This translation is a stunning achievement--to read it is to hear the Bible as if for the first time. While other English translations of the Bible render its language as if it had been written in English, this new translation re-creates the full force of the Bible's original rhetoric and poetry--its rhythms, nuances, and stylistic devices--allowing the English reader to experience the spiritual and aesthetic power of the Bible's own voice while recovering layers of meaning that are missed entirely in conventional translations.

Everett Fox has devoted twenty-five years to this unique approach to Bible translation. Based on 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.

Widely praised by Bible scholars and theologians of every denomination, the publication of the first volume of The Schocken Bible is a major religious, scholarly, and literary event. Together with its extensive commentary and illuminating notes, this unique translation draws the reader closer to the authentic living voice of the Bible.

Everett Fox holds the Allen M. Glick Chair in Judaic and Biblical Studies at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is the author of many studies on the Biblical narrative and its translation and is co-editor, with Lawrence Rosenwald, of Scripture and Translation, a collection of essays by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts, with his wife and three children.

"No serious Bible reader--whether Jewish, Christian, or secular--can afford to ignore this volume."