In the interest of full disclosure, the reviewer has never really understood the need to try to reconcile current scientific notions of cosmology with the first few chapters of Genesis. But this book deserves to be considered on its own terms.
As the subtitle suggests, the author uses traditional Jewish techniques of linguistic analysis to develop translations of verses from Genesis that both differ from the King James version and don’t conflict with the picture that scientific research and reconstruction paints of cosmo-genesis and bio-genesis. Perhaps the greatest departures from the traditional reading of the first chapter is the translation of “yom” as “era” and the suggestions that the ordering of the eras in the creation story isn’t chronological and that the eras overlap. I find the author’s ideas to be interesting and thought-provoking, but not necessarily convincing.
The author uses a somewhat idiosyncratic but nonetheless clear transliteration scheme when quoting Hebrew text in Roman characters. Appen., index.
