Joshua: new translation & commentary online

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StephenGoranson
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Joshua: new translation & commentary online

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Joshua: A new translation with commentary
by William Whitt

Publication date 2023-05-25Topics Bible, Old Testament, Book of Joshua, Deuteronomistic History,
Bible Commentaries Collection opensource

"This translation of Joshua is the seventh 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 Masoretic 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 to the book I summarize the theory of the composition history of the Torah and Former Prophets that I have developed over the course of my translation work, and I place Joshua within that framework, examining its connections both to the books of the Torah and to the Former Prophets.

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 Joshua. In that essay, I assign each of the parashot to one of the five major compositional stages that I identify, which span a period of more than three centuries, from the early sixth century BCE to the mid-third century BCE.

Most notably, in my treatment of Joshua's composition history, I view nearly all the material added to the book between the end of the Babylonian exile and ca. 400 BCE as the result of a collaborative effort between Yahweh's priesthoods at Mount Zion and Mount Gerizim. The material that I identify as written principally by the Samarian priesthood is especially interesting, as it provides a window into the compromises required of the leaders at both cult locations in order to maintain a set of common texts in their respective cult libraries.

Links to my other translations (all of which are open access) can be found at my author page at the Internet Archive (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://arc ... 4V-lbPP9Oc$ ), and my author page at academia.edu (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://duk ... 4V-jpFO_QQ$ )."
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