Journal Article

A Book \Without Blemish\: The Jewish Publication Society's Bible Translation of 1917

Greenspoon, Leonard J.

1988

Overview

For the most part studies of Bible translations have not taken into account the social and religious environment in which the translators worked. This article, by contrast, highlights several factors that were influential in the production of an important Jewish version of the Hebrew Bible. It is essentially a study of the seven individuals who served as editors of the JPS Bible translation, with emphasis on the interplay of personalities and of institutional loyalties. Greatest emphasis is placed on the perspective of Max L. Margolis, who served as editor-in-chief of this project. It is shown that the translation as a whole, the renderings of individual passages, and even the wording of the title-page and Preface cannot be fully understood without this knowledge of how the translators worked. Even though the 1917 JPS translation is no longer widely used, the study of its translators is highly relevant for present-day discussions of the process by which a sacred text is rendered from one language into another.

• Publisher: Annenberg Research Institute,D. Nutt
• Subject: Archives / Bible / Committees / Jewish history / Jewish peoples / Language translation / Memoranda / Rabbis / Torah / Zionism