Robert Alter’s Translation of the Hebrew Bible: A Response to Lénart de Regt

Abstract

This paper responds to Lénart de Regt's discussion (in this issue of TBT) of Robert Alter's translation of the Hebrew Bible. First is a summary of de Regt's discussion of Alter's translation. The second part presents the driving points of Alter's norms for reading the Bible as literature. The third part discusses the application of Alter's norms to translation and ends with a few examples and observations.

Keywords

translation norms translation criticism literary translation Robert Alter Hebrew Bible

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Alter

Robert

. 1981. The Art of Biblical Narrative. New York: Basic Books.

Alter

Robert

. 1985. The Art of Biblical Poetry. New York: Basic Books.

Alter

Robert

. 1992. The World of Biblical Literature. London: SPCK.

Alter

Robert

. 1996. Genesis: Translation and Commentary. New York: Norton.

Alter

Robert

. 1999. The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel. New York: Norton.

Alter

Robert

. 2019. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary. Vol. 1: The Five Books of Moses. Vol. 2: Prophets. Vol. 3: The Writings. New York: Norton.

Alter

Lénart J. de

. 2003. “Hebrew Syntactical Inversions and Their Literary Equivalence in Robert Alter’s Translation of Genesis.” The Bible Translator 54: 111–21.

Alter

Lénart J. de

. 2006. “Hebrew Syntactic Inversions and Their Literary Equivalence in English: Robert Alter’s Translations of Genesis and 1 and 2 Samuel.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 30: 287–314.