“The New Testament” (translated by David Bentley Hart)

This is a very different translation to the New Testament than the King James version. Hart states, up front, “To be honest, I have come to believe that all the standard English translations render a great many of the concepts and presuppositions upon which the books of the New Testament are built largely impenetrable, and that most of them effectively hide (sometimes forcibly) things of absolutely vital significance for understanding how the texts’ authors thought.” He continues, “This is not a literary translation of the New Testament, much less a rendering for liturgical use…. I have elected to produce an almost pitilessly literal translation.” On the background of the times, Hart adds, “When one truly ventures into the world of the first Christians, one enters a company of “radicals” (for want of a better word), an association of men and women guided by faith in a world-altering revelation, and hence in values almost absolutely inverse to the recognized social, political, economic, and religious truths not only of their own age, but of almost every age of human culture…. The New Testament knows very little of common sense. The Gospels, the epistles, Acts, Revelation—all of them are relentless torrents of exorbitance and extremism…. Everything is cast in the harsh light of a final judgment that is both absolute and terrifyingly imminent.”