The New Testament: A Translation

From one of our most celebrated writers on religion, a fresh, bold, and unsettling new translation of the New Testament

"The greatest achievement of Hart's translation is to restore the urgency of the original. . . . It is beautiful."--James Mumford, Standpoint

"This translation is a remarkable feat."--Lucy Beckett, Times Literary Supplement

David Bentley Hart undertook this new translation of the New Testament in the spirit of "etsi doctrina non daretur," "as if doctrine is not given." Reproducing the texts' often fragmentary formulations without augmentation or correction, he has produced a pitilessly literal translation, one that captures the texts' impenetrability and unfinished quality while awakening readers to an uncanniness that often lies hidden beneath doctrinal layers.

The early Christians' sometimes raw, astonished, and halting prose challenges the idea that the New Testament affirms the kind of people we are. Hart reminds us that they were a company of extremists, radical in their rejection of the values and priorities of society not only at its most degenerate, but often at its most reasonable and decent. "To live as the New Testament language requires," he writes, "Christians would have to become strangers and sojourners on the earth, to have here no enduring city, to belong to a Kingdom truly not of this world. And we surely cannot do that, can we?"

Author: David Bentley Hart
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 10/08/2019
Pages: 648
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780300248449
Binding Material: Paper

About the Author
David Bentley Hart, an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion and a philosopher, writer, and cultural commentator, is a fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study. He lives in South Bend, IN.