Product Description

Through a distinguished career of critical scholarship, Robert Alter's masterly new translation and probing commentary combine to give contemporary readers the definitive edition of The Five Books. Alter's translation recovers the mesmerising effect of these ancient stories - the profound and haunting enigmas, the ambiguities of motive and image, and the distinctive cadences and lovely precision of the Hebrew text. Alter's translation conveys the music and the meaning of the Hebrew text in a lyrical, lucid English. His commentary illuminates it with learned insight and reflection on its literary and historical dimensions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #227139 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1120 pages

About the Author
ROBERT ALTER is the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published many acclaimed works on the Bible, literary modernism and contemporary Hebrew literature.

Customer Reviews

alter, the five books of moses
This book reveals just how much more there is to learn from an area that has been worked through from century to century. An indispensible guide to those who wish to learn, with new insights into the OT on every page.

Altered images.
The Pentateuch, Torah or simply 'The Law' traditionaly ascribed to Moses modern Biblical scholarship identifies three sources of authorship for these foundational books of scripture, The Jahwist(J), The Priestly Work (P), The Elohist (E). And material from Deuteronomy (D). J-P-E-D.
This contemporary English prose translation by distinguished Biblical Scholar Robert Alter (Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparitive Litrature at the University of California, Berkeley), could be described as a reconstructionist or restorative project, an attempt to bring out the original Jewish idiom and reading of the text over and above later Christian readings and glosses. And as this is a modern, stand alone translation that lies outside the Tyndale succession, of which 'The King James Version' is the pre-eminent example, traditional phrases now embeded in the English language and associated with "The Scriptures" are not present here. This translation then is less 'Holy Bible' and more Jewish Tanakh. Christians of a more traditionalist, conservative or evangelical stripe may find this distasteful, I however found it to be refreshing, forceful, lucid, and immensely learned. A successful attempt to bring out the strange otherness or foreigness of the original ancient Hebrew texts.
Reading Alter is like looking anew at a restored masterpiece or wiping away decades of dust from an antique mirror. This is a wonderful translation but what really makes this edition of the Torah essential is Robert Alters animated and somewhat colourful commentary where the translators personality really shines through. A Profoundly illuminating monument of modern scholarship.

The Five Books-- A Critical Review
The Five Books Of Moses, a scholarly translation of The Torah by Dr. Robert Alter is nothing short of magnificent. I've been wanting a book such as this for quite some time and to be quite frank, I was greatly disappointed with the recently released Oxford Jewish Bible.

The Five Books of Moses, is just that a translation of the first five books of our Bible, but it also has substantial and thorough annotations which entices the reader to reconsider age-old beliefs about the text and how one perceives the patriarchs, matriarchs and the Torah in general.

In addition to the text, Dr. Alter offers alternative translations based on the oldest historical usage of individual words. In some cases, he also he focuses on the history of the letters and how that might affect translation.

This is an indispensable book and one that should be owned with Everett Fox' competing version of the same topic.