From one of our most celebrated writers on religion comes this fresh bold & unsettling new translation of the New Testament David Bentley Hart undertook this new translation of the New Testament in the spirit of "etsi doctrina non daretur" "as if doctrine is not given" Reproducing the texts' often fragmentary formulations without augmentation or correction he has produced a pitilessly literal translation one that captures the texts' impenetrability & unfinished quality while awakening readers to an uncanniness that often lies hidden beneath doctrinal layers The early Christians' sometimes raw astonished & halting prose challenges the idea that the New Testament affirms the kind of people we are Hart reminds us that they were a company of extremists radical in their rejection of the values & priorities of society not only at its most degenerate but often at its most reasonable & decent " To live as the New Testament language requires" he writes " Christians would have to become strangers & sojourners on the earth to have here no enduring city to belong to a Kingdom truly not of this world & we surely cannot do that can we?"