Artscroll Talmud
Well, the Artscroll Talmud has been complete for a while now. For someone who didn’t grow up speaking Ashkenazi Hebrew, it can take a little getting used to the transliserations. But it is a masterful work, and don’t let that distract you. For people who are more comfortable in English than in 3rd-6th century BCE Aramaic (Babylonian dialect), the Artscroll Talmud has two things that our other favorite, the Steinsaltz Talmud, does not: one, it’s complete. Rabbi Steinsaltz only published four tractates in English (though of course he’s done them all in modern Hebrew, which served as the basis for the English version).
The other thing that Artscroll has in its Talmud version is in-line Hebrew and English. That is, one page has the original Aramaic/Hebrew text. The facing page is not just a translation, though. It is a running translation and explanation, based largely on Rashi, that includes the vocalized Aramaic/Hebrew text followed by English translation, phrase by phrase. The original and the translation are in bold font, while interpolated explanations and other words needed to render the sentences in readable English are in normal type. Another thing that takes getting used to, but is actually quite handy, is that since it usually takes 3-4 English pages to translate 1 original Hebrew/Aramaic page, the Artscroll Talmud repeats each original page three or four times until the facing English page catches up to it. On any given English page, you can see where you are on the Hebrew/Aramaic page courtesy of a grey bar on the Hebrew/Aramaic page that shows which parts of it are on the current English page.
The Steinsaltz version, on the other hand, does a similar interpolation of explanation and text, but it keeps the Aramaic/Hebrew text separate from the English. It also uses its own pagination, instead of that in the Vilna edition. (Some readers, it seems, couldn’t handle that, though the Vilna printing is of course not really all that old in Talmud years.) One other plus of the Steinsaltz English section is that he also gives you a literal translation separate from the translation with interpolated commentary and explanation. If you don’t know Hebrew and Aramaic, this is a nice way to get a feel for the structure of the language used in the Talmud.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Almost forgot to mention: the English version of the Steinsaltz Talmud (formally titled, “The Talmud - The Steinsaltz Edition”) is out of print. Most of the earlier volumes (up to about volume 10 or so) are still readily available; some of the later volumes, especially for tractate Sanhedrin, are quite rare now, and command prices of hundreds or even thousands of dollars each.
Still, it’s a beautiful edition, and there’s place on our bookshelf for it. A place of honor, actually.