comments Barnstone avoids polemics, and reveals himself as a well-informed and urbane liberal-minded scholar. He stresses that the gospel narratives find little or no confirmation in historical accounts. Somewhat surprisingly, he goes on to say that Jesus's crucifixion by the Roman authorities must be regarded as an established fact. This is certainly the opinion of the large majority of New Testament scholars. But there is by no means unanimity on this point. However, this is a minor matter.
All in all, Barnstone succeeds extremely well in making his readers approach the New Testament with fresh eyes, shifting attention from points of doctrine and historicity, on to what is common to great religious poetry all over the world: its power to inspire feelings of hope and joy, and at the same time to convey a sense of the mystery of human existence.
This is a superb achievement.

Rating:
Summary: Visceral, amazing and fresh
Review: The bible's anti-semitism is meticulously footnoted, contextualized and challenged, with the goal that moderns of all religious background might appreciate the world-class poetry of "the last great Jewish prophet." I loved this, for its immediacy and for the freshness that the restoration of Hebrew names gives. I found the stories reaching me as never before. As I read The New Covenant cover to cover in about a week I found myself unable to resist reading passages out loud, the way great poetry should be read.

Rating:
Summary: Visceral, amazing and fresh
Review: The bible's anti-semitism is meticulously footnoted, contextualized and challenged, with the goal that moderns of all religious background might appreciate the world-class poetry of "the last great Jewish prophet." I loved this, for its immediacy and for the freshness that the restoration of Hebrew names gives. I found the stories reaching me as never before. As I read The New Covenant cover to cover in about a week I found myself unable to resist reading passages out loud, the way great poetry should be read.

Rating:
Summary: Annotations leave you wanting
Review: The translation is without a doubt good throughout and from a literary standpoint, most excellent. It is quite possibly the type of translation that should serve as an antidote to the banal translations that have recently flooded the market that seek to establish a pop-culture aura around Jesus Christ the Nazarene. As opposed to many modern translations that try to make Jesus a rhinestone social activist, this translation's fidelity to historical context and literary ingenuity is nothing but commendable. It is fresh throughout and not infrequently ingenious.

Unfortunately, the annotations by the translator are quite scandalous to a Christian reader in that they presume that the Gospels are not historical documents of actual events, but are the result of a progressive anti-Semitism. Whereas the translator is willing to forbear charging the prophets such as Isaiah and Jeremiah of this crime (and they were no less scathing of their contemporaries than Jesus)he paints a picture for his reader that lacks a historical basis and is as prejudiced as the bigotry of those who actually are anti-Semitic.

Enjoy the translation if you wish to read it, but read the annotations with great discernment.

Rating:
Summary: Good Translation, Bad Commentary
Review: Willis Barnstone wrote this new translation of the New Covnenant for two reasons: first, to allow English speaking readers to see the poetry and clarity of the original, and second, to restore the Gospels to their Jewish origins. He succeeds in his first goal: the translation itself is poetic and easily undertstood. Still, he does not greatly surpass the King James Version. Barnstone also succeeds in his second goal, but to a fault. It is refreshing to see the traditional names returned to their probable Jewish and Aramaic forms (Jesus is "Yeshua"). The problem lies within Barnstones copius notes and commentary. According to Barnstone, the original, Aramaic version of the Gospels (which has never been discoverd) was changed over the years, and the extant Greek versions are "politicized" and anti-Jewish. He sees anti-Judaism in everything from the existence of Judas Escariot to the Greek translation of Rabbi as "teacher." He points out over and over again places in the Gospels where he perceives this anti-Jewishness. This is a distraction and takes away from the reading of the Gospels. Buy this translation only if you're willing to wade through repetative, unnecessary commentary to get to a fair translation of the Gospels and Revelation; otherwise, look elsewhere.