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    The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible
    Unavailable
    The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible
    Unavailable
    The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible

    Written by Aviya Kushner

    Narrated by Kirsten Potter

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Aviya Kushner grew up in a Hebrew-speaking family, reading the Bible in the original Hebrew and debating its meaning over the dinner table. She knew much of it by heart - and was therefore surprised when, while getting her MFA at the University of Iowa, she took the novelist Marilynne Robinson's class on the Old Testament and discovered she barely recognized the text she thought she knew so well. Kushner began discussing the experience with Robinson, who became a mentor, and her interest in the differences between the ancient language and the modern one gradually became an obsession. In this eye-opening chronicle, Kushner tells the story of her vibrant relationship to the Bible, and along the way illustrates how the differences in translation affect our understanding of our culture's most important written work
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateSep 8, 2015
    ISBN9781681414591
    Unavailable
    The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible
    Author

    Aviya Kushner

    Aviya Kushner grew up in a Hebrew-speaking home in New York. She is the author of The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible (Spiegel & Grau / Penguin Random House), which was a National Jewish Book Award Finalist, a Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature Finalist, and one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Religion Stories of the year, as well as the poetry chapbook Eve and All the Wrong Men (Dancing Girl Press, 2019). Kushner is The Forward's language columnist, and previously wrote a travel column for The International Jerusalem Post. She is an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago, a founding faculty member at the Randolph College MFA program, and a member of The Third Coast Translators Collective. Her work has been supported by the Howard Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.

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    Reviews for The Grammar of God

    4.5/5

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    • 5/5
      This an excellent book, providing a different and deeply personal perspective on the language of the Old Testament and the significance of translation. As a Christian learning Hebrew/Greek and studying the Hebrew Bible, it has been a useful and informative opportunity to step back and wrestle with the wider significance of language, of grammar, and of culture in the way we approach Holy Scripture. In the end, this is a quest to find meaning, not just the meaning of scripture, but the meaning of our lives themselves and our attempts to fulfill our ordained purpose. Clearly the author has spent a great deal of forthright--- and holy--- effort in attempting to discern those meanings and she let's us go along with her on that journey. Having now listened to the audio, I am tempted to get a physical copy to be able to revisit parts of the book more deeply.

      תודה רבה
    • 4/5
      This is an incredibly rich stew of stories and a glimpse into some of the differences between the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the Christian Bible as translated into English. Aviya Kushner, poet, teacher, and former journalist uses her family's habit of arguing about the meaning of Hebrew texts and her introduction to the Christian Bible in English, via a course taught by Marilynne Robinson, to highlight some of the key differences she sees between these texts. This is a deeply personal book, as well as one that gave this reader both a glimpse into how grammar and translation influence the meaning of texts, and the rich history of Jewish study and commentary of the Torah, prophets, and writings.
    • 3/5
      This was a fascinating concept, and I liked the memoir approach. The overall arc and rationale for which Bible passages Kushner suggested still feel unclear. 3.5 stars.
    • 4/5
      She grew up speaking Hebrew in an orthodox Jewish community and was shocked at the Pentateuch she was given in a class at the Iowa Writers School taught by Marilynne Robinson. This led her to do a textual comparison and reflect on how those differences are expressed in the different cultures. Fascinating.