Restless Search: A History of Persian Translations of the Bible

A Restless Search: A History of Persian Translations of the Bible is a philological and linguistic analysis of Persian translations and a call for interfaith cooperation. Thomas appraises biblical translation efforts through eight periods of Persian history-from the fifth century into the twenty-first-during which successive translators and groups of translators, sometimes of different faiths, worked to reshape and refine versions of the Bible in the supple Persian language of their times. He demonstrates how literary style, vocabulary, and word choice were vexed by lack of a standard Persian vocabulary for key biblical terms. Thomas supplies technical analyses and overviews of Persian biblical translations. In addition, he incorporates research by literary scholar Ali-Asghar Aghbar on the stylistics of three major Persian biblical translations.