Alter’s Latest Biblical Translations

1. 
   J. K. Gayle permalink*

   April 3, 2013 6:50 am

   Thank you very much for this announcement, and for the links! I’ve ordered my copy and am especially interested in Alter’s “Joshua” and “Judges.”

   As Willis Barnstone was translating, restoring, the “New Covenant” (or the NT gospels and Apocalypse), he praised Alter’s work this way:

   A major change from the pedestrian Hebrew Bible translations that our century has sponsored has been the 1996 publication of Genesis in versions by Robert Alter and by Stephen Mitchell and the 1999 translation of Alter’s David. Alter and Mitchell are both literary, the Alter rhythmically rhetorical and austerely beautiful, with significant annotation; the Mitchell more contemporary, clean, and, like the Alter at once close to both the King James and to modern speech. Like the Everett Fox lineated translation of The Five Books of Moses, the first lines of Genesis in the Alter version have orchestral power and balance, although Alter does so in prose rather than in verse. [from The New Covenant Commonly Called the New Testament, page 17.]
2. 
   Theophrastus permalink*

   April 3, 2013 7:29 pm

   Thanks for the quote, Kurk. I also talk about Alter’s program indirectly through a discussion of translations of Finnegans Wake here.
3. 
   childeroland permalink

   April 13, 2013 6:47 pm

   He’s supposed to be doing the Major Prophets next.
4. 
   Theophrastus permalink*

   April 14, 2013 4:08 pm

   Yes, I understand he is continuing his efforts on Biblical translations.
5. 
   Russ permalink

   July 9, 2013 7:37 pm

   Thank you for the info. I just started reading his translation of the Wisdom Books. (I’m falling behind in my reading.)

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1. Forthcoming Book on Translating Finnegans Wake | BLT
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