The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary

About this book

The capstone of a brilliant scholars lifelong work to establish the literary identity of the Bible in an elegant slipcased hardcover. Through a distinguished career of critical scholarship and translation Robert Alter has equipped us to read the Hebrew Bible as a powerful cohesive work of literature. The culmination of this work Alters masterly new translation and probing commentary combine to give contemporary readers the definitive edition of The Five Books. Alters majestic translation recovers the mesmerizing effect of these ancient storiesthe profound and haunting enigmas the ambiguities of motive and image and the distinctive cadences and lovely precision of the Hebrew text. Other modern translations either recast these features for contemporary clarity thereby losing the character of the original or fail to give readers a suitably fluid English as a point of contact. Alters translation conveys the music and the meaning of the Hebrew text in a lyrical lucid English. His accompanying commentary illuminates the text with learned insight and reflection on its literary and historical dimensions.