The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels Thomas, Mary, and Judas by Willis Barnstone

The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels Thomas, Mary, and Judas Reviews

• 
  Keith

  Having enjoyed Robert Alter’s scholarly yet beautiful versions of the Five Books of Moses, The David Story and The Wisdom Books, it’s painfully clear that we need something similar done for the New Testament. The King James version is beautifully written, but it is in a language now 500 years old. We need a new version that offers the beauty and the historical context to understand what is happening. Willis Barnstone’s The Restored New Testament may be that book.
  
  Barnstone, a poet and translator, offers a more beautiful text than many scholarly translations (for example, the Jesus Seminar translation of the Complete Gospels). His numerous footnotes and essays are also very helpful in understanding the historical context of the various books of the New Testament.
  
  Oddly, though, he renders Jesus’ speeches, Paul’s letters and other books into loose blank verse. The justification for that – other than he felt like it – is a mystery to me. I’m pretty sure the original documents were not in a rhythmic form used by the Greeks or Israelis of the time. (Parts of the Gospel of John are in verse, however.) Just because prose is beautiful doesn’t mean it should be translated into verse.
  
  Then there is the naming he chooses to use, which is confusing. Barnstone uses Jesus’ Hebrew name, Yeshua throughout the book. (Jesus comes from the Greek Ieosus, which comes from the Hebrew Yeshua – which is normally translated as Joshua. Oh my!) I understand Barnstone’s intent: One of his continuing themes is that over time the books of the New Testament took on an increasing anti-Semitic tone -- compare the gospels of Mark and John – as the early Christians tried to distance themselves from the Jews – and the Jewish religion – and align themselves with Rome and the Roman empire. Barnstone argues that first and second century Christians starting using the Greek names to minimize the Jewishness of Jesus. To put Jesus back in historical context, that’s why he uses the Jewish names.
  
  It’s also sometimes confusing whether Barnstone is trying to be true to the Greek original that he is translating, or the Hebrew underlying it historically. For example, Barnstone uses Greek and Aramic words (for which we have English equivalents) rather indiscriminately. “Messiah” becomes the Hebrew “Mashiah.” “Amen” becomes “Amain.” “All mighty” becomes the Greek “pantokrator.” Why are these terms singled out for this treatment? I’m not sure I understand.
  
  These are rather minor quibbles. Overall, this is an outstanding and useful book (thus I rated it highly). Alter’s translations from the Jewish holy books have raised the bar and Barnstone’s translation is the best and most thoroughly researched of all the translations I’ve read. The King James Version is, obviously, the standard for all English translations in terms of beauty and scope. But if you are seeking a version that provides the context along with beauty, Barnstone’s is the best I’ve read. Be forewarned: This may not be the book for those who are religiously conservative or traditional.
  
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  So far, I’ve read the introductory essays and these sections:
  
  The Gospel of John – Barnstone provides a very good translation of this well-known book, putting the sayings of Jesus in verse form. (Note: The original prologue of this gospel is in verse. It uses the accentual-semantic-syntactic parallelism used in the Old Testament Psalms. There is no evidence that Jesus’ sayings are meant to be read in verse.) (08/11)
  
  The Authentic Letters of Paul: When Paul/Saul/Shaul is not complaining about circumcision (for some reason he was having trouble finding converts when he required them to be circumcised. Who’d a thought?), homosexuality, any kind of sex in general (he even urges married couples to be celibate), hair length, homosexuality, women’s rights, head coverings, homosexuality and Jewish Law, among other things (including homosexuality), there is some beautiful writing and sentiment (e.g., 1 Corinthians 13). But you have to look hard for it between the threats, the requests for money, and his complaints about the Gnostic and Christians in Jerusalem. (08/11)
  
  Activities of the Messengers (i.e., Acts of the Apostles) – This is a rather episodic telling of the lives of Peter (aka Simon, aka Shimon Kefa) and Paul (aka Saul, aka Shaul) after Jesus’s death. Neither story is complete, with the focus transitioning to Paul halfway through (whatever happened to Peter?), and Paul’s life story abruptly ending when he arrives in Rome. These apostles/messengers travel throughout the Roman world preaching, performing miracle and making miraculous escapes from imprisonment.
  
  As Barnstone notes, references to Jewish people change from “us” to “them” as the story proceeds. The true seeds of anti-Semitism are planted in this book which continually talks about Jews not understanding the Good News, actively/violently resisting the message and messengers, and trying to kill the apostles. As noted in Wikipedia, the book attempts “to answer a theological problem, namely how the Messiah promised to the Jews came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church; the answer it provides, and its central theme, is that the message of Christ was sent to the Gentiles because the Jews rejected it.” The book also effectively moves the story from Jewish Jerusalem to Christian Rome.
  
  Other than saying Jesus is the Messiah and performing miracles, there’s little doctrine mentioned. Achieving Eternal life is referenced, but otherwise there is no discussion of a moral code or theological foundation (other than Judaism). I’m not clear on what else they really preached.
  
  This book is for people interested in the history of the early Church. Otherwise, there’s not a lot of interest artistically or philosophically. (09/16)
  
  Revelation – As literature, this is probably the most interesting book in the New Testament. Again, Barnstone puts the entire book in verse, though I can find no evidence that it was originally written as poetry (other than it is beautifully written). In terms of content, though, I find the book vindictive and mean spirited. Reveling in the imagined tortures and grotesques death of your enemies is disturbing. (I fear that a lot of people spend their time thinking about that kind of stuff today. I see no good in it.) (08/11)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  Melting Uncle

  This is the longest book I've ever read cover to cover!
  
  If you're interested in reading the New Testament this is a tour-de-force that emphasizes context and the roots (historical and Jewish) of the writings and thought that makes up the NT.
  
  Willis Barnstone's undertaking here is vast in scope. I would expect a project of this scale to come from a team of scholars, but I guess Willis is a kind of juggernaut of biblical scholarship, a David to the New Testament's Goliath. By the end I had grown extremely fond of the voice that emerges from the footnotes and essays.
  
  I doubt these will become the definitive translations or the final word in NT scholarship but I would strongly suggest this to anybody interested in reading the Bible as literature.
  
  A lot of light is shed on popular misconceptions. For example, the popular "camel through the eye of a needle" from the Gospels and St Paul's "through a glass darkly" are likely mistranslations from the original Greek. This is just the tip of the iceberg and I don't want to spoil it for you but I came away feeling like much of what I was taught in Catholic school about these texts was wrong.
  
  If I had any criticism for The Restored New Testament, it's that sometimes Barnstone comes down very hard on the text. Part of his project is to expose harmful anti-Semitic distortions within the NT. At times the commentary is scathing and sharply critical, not without reason. Truthfully, I don't know how you could read this and still be a Christian. On the other hand, Barnstone holds up the NT as a diamond in the history of world literature.
  
  But hey, it's the Bible. It has everything from life-changing wisdom to utter malarky. What did you expect??
• 
  Dave Amorde

  The scope of this undertaking is nearly incomprehensible. To make a long story short, the author has taking numerous steps to restore the Christ and his followers to their proper Jewish roots. People ("Yeshua/Yeshuda" for "Jesus"), Books ("Apocalypse" for "Revelation"), as well as cities and other physical landmarks have all be "restored" to their proper Hebrew/Aramaic roots, as Aramaic was the lingua franca of the day.
  Dozens of supportive writings, and countless supportive annotations explain the author's reasons, the primary being historical and political accuracy. The inclusion of 3 Gnostic gospels (Thomas, Mary and Judas) is both bold and controversial. We are constantly reminded that Christianity was, at its core, about a Jewish man preaching to a Jewish audience. Other authors have recently gone as far as accusing Paul of hijacking the movement away from its roots. This author doesn't go that far, but it is clear that he is painfully aware of the politics that permeated the early church. I absolutely applaud the work of this author, and others, in their efforts to restore The Christ's proper place in history, as well as the other players such as Pontius Pilate. No longer is Pilate a patsy of the Jewish leadership; he is treated as the ruthless long arm of Rome that he was. If one is trying to peel back the onion of 2000 years of lies and politics, this isn't final stop, but a key destination along the way
• 
  Fred Kohn

  Came down on the side of 4 stars rather than 3 simply because of the massive scope of this for the most part highly successful book. The translation is wonderful. I was a bit put off by rendering Paul in poetry rather than prose, but about half way through Romans, I got the gist of it and started to really like it. My hesitation in giving 4 stars is because I don't quite trust all the scholarship,especially in some of the footnotes. I have decided not to give specific examples because I think for the most part he has it right and I don't want to leave the impression the scholarship is horrid. And scholars are allowed to have idiosyncratic ideas because, after all, they are scholars. If they all agreed about everything we would only have the need for one! But at the end of the day I think Barnstone is a better translator than a scholar. Not that there's anything wrong with that! I did find the inclusion of the Gospels of Mary and Judas rather strange because I can think of at least a half dozen higher quality non-canonical writings off the top of my head. I think those two Gospels were included because of their current popularity. But was are people going to say a decade or two from now?
• 
  Julie

  Excellent reference material! Returns the 'Jewishness' to the New Testament. It is easy to forget that the disciples and Jesus himself are just as much Jews as are the Pharisees, Sadducees and Paul. Jewish names for persons, places etc have been returned to the scriptures as found in the original scrolls. It takes a bit getting used to while reading but worth the effort.
• 
  Alex

  I was pretty excited to read the scandalous Mary Magdalene gnostic gospel. Too bad I didn't read it back in my 20s when I was all about the new ageism. That's the flavor I detected in it.
  
  When I read Willis Barnstone's commentary in other parts of this book, I had trouble following along. Maybe this would be a better read for those with some already establish understanding of the bible. Not for me.
• 
  Deborah Spera

  This is an enlightening view of the new testament. Barnstone shows us the text as it was originally intended. The poetry is exemplary.
• 
  JoAnn Jordan

  This translation of the New Testament is excellent. There are some major differences from the texts we are familiar with, in that the Hebrew names are used for places and people. Some things are included here that are not included in the usual translations. The footnotes are extensive and informative.
  
  I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a fresh outlook on the New Testament. I learned a great deal that might not usually be accessible outside of seminary.
• 
  Stephen Victor

  A marvelous translation that does away with the anglicized names we're so accustomed to (Yaakov instead of James, for example), but Yohannon the Dipper? Come on!