Genesis: New Translation of the Classic Bible Stories, a

As someone who has recently been fascinated with new translations of the book of Genesis, I found Mitchell's to be one of the best. I call it 'very necessary' because I believe that whether or not one reads the Bible as literature or religious truth, this translation does a superb job in recovering the text from centuries of doctrinal interpretation and positioning the reader for an honest assessment of Genesis. The God of these stories is a complex, capricious, and ultimately unpredicatable character. The Lord is not a likeable deity. And, in my opinion, for a Christian or Jew who has problems with this portrayal of the Lord, read the older versions again. They more or less can reveal the same interpretation to an intelligent reader, and even provoke an interest in how these stories have been read and misread through the discourse of doctrine, of everyday media, and why. This is how I find Mitchell's translation and interpretation valuable, because it questions this Lord. Mitchell looks at the stories of the rejected Cain, the slighted Esau, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and others and reevaluates them with a critical but fully appreciative approach.