Judges: A new translation with commentary
This translation of Judges is the eighth in my project to translate the Torah and Former Prophets. The book follows a similar approach to my other translations-my emphasis is on what is called "functional equivalence" (that is, expressing the ideas in the text in the most natural way in English), and I organize the text according to the textual divisions found in the Masoretic text (the "open" and "closed" parashot) rather than the traditional Christian chapter divisions. Organizing the text in this way, I believe, gets us closer to the ancient writers, and yields numerous insights into their composition approach.
In my introduction, I examine the place of Judges within the books of the Former Prophets and I argue that the original version of the book was composed during the reign of Josiah as part of what I call the "Josianic History." I also discuss my reasons for abandoning the "Deuteronomistic History" terminology and why I have replaced this with works that I call the Josianic History (written in the 630s and 620s BCE) and the Israelite History (written in the first half of the sixth century BCE).
The commentary accompanying the translation focuses on issues of translation, language, and composition history. After the commentary I provide an essay that summarizes my (necessarily speculative) views on the composition history of Judges. In that essay, I assign each of the parashot to one of the six major compositional stages that I identify, which span nearly a millennium, from the eleventh century BCE to the mid-second century BCE. The book includes an appendix that discusses the display of the Song of Deborah in the Masoretic text, and that presents the song in English in the "checkerboard" format used by the Masoretes.
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