Looking for a Hebrew to English translation of The Old Testament with notes.

go to a jewish books website. jews don't translate through greek or latin first, as they still read hebrew, so the book will go straight from hebrew to english. search for something that's recommended for bar/bat mitzva kids, usually those have the hebrew, english and notes. that seem like something useful? mine's from Soncino press, and it's the Pentateuch and Haftorah, so the 5 books (torah) and the rest of the old testament.

The Plaut book is very good and will suit your purposes nicely, I think. It provides the JPS translation (which is well known for striving for historical accuracy) and, in addition to general commentary, excerpts similar or related works from other religious texts (like other ancient near eastern creation myths for instance).

...however this appears to be based on the King James Bible, which - no offense - given its history seems totally worthless to me as a study tool.

Um, yeah, everyone thinks this.

And everyone is wrong.

All bibles that are called translations use both the original Hebrew for Old Testament, and Greek for new testament as source material.

What you are thinking is a "transliteration", which the King James is not.

The most accessible version of what you want would probably be a digital bible program that supports "Strong's numbers" which assigns each Hebrew word a number that you can usually click on to see the original Hebrew characters and translated versions. Strong's Hebrew to English dictionary will also list multiple definitions, or criteria for interpretation on the more obscure or misunderstood words. And since Strong's books have entered the public domain, a little google searching will probably come up with a free, or very inexpensive, version that you can use.

Seriously, can someone please explain to me why everyone thinks the King James version is so inaccurate? It wasn't and never has been "A translation of a translation of a translation" as most people claim. A fragment of the Book of Daniel was found almost intact in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it compares to the Hebrew source for the King James bible so closely that it is uncanny.

Also if you want a website... I used this for years in a Jewish day school, the translation isn't bad though it doesn't have notes.

If you want notes, I like the JPS Tanakh, also something we used in school.

Just go ahead and learn Hebrew.

Good luck :-)