Robert Alter is a distinguished scholar of the Hebrew Bible, having taught at UC Berkeley for more than 50 years. He has served on the Council of Scholars for the Library of Congress, and he has been a Senior Fellow for the National Endowment for the Humanities. His scholarship is widely recognized and respected.
His books The Art of Biblical Narrative and The Art of Biblical Poetry are landmark works in the field of reading the Bible as literature, and he has influenced generations of Bible students to see the artistry and magnificence of this ancient collection of books we call the Old Testament.
And yet, Alter, as far as I can tell, makes no profession of faith in Jesus Christ. He appears more widely acclaimed in Jewish than Christian circles. And a number of bedrock principles that underlie Christian belief carry little weight with him. Inerrancy, infallibility, and authority don’t show up in his thinking about these texts. And the New Testament is another historical data point, but not an authoritative interpretation of the Old Testament.
These factors produce a fascinating cohabitation of conflicting extremities in Alter’s recently published translation and commentary of The Hebrew Bible. On the one hand, there is deep respect for, and glorious handling of, a collection of beautiful texts. On the other hand, judgment is pronounced time and again over these texts, with respect to their shaping, content, and effectiveness.
Components
This three-volume set, divided according to the traditional Hebrew divisions of Torah, Prophets, and Writings, offers three tools for the student of the Old Testament:
- A masterpiece of translation
- Guidance through commentary
- A survey of books and groups of books through introductory essays
All three components deserve comment.
Translation
Alter’s translation is truly a masterpiece. Though it might suffer at times from being the work of an individual instead of a self-policing team of scholars, it benefits from its complete freedom from partisan or economic concerns. Since Alter is not seeking a living from massive sales, he is free to be as clear and honest about the text as possible.
Most Bible publishers, for example, refuse to translate Psalm 23:6 as anything but “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” since they won’t sell Bibles if they mess with what people expect from Psalm 23. Yet any honest Hebrew scholar will freely admit that, without doubt, the Hebrew is better translated, as Alter puts it, “And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for many long days.”
Time and again, Alter defies our expectations of favorite memory verses. I found myself especially tripped up by Proverbs 1:7: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge [so far, so good!]. Wisdom and reproof dolts despise [Now wait a minute…].”
Such jarring breaches of expectation serve a commendable purpose: representing the Hebrew as best as possible in English. Alter explains his translation philosophy in his Art of Bible Translation, which also came out this year. This philosophy includes such maxims as:
- Never use synonyms in English when the Hebrew repeats the same word.
- When the Hebrew uses word play or sound play, find a comparable English alliteration or word play.
- Translate not only the words, but also the tone and style. High Hebrew literature should sound like high English literature. A vernacular Hebrew style must be represented accordingly in English.
These principles are to be highly commended. The second point leads to such gems as “dolts despise” in Proverbs 1:7, reflecting the lilt of the underlying Hebrew phrase. And his rigorous following of these principles makes Alter’s translation a literary masterpiece.
It’s worth the space to consider an example. Read the following narrative out loud to better pick up the rhythmic and stylistic glories:
And all the earth was one language, one set of words. And it happened as they journeyed from the east that they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to each other, “Come, let us bake bricks and burn them hard.” And the brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar. And they said, “Come, let us build us a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, that we may make us a name, lest we be scattered over all the earth.” And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the human creatures had built. And the LORD said, “As one people with one language for all, if this is what they have begun to do, now nothing they plot to do will elude them. Come, let us go down and baffle their language there so that they will not understand each other’s language.” And the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth and they left off building the city. Therefore it is called Babel, for there the LORD made the language of all the earth babble. And from there the LORD scattered them over all the earth.
Genesis 11:1-9
Notice the relatively short sentences. Notice the lack of identifiable subject in the second sentence (“they”). Notice how almost every sentence begins with “and.” Notice the word play of Babel/babble. All these things are clear and obvious in the Hebrew text, but almost never captured in typical English translations.
Commentary
I find the commentary either spectacular or dreadful, depending on the agenda behind it. Alter is most engaging when he explains his word choices and makes literary connections. He is far less engaging when he sits in judgment over the text, presuming to explain what the “original” text really said—even in places where there is zero manuscript evidence to support such conclusions.
Introductory Essays
Alter provides an essay for each book, along with an essay for each volume. In addition, a few essays survey sub-groups such as the wisdom literature. And one long essay on the entire Hebrew Bible and approaches to translation is reprinted in all three volumes.
Again, these essays have both spectacular moments and dreadful ones. The opening, thrice-reprinted essay, contains such gems as:
The unacknowledged heresy underlying most modern English versions of the Bible is the use of translation as a vehicle for explaining the Bible instead of representing it in another language, and in the most egregious instances this amounts to explaining away the Bible. (p.xv)
An adequate English version should be able to indicate the small but significant modulations in diction in the biblical language. (p.xxvii)
A suitable English version should avoid at all costs the modern abomination of elegant synonymous variation, for the literary prose of the Bible turns everywhere on significant repetition, not variation. (p.xxvii)
The book introductions likewise contain marvelous analyses of metaphor, poetry, artistry, or thematic development.
But at the same time, there is good dose of stinkers, such as:
It is of course possible to link each of these sexual details [from Ezekiel 16] with the allegory of an idolatrous nation betraying its faith. But such explicitness and such vehemence about sex are unique in the Bible. The compelling inference is that this was a prophet morbidly fixated on the female body and seething with fervid misogyny…Ezekiel clearly was not a stable person. (Vol 2, p.1051)
At this point [Job 32], in the original text, the LORD would have spoken out from the whirlwind, but a lapse in judgment by an ancient editor postponed that brilliant consummation for six chapters in which the tedious Elihu is allowed to hold forth. (Vol 3, p.460)
The book of Daniel, then, is an imperfect composition. In style, its Hebrew sections are seriously flawed. Its narrative is primarily a vehicle for laying out tales of miraculous aid that demonstrate God’s power, or for setting the circumstances for elaborately coded revelations of the future course of history that require deciphering. (Vol 3, p.749)
There are times to bask in these essays, and there are times to hold the nose while plodding forth.
Recommendation
This three-volume set is not a reader’s Bible. The commentary takes up much space on each page, and the typesetting unfortunately presents the text in unbearably long paragraph blocks. But I would recommend it for at least two purposes.
First, I recommend this set for those who always wonder what might be lying “underneath” the English text in the Hebrew original. Alter’s masterpiece will give those who don’t read Hebrew the clearest picture of it in translation.
Second, I recommend this set for those who would like to read the Bible out loud. When I finish reading the New Testament to my kids on Sunday nights, I plan to return to the Old Testament with them, in Alter’s translation. It’s possible that much of the high-style books, such as Isaiah, will go over their heads. Alter makes sure that Isaiah, in English, sounds just as lofty and high brow as the Hebrew is. But that’s all the more reason to read this work out loud. In the Hebrew Bible, we have a collection of the greatest literature the world has ever seen. And it was meant to be read out loud.
Alter’s masterpiece was kindly handed to us for just a time like this.
And all the people gathered as one man in the square that is in front of the Water Gate, and they said to Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Teaching of Moses with which the LORD had charged Israel. And Ezra the priest brought the Teaching before the assembly, men and women and all who had understanding to listen, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it before the square that was before the Water Gate from first light to midday in the presence of the men and the women and those who had understanding, and the ears of all the people were listening to the Book of Teaching.
Ezra 8:1-3
Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, Norton, 2019
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this work from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Amazon links are affiliate links, which means that clicking on them and making a purchase will grant a small commission to this blog at no extra cost to yourself.
