The Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (The Schocken Bible, Volume 1) (Paperback)

~ Everett Fox (Translator) "THE TEXT OF GENESIS SEEMS TO SPEAK WITH MANY VOICES..." (more)
Key Phrases: soothing savor, holiest holiness, covers the innards, Tent of Appointment, Near East, Mount Sinai (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Based on the Buber-Rosenzweig translation of the Hebrew Bible, completed in 1960, Fox's new rendering of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy is a breathtaking translation that captures the beautiful, majestic, and dynamic character of biblical Hebrew. In his translation, Fox (Jewish studies, Clark Univ.) lovingly caresses the language of the Bible so that readers may listen to it as it was heard and read by its earliest Jewish audience. Listen, for example, to his rendering of Exodus 3:14, the encounter between God and Moses: "God said to Moshe:/Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh/I will be-there howsoever I will be there." Fox provides keen and insightful notes and commentary, and the introductions to each book are crisp and fresh. The Five Books of Moses demonstrates the living character of scripture in the modern world. An essential purchase for all libraries.
Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Westerville P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A binding religious text, a historical document of the first importance, and a work of great literary imagination." --Edward Hirsch, New York Times Book Review

"Fox's translation has the rare virtue of making constantly visible in English the Hebraic quality of the original, challenging preconceptions of what the Bible is really like. A bracing protest against the bland modernity of all the recent English versions of the Bible." --Robert Alter, professor of comparative literature, University of California, Berkeley

"No serious Bible reader--whether Jewish, Christian, or secular--can afford to ignore this volume." --Jon D. Levenson, Harvard Divinity School -- Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 1056 pages
• Publisher: Schocken; 1st pbk. ed edition (February 8, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805211195
• ISBN-13: 978-0805211191
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #33,814 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

76 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply The Best Ever, November 16, 2004

By	Amitai Adler (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Everett Fox's translation of the Torah is plain and simple the finest translation from Hebrew I have ever seen. None of the other notable English translations, from the JPS Tanakh to the excellent Bloch translation of Song of Songs even comes close to the power and faithfulness of Fox's Five Books of Moses. He comes as close as is linguistically possible to capturing the rhythm, nuance, and grace of the Hebrew original as is possible in another langage. Furthermore, when he knows that pure translation will be insufficient to capture a play on words-- how many native English readers even know the Bible is full of plays on words?-- he provides transliterations of the relevant Hebrew phrases as well, so the device becomes apparent.

Some have complained that in forcing the English language to follow the patterns of a different grammatical system-- to say nothing of worldview-- he has twisted even poetic English beyond recognition. But not only is this text highly readable poetry, it reinforces with every word the nearly-always neglected fact that the Tanakh (the "Old Testament") was not written in English, or Latin, or Greek, and represents a vastly different set of literary (and religious) endeavors than the Christian scriptures. It forcefully gives the reader a much-needed reminder that this is not the book you think it is.

Most translations, in smoothing the text out into English prose and poetry, either sacrifice accuracy (e.g. the King James), or sacrifice the poetry (e.g. the JPS, which contains some of the least poetic poetry I can think of), resulting in an anemic set of verses bearing little resemblence to the wild, vibrant song of the Hebrew original. Fox's unique word-flow unpacks the dense Hebrew into a torrent of breathtaking imagery (e.g. "At the beginning of God's creating/of the heavens and the earth,/when the earth was wild and waste,/darkness over the face of Ocean,/rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters--"). He retains the proper transliterations of the Hebrew names, for an authentic-sounding "Yitzchak" instead of "Isaac," "Yaakov" instead of "Jacob," "Moshe and Aharon" instead of "Moses and Aaron." Perhaps most importantly, he refuses to translate the tetragrammaton, and so instead of "the LORD said this" or "the LORD said that," his text references YHWH (the w instead of the v I expect results from his basing his work on Rosenzweig, who of course used the w because it is pronounced v in German).

My one niggling complaint is his decision regarding the translation of emphatic doubling, so that repetitions like "mot yumat" are translated "he shall die, yes die." It certainly reflects a doubled verb form, and it is certainly different than the traditional, "shall surely die," but I am not wild about the sound of it. But that's a small thing amidst a sea of greatness.

The footnotes and commentary are also very useful, although more so, I think, if you are not a fluent Hebrew speaker familiar with the original text. Nonetheless, I am both, and I still found several highly valuable pieces of information that I did not know, and many more additional comments that presented the text in ways that I had not quite thought of before. One word of warning: if you are looking for a Torah with the traditional Jewish type of commentary (like Hertz or Hirsch or the Artscroll), this is not it. The commentary is not religious, but literary, linguistic, historical, and cultural. You should still get this translation, just be aware of what it is and is not.

Nobody who reads the Bible and speaks English should be without a copy of this. That goes double for anyone who speaks English but not Hebrew.

57 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new beginning..., June 17, 2003

By	FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Schocken Press has undertaken an ambitious project, to retranslate the Bible into modern language capturing the sound and quality of idiom of the original languages as much as possible. The first volume of this project is available in The Five Books of Moses, Shocken Bible: Volume I, translated and with commentary by Everett Fox.

'Based upon principles developed by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, this new English translation restores the poetics of the Hebrew original--the echoes, allusions, alliterations, and word-plays that rhetorically underscore its meaning and are intrinsic to a text meant to be read aloud and heard.' The underlying premise of most translations of the Bible have been to clarify the meaning of the text. While this is certainly not overlooked here, it can be the case that in the pursuit of textual clarity, the ability to make it audibly intelligible gets lost -- a lot of passages from the New Revised Standard Version, for instance, are so precise in construction that they defy oral expression.

Fox says in his Translator's Preface: 'I have presented the text in English dress but with a Hebraic voice.' Careful attention has been given to rhythm and sound. Too many English translations overlook the auditory quality of the words, and while striving to capture the idea of the text, they miss the crucial 'hearing cues' that an oral rendering would give the listener.

To this end, the text is printed as if it were in blank verse (save where a poetic style was already present and could be carried forward). Proper nouns (the names of persons and places) retain their Hebraic forms; odd, though, that the title of the book is The Five Books of Moses rather than The Five Books of Moshe. Also, a principle of the 'leading-word' is employed here. A good example follows:

The New English Bible translated Genesis 32.21-22 as:

for he thought, 'I will appease him with the present I have sent on ahead, and afterwards, when I come into his presence, he will perhaps receive me kindly.' So Jacob's present went on ahead of him...

Here, one would get the idea that the 'present' is the key word. But, in Hebrew, it isn't. Fox's translation reads thusly:

For he said to himself:
I will wipe (the anger from) his face
with the gift that goes ahead of my face
afterward, when I see his face,
perhaps he will lift up my face!
The gift crossed over ahead of his face...

A very different sense of meaning, cadence, and purpose comes out from this translation.

Fox is heavily indebted to the work of Buber and Rosenzweig (who worked on a German translation similar in character to this English translation) in the early part of this century. Fox dismisses the idea that this is simply an English variant of their German masterpiece, but does acknowledge great inspiration and methodological similarities. 'Buber and Rosenzweig translated the Bible out of the deep conviction that language has the power to bridge worlds and to redeem human beings. They both, separately and together, fought to restore the power of ancient words and to speak modern ones with wholeness and genuineness.'

Fox begins each of the five books with an essay discussing historical context, textual contents, themes and structures, and other important items. Fox continues a running commentary of the text on pages opposite the Biblical text, and has extensive notes. This is a work of care and precision, and very useful for Biblical research.

Worthwhile for scholars, Bible enthusiasts, and occasional readers, this book is an interesting addition to any collection, and a vital piece for research and exegesis of the Torah.

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For anyone who's ever tried reading the Bible and gave up., May 31, 2000

By	Tim Lieder "Founder of Dybbuk Press" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

While this is the most authentic and poetic translation of the Torah, the five books of the Bible that Jews hold as sacred but Christians & Muslims see as a lot of rules and stories that served as the basis for their guy, it can be read by anyone.

Everett Fox does an amazing job of capturing the Hebrew syntax and poetry down to repeating words which are repeated in the context and bring more insights than many translations which gloss over the word plays.(like the fact that Moses' "basket" and Noah's "ark" is the same word. Or that it is the REED sea not the red sea.)

But the most important part of this book is the fact that it makes the "boring" parts of the Bible exciting and vibrant. You will never badmouth Leviticus, Numbers or Deuteronomy again after you read this translation. Trust me.