Writer seeks to restore Bible's Jewish roots

[Newsjock]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

It's the day after Thanksgiving in the bustling kitchen of Willis Barnstone's book-filled home in Oakland's Piedmont Avenue neighborhood. The 82-year-old poet, translator and literary critic ... is supposed to be talking about his masterful new book, "The Restored New Testament - A New Translation With Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels Thomas, Mary, and Judas" (Norton, 1,485 pages, $49.95). The book seeks to restore the lyricism and mysticism of the Jesus story, and perhaps most important, to undo centuries of mistranslation designed to obscure the Jewish identity of the carpenter from Nazareth.

... That's the first thing you notice about this Bible. The names have been changed, and not to protect the innocent. Other Bibles make it too easy to forget the fact that Jesus and his first 12 followers were Jews. This Bible starts by restoring the Jewish names of the purported authors of the familiar gospel stories. Matthew becomes Mattityahu. Mark morphs into Markos, Luke is Loukas. John appears as Yohanan. John the Baptist is renamed Yohanan the Dipper.

Barnstone adds three other versions of the story, the recently discovered Gnostic gospels of Toma (Thomas), Yehuda (Judas) and Miryam of Magdala (Mary Magdalene), and argues in his commentary that they are at least as important and potentially accurate depictions as the canonical accounts that made it past the theological censors and into that ancient anthology we call the Bible.

... "This depiction of a militant Yeshua (Jesus) siding with Rome in anger against the people of Jerusalem should be seen as a portrait wrongful to Christians at all levels of faith," he writes.

One of the scholars praising Barnstone's Bible is Frederick Crews, who calls the work "profoundly subversive."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/25/DD2B1B5CCU.DTL&type=books

[MineralMan]

1. Sounds interesting for all students of the Bible.

I think I'll put this on my Amazon wish list, just in case some rich uncle can afford to give it to me. Just in case, I'll reserve it through the Saint Paul Library.

[WCGreen]

2. And Saul of Tarsus would be taken to task for bastardizing or eliminating almost all of the

Jewish rituals. I notice he isn't mentioned in your post.

[supernova]

3. Johan the Dipper?

That's giggle-worthy. :D But perhaps his "title" was giggle-worthy then too. ;-) Even by today's standards John is an odd duck.

Glad to see that someone has restored the Gnostic Gospels (some of them anyway) to the fold.

I don't agree with his view of orthodoxy: "a militant Yeshua (Jesus) siding with Rome in anger against the people of Jerusalem" though. I view him as someone trying to tell them how to survive occupation and redefine what living in community means.

[xchrom]

4. Recommend -- I love this idea. Nt