Tikkun has an interview with Willis Barnstone in which they discuss Barnstone’s Restored New Testament. I’ve read through a fair share of the RNT (my own interview with Barnstone should be coming out soon in the Journal of Italian Translation), though not all of it – 1500 pages! – and not only is it a strikingly fluid translation in modern English, but it also importantly restores the book to its original Jewish context. You don’t get that, for some reason, reading previous versions.

Money quote:

Basically, in the New Testament only the bad guys are Jews. The hero Jews, meaning Jesus, disciples, and family, come through anachronistically as from a world of later church fathers. In the Old Testament, the Jews are annoyingly called Israelites, children of Israel, Hebrews, anything but Jews (except in Esther), while in the NT the word Jew is used everywhere as a curse. Yet the New Testament was written about Jews, for Jews, and by Jews. Who else were they? Galileans descended from Mars?