Acts and Letters of the Apostles

Richmond Lattimore, one of the most distinguished living translators of Greek, has in this book completed his rendering of the New Testament in fresh and accurate English for the modern reader. The publication of his translation of The Four Gospels and the Revelation in 1979 was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "an achievement that places us more deeply in Lattimore's debt than any other in a long diligent career." The Acts of the Apostles, which he calls "the earliest consecutive story of early Christianity that we have," and the three groups of Letters of the Apostles--those of Saint Paul, the letter to the Hebrews, and the General Letters--are now made available to complete the New Testament in his translation. His aim again has been to provide a simple, literal rendering in which the syntax and order of the Greek dictate the character of the English style. Lattimore, as an authority on the Greek language in which these texts have come down to us, and as a writer without pretensions as a biblical scholar, allows the words of the apostles and earliest disciples to speak for themselves with accuracy and fidelity to the Greek. The book's design follows the attractive and readable format of The Four Gospels, and avoids the usual apparatus of biblical texts.