The New Testament

An Eastern Orthodox scholar attempts to convey the feeling of what it is like to read the Koine Greek of the New Testament, doggedly avoiding any theological niceties, and presenting a stripped-down New Testament in the raw.

Reading this translation is to encounter a "pitilessly literal" New Testament where the words "hell", Satan, "eternal damnation", or familiar theological points are nowhere to be found.

• Hart preserves the original separate terms of Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna (an abbreviation for the Vale of Hinmon), rather than compound them into a single "hell".

• Hart uses "Accuser" to translate the title of "Satan".

• Hart also insists on using "to the end of the age" to translate "chronois aoniois" and its variants.

The result is a translation that varies between exhilarating and perplexing, containing one of the most beautiful renderings of the beatitudes, and some groan-inducing letters of Paul that probably can't be read out loud in public.