Description
By (author) Alter Robert
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A landmark event: the complete Hebrew Bible in the award-winning translation that delivers the stunning literary power of the original.
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A masterpiece of deep learning and fine sensibility, Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible, now complete, reanimates one of the formative works of our culture. Capturing its brilliantly compact poetry and finely wrought, purposeful prose, Alter renews the Old Testament as a source of literary power and spiritual inspiration. From the family frictions of Genesis and King David’s flawed humanity to the serene wisdom of Psalms and Job’s incendiary questioning of God’s ways, these magnificent works of world literature resonate with a startling immediacy. Featuring Alter’s generous commentary, which quietly alerts readers to the literary and historical dimensions of the text, this is the definitive edition of the Hebrew Bible.
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“Alter’s translation can be fairly described as a godsend. The foundational texts are here given their due in prose at once modern and magnificently cadenced. Immediately readable, immensely learned, an education and a restitution…”
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“Encountering these books in this form—as ancient literature, laid out as poetry, with copious footnotes—allows you to be dazzled by their range, from the frank eroticism of the Song of Songs to the bucolic idyll of Esther and the downright weirdness of Daniel.”
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“You think you know these texts, or you do until you read Alter, who reignites their beauty in bracing and unexpected ways.”
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“Sober, clear, and fluid… Masterful commentary.”
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“Thrilling and constantly illuminating.”
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“Musically and poetically sensitive… [Alter] takes us back to the essence of the meaning…”
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“A master translator of Hebrew poetry.”
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“Alter has achieved the significant feat of refreshing English by taking it back to one of its sources of strength.”
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“Alter is amazingly successful… [His] translations of many famous passages are primordially spare and dignified, the work of a scholar with an unusually sure ear for verse.”
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“In each of the Biblical books in this volume a balance of explanation, translation and commentary is offered. In each of them the reader is made a partner in an adventure of scholarship and clarification which is both rare and exemplary.”
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“Robert Alter”s new translation of the Hebrew Bible draws out the literariness of the text.”
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“Most Biblical translations are teamwork; the so-called King James Version of the Bible was produced by forty-seven English churchmen. But Alter has, like Dr. Johnson with his dictionary, tackled the job on his own. The accomplishment, two decades in the making, is almost absurdly impressive. One wants to call it titanic or Olympian or even heroic, but those are the wrong words—pagan words. Alter will have to settle for one of the God-fearing Hebraic terms of praise that stipple his text: “righteous” or “strong” or, simply, “wise.”
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“… truly magnificent translation… Mr. Alter’s sense of the original’s beauty and his representation of it may be different—rougher, blunter, more jagged, not so stately—but his translation is all the more compelling for that.”
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“A monumental new translation of the Hebrew Bible.”
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“To translate the Bible into English in the early 17th century, King James approved a team of more than 50… When you think of these translating battalions, it puts into perspective the achievement of Robert Alter… Stretching to more than 3,000 pages including
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