Everett Fox
Everett Fox is a scholar and translator of the Hebrew Bible, a graduate of Brandeis University. He is currently the Allen M. Glick Professor of Judaic and Biblical Studies and director of the program in Jewish Studies at Clark University.
Fox is perhaps best known for his translation into English of the Torah. His translation is heavily influenced by the principles of Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. Buber in 1962 completed their translation of the Hebrew Bible into German. Fox co-translated their Scripture and Translation into English with Lawrence Rosenwald of Wellesley College (Weissbort and Eysteinsson 562). The main guiding principle of Fox's work is that the aural aspects of the Hebrew text should be translated as closely as possible. Instances of Hebrew word play, puns, word repetition, alliteration, and other literary devices of sound are echoed in English and, as with Buber-Rosenzweig, the text is printed in linear, not paragraph, fashion. He has argued for the superiority of Biblical translations that preserve or reflect such Hebrew forms, and pushes English farther than does Robert Alter, whose translations are motivated by a similar appreciation of the character of the Hebrew original.
Fox's translation of the Torah was published in 1995 by Schocken Books (a division of Random House) as The Five Books of Moses. Fox continues to translate, and in 1999 published Give Us a King!, a translation of the books of Samuel. His translation of the complete Early Prophets (the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) was published in November 2014.
Fox served as a religious consultant on the making of the film Prince of Egypt.
He is the husband of Jewish educator Rabbi Cherie Koller-Fox and father of three children, Akiva Fox, Leora Koller-Fox, and Ezra Fox.
Selected publications
- Give Us a King!: A New English Translation of the Book of Samuel, 1999 ISBN 0-8052-4160-4
- The Five Books of Moses: (The Schocken Bible, Volume 1) A New English Translation with Commentary and Notes, 1995 ISBN 0-8052-1119-5
- Scripture and Translation (translation of Buber and Rosenzweig, Die Schrift und ihre Verdeutschung) -- introduction, co-editor and co-translator with Lawrence Rosenwald. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1994.
- Stalking the Younger Brother: Some Models for Understanding a Biblical Motif. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 18:45-68. 1993.
- The Bible and Its World," in Barry Holtz, ed., The Schocken Guide to Jewish Books. New York: Schocken Books. 1992.
References
Weissbort, Daniel and Astradur Eysteinsson. 2006. Translation—Theory and Practice: A Historical Reader, (pp. 562–568 about Fox). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
External links
- Everett Fox's webpage
- Everett Fox's homepage at Clark University
- Everett Fox at Schocken Books
- Updike's review of translation by Alter and Fox
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