Genesis: an interesting translation

[Jayhawker Soule]

I am beginning to read Mary Phil Korsak's Genesis translation, At the Start: Genesis Made New. I consider it more idiosyncratic than authorative, but still well worth the effort. From its Foreword ...

The hallowed King James version with its antique splendours represents one kind of familiarity; and there are thoroughly modern versions which represent another kind. Both fail to convey the essential remoteness of the ethos of YHWH and his people from the English-speaking world of today. We need a version which will bring home to us its distance and difference, and so enable us to find a valid relationship to it as readers from another time, another world. [pg. xi]

To give you a sense of Korsak's rendering, here is Genesis 1:26-31.

Elohim said
We will make a groundling
in our image, after our likeness
Let them govern the fish of the sea
the fowl of the skies, the cattle, all the earth
every creeper that creeps on the earth

Elohim created the groundling in his image
created it in the image of Elohim
male and female created them

Elohim blessed them
Elohim said to them
Be fruitful, increase, fill the earth, subject it
Govern the fish of the sea, the fowl of the skies
every beast that creeps on the earth

Elohim said, Here I give you
all plants seeding seed upon the face of all the earth
and every tree with tree-fruit in its seeding seed
I shall be for you for eating

And for every beast of the earth
for every fowl of the skies
for all that creeps on the earth with living soul in it
all green of plants for eating
It was so

Elohim saw all he had made Here! it was very good
It was evening, it was morning
The sixth day

It is not, in my opinion, a substitute for the JPS/Sarna, but it is lovely supplement along with the offerings of Friedman, Fox, and Alter.

Also see Mary Phil Korsak.