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Title: The Book of Job by Stephen Mitchell ISBN: 0-06-096959-8 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 03 August, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.62 (8 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Off to a good start...
Comment: Contemporary translations of the book of Job are needed. Stephen Mitchell provides a good one. There are many passages where he translates in a very every-day even street language manner. He takes great liberty in translating some passages and in my opinion some passages have their meaning a bit distorted because of it. If you are used to reading a strict translation of Job, this could be a good version to help give it real power and meaning but, I wouldn't recommend it to be the main translation of use by anyone who really wants to do a study on the book of Job.
Being a former student of Zen Buddhism myself, I reconnized many of the the ideas from Zen suddenly being imposed on the book of Job. He raises some good points, but in general I disagree with much of the interpretation he tries to write into the book. He also, in my opinion, misunderstands the purpose of the book by denouncing the prologue and epilogue as being mostly irrelevant to the theme of the book. Without the prologue and epilogue it is impossible to find any of the significant truths which the book was intended to convey.
It was a fun translation, the New Living Translation and the New International Version of the Bible also give good translations for those who really want to study it. Would have been better without the intro. by the translator. I also recommend the interpretation by Bob Sorge "Pain, Perplexity and Promotion" as an interesting and somewhat uplifting accompangiment.
Rating: 4
Summary: Why?
Comment: Job has a sudden change of fortune, he losses his health, wealth, family, and status. He addresses the question "Why?" Four human counselors --Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar-- (Elihu is not present in this translation) are unable to provide the insight Job desperately needs. It remains to Jehovah to address Job and let him know that he must trust in the goodness and power of God in adversity by enlarging his concept of God. Job is perhaps the earliest book of the Bible, author unknown. Set in the period of the patriarchs, the main character is a Gentile. Oddly enough, he has been personified as the virtue of patience, contrary to the Biblical Job who is angry to the point of blasphemy, and rightly demands justice.
This beautiful translation into English, directly from Hebrew, is to be praised for its sound, strong, energetic poetry and more so for its scholarly introduction. Mitchell's interpretation of the book of Job is not one of spiritual acquiescence, of capitulation to an unjust, superior force, but of a great poem of moral outrage, a Nietzchean protest. In it, Job embodies Everyman and grieves for all human misery, and acquiescence at the end of the poem is a result of spiritual transformation, a surrender into the light, the acceptance of a reality that transcends human understanding.
Rating: 5
Summary: All right, I'll give it five stars
Comment: . . . even though I'd like to deduct a star for its omissions.
As with so much of Stephen Mitchell's work, it's easy to pick on him for what he's decided to leave out. Here, his translation of Job omits the hymn in praise of Wisdom and the speech (in fact the entire presence) of the young man Elihu. I tend to disagree with his reasons for skipping them. But having read his translation for nearly a decade now, I have to admit we don't miss them much.
His work has been described as "muscular," and that's a very apt term. Not only in Job's own language (from his "God damn the day I was born" to his closing near-silence after his experience of God) but in the voices of all the characters -- and most especially in the speech of the Voice from the Whirlwind -- Mitchell's meaty, pounding, pulse-quickening poetry just cries out to be read aloud.
And as always, I have nothing but praise for Mitchell's gift of "listening" his way into a text and saying what it "wants" to say. In particular, his translation of the final lines has a wee surprise in store for anyone who hasn't already read it. (He disagrees with the usual repent-in-dust-and-ashes version and offers a denouement more fitting to the cosmic scope of Job's subject matter.)
Moreover, all this and much else is discussed in a fine introduction that -- in my opinion as a longtime reader of Mitchell -- may well be his finest published commentary to date.
Essentially, he deals with the so-called "problem of evil" by simply dissolving it. The God of Mitchell and of Mitchell's Job is not a feckless little half-deity who shares his cosmic powers with a demonic arch-enemy and sometimes loses; this God, like the God of the Torah itself (and incidentally of Calvinist Christianity, at which Mitchell takes a couple of not-altogether-responsible swipes), is the only Power there is. Ultimately God just _does_ everything that happens, because what's the alternative? "Don't you know that there _is_ nobody else in here?"
As I suggested, there are a handful of half-hearted jabs at traditional (usually Christian) religion, but for the most part it should be possible for a theologically conservative reader simply to read around them. (This is a nice contrast with Mitchell's Jesus book, which -- to the mind of this non-Christian reviewer -- seems to be brimming with anti-Christian "spiritual oneupmanship.")
So it's not only a fine translation that properly recognizes Job's central theme of spiritual transformation, but a universally valuable commentary into the bargain. If you haven't read any of Mitchell's other work, this is a great place to start. And if you _have_ read some of Mitchell's other work, do get around to this one. It's probably his best.
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Title: A Book of Psalms: Selected and Adapted from the Hebrew by Stephen Mitchell ISBN: 0060924705 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Gospel According to Jesus by Stephen Mitchell ISBN: 0060923210 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 March, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation by Stephen Mitchell ISBN: 0609810340 Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA) Pub. Date: 27 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Tao Te Ching by Stephen Mitchell ISBN: 0060812451 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 October, 1992 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Essence of Wisdom: Words from the Masters to Illuminate the Spiritual Path by Stephen Mitchell ISBN: 0767903064 Publisher: Broadway Books Pub. Date: 19 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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