The Tanakh is an entirely original translation of the Holy Scriptures into contemporary English, based on the Masoretic--the traditional Hebrew--text. It is the culmination of three decades of collaboration by academic scholars and rabbis representing the three largest branches of organized Judaism in America. Not since the third century B.C.E., when seventy-two elders of the tribes of Israel created the Greek translation of Scriptures known as the Septuagint, has such a broad-based committee of Jewish scholars produced a major Bible translation. In executing this monumental task, the translators made use of the entire range of biblical interpretation, ancient and modern, Jewish and non-Jewish. They drew upon the latest findings in linguistics and archaeology as well as the work of early rabbinic and medieval commentators, grammarians, and philologians. The resulting text is a triumph of literary style and biblical scholarship, unsurpassed in accuracy and clarity.