The New Testament
"David Bentley Hart undertook this new translation of the New Testament etsi doctrina non daretur, "as if doctrine is not given." Reproducing the texts' often fragmentary formulations without augmentation or correction, he has produced an often pitilessly literal translation of the early Christians' sometimes raw, astonished, and halting prose, one that captures the texts' frequent impenetrability and unfinished quality while awakening readers to an uncanniness that often lies hidden beneath doctrinal layers. This rendering also challenges the idea that the New Testament affirms the kind of people we are. Hart reminds us that the first Christians were a company of extremists, radical in their rejection of the values and priorities of society not only at its most degenerate, but often at its most reasonable and decent. "To live as the New Testament language requires," he writes, "Christians would have to become strangers and sojourners on the earth, to have here no enduring city, to belong to a Kingdom truly not of this world. And we surely cannot do that, can we?""--Jacket flap.
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- YES. I'm stoked about David Bentley Hart's New Testament translation for that reason: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/030024844X/ref=ox_sc_sav...
> Reproducing the texts' often fragmentary formulations without augmentation or correction, he has produced a pitilessly literal translation, one that captures the texts' impenetrability and unfinished quality while awakening readers to an uncanniness that often lies hidden beneath doctrinal layers.
- A few years ago, I read The New Testament - a translation by David Bentley Hart (an Orthodox scholar). It’s more of an academic literal translation. I read it mainly just to educate myself. I was raised in a strict “no religion” family, and I’d already explored Zen and Buddhism. So, I figured, why not educate myself in this religion that surrounds me and affects me so directly.
Well, a lot of it is what you’d expect, unfortunately. But, if you get rid of 90% of it, and focus strictly on Jesus’s Laws, I believe he represents fundamental truths.
“Love God above all else, all the time” - I find this to mean live in the present, love each moment, put love into each motion and effort. Love yourself. And,
“Love others as you love yourself” - The covenants that you make with others, the promises that you keep are the purpose of life. Treat others with compassion. Be yourself. Relish in your unique existence.
It’s really unfortunate that Jesus was eclipsed by Paul, Timothy, others.
Well, I never actually got to “belief in a higher power” (I really wanted to experience that Human concept). But, I did become a believer in Jesus’s Laws, and I still try to practice them.
- The Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart (who has translated the New Testament) has suggested "bread adequate for the day's needs:"
"'Daily bread,' admittedly, is almost accurate enough, though the phrase would better be rendered 'bread adequate for the day's needs'; but I doubt most of us quite hear the note of desperation in that phrase 'τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον'—the very real uncertainty, suffered every day, concerning whether today one will have enough food to survive."
But this in the context of a larger argument, in which the Lord's Prayer is presented quite specifically as a prayer intended to be uttered by the destitute.
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/a-prayer-for-the-p...
- Honestly, I had to read the New Testament (David Bentley Hart translation) a couple of times to come up with a cosmic scenario in which my beliefs made logical sense to me. And, what I did come up with did make sense, but it is complicated to explain.
