Biblical Sinai Traditions: translating a distinguished scholar

Professor Israel Knohl is a distinguished scholar of Tanakh. He is emeritus at Hebrew University and a senior fellow at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He has written numerous books and articles, both academic and more popular, on a wide variety of Biblical subjects. So I felt privileged when he approached me to translate his most recent book, Biblical Sinai Traditions, which deals with traditions regarding the revelation at Sinai (or not at Sinai, as the case may be).

The passage below comes from the conclusion and sums up the main thesis of the work.

“As mentioned, it was the revolutionary northern author who first established the figure of Moses as a legislator who mediated between God and Israel and placed him at the heart of the Hebrew Biblical composition, and Jewish composition in general. It is he who took the ancient poetic traditions and adapted and combined the separate foundations of those poems.  In doing so he created, for the first time, a snapshot of the event at Mt. Horeb or Sinai, an event that begins with a public revelation to the whole nation and continues with the transmission of a book of laws to Moses in a unique and private manner. One could say, then, that the opening of the Tractate Avot, “Moses received the Torah at Sinai”, is essentially a reflection of the results of the revolutionary works of the northern author.”

“Tiki Krakowski translated my book into English. Her translation is very good, and she was diligently precise down to the small details of the book.” 

— Prof. Israel Knohl, Yehezkel Kaufman Prof. of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Emeritus).