"Jewish Bible Translations is the first book-length history and analysis of Jewish Bible translations from the third century BCE to our day. Greenspoon delves into the historical, cultural, linguistic, and religious contexts of translations in eleven languages: Arabic, Aramaic, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish"--

A study of the life and times of Bishop S.I.J. Schereschewsky (1831-1906) and his translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into northern vernacular (Mandarin) Chinese. Based largely on archival materials, missionary records and letters, the book includes an analysis of the translated Chinese text together with Schereschewsky's explanatory notes. The book examines his Jewish youth in Eastern Europe, conversion, American seminary study, journey to Shanghai and Beijing, mission routine, the translating committee's work, his tasks as Episcopal bishop in Shanghai and the founding of St. John's University. Concluding chapters analyze the controversial "Term Question" (the Chinese term for God) and Schereschewsky's techniques of translating the Hebrew text. Included are useful discussions of the Old Testament's Chinese reception and the role of this translation for subsequent Bible translating efforts.

Rosenzweig's Bible examines the high stakes, both theological and political, of Franz Rosenzweig's attempt to revivify the Hebrew Bible and use it as the basis for a Jewish textual identity. Mara Benjamin's innovative reading of The Star of Redemption places Rosenzweig's best-known work at the beginning of an intellectual trajectory that culminated in a monumental translation of the Bible, thus overturning fundamental assumptions that have long guided the appraisal of this titan of modern Jewish thought. She argues that Rosenzweig's response to modernity was paradoxical: he challenged his readers to encounter the biblical text as revelation, reinventing scripture - both the Bible itself and the very notion of a scriptural text - in order to invigorate Jewish intellectual and social life, but did so in a distinctly modern key, ultimately reinforcing the foundations of German-Jewish post-Enlightenment liberal thought. Rosenzweig's Bible illuminates the complex interactions that arise when modern readers engage the sacred texts of ancient religious traditions.