Book Review | The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, 3 vols. by Robert Alter
The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, 3 vols.
by Robert Alter
W. W. Norton
2018, 3500 pp, $125
When I first learned that Robert Alter had completed the task of singlehandedly translating the entire Bible, a project he commenced around 1995, my mind went to Lawrence of Arabia. In one scene of that spectacular movie, Peter O’Toole, playing T. E. Lawrence, enters British military headquarters in Cairo, dusty and exhausted from the long trek across the Sinai, and says to his commanding officer, “We’ve taken Aqaba.” The officer asserts, “It’s impossible,” to which Lawrence replies, “Yes, it is, I did it.” And so it is with Alter’s The Hebrew Bible: What had been thought to be impossible—a complete modern Bible translation with expert commentary, not by committee, but by a single individual—is indeed possible.
Unlike Lawrence, though—who,...