Twenty Three Hundred Years of Jewish Bible Translators: Who They Were, What They Accomplished, Why They Rendered the Hebrew Bible as They Did"l

Recently I published the first book-length study of Jewish Bible Translation. For this Conference, I want to look at the translators themselves, from those responsible for the Septuagint to those working in the twenty-first century. For some of these translators, we have little biographical data, for others we are well informed about their activities, individual and communal, from birth to death. In the process, we will discern features that are common to most of these figures, as well as highlight some fascinatingly distinctive characteristics of a few of them. Overall, this presentation will add a vast number of personalities to enhance our understanding and appreciation of the long tradition of Bible translating within Judaism.