Robert Bernard Alter (born 1935)
Biography
Robert Alter was born in a Jewish American family, and first learned
Hebrew as part of his religious upbringing.
earned his bachelor's degree in English (Columbia University, 1957) and his master's degree (1958) and doctorate (1962) from Harvard University in comparative literature. He started his career as a writer at
Commentary, where he was for many years a contributing editor. He has written twenty-four books, including his three-thousand-page
translation of the entire
Hebrew Bible.
He lectures on topics ranging from biblical episodes to
Kafka's
modernism and Hebrew literature.
Biblical studies
One of Alter's contributions is the introduction of the
type scene into contemporary
Hebrew Bible studies. An example of a type scene is that of a man meeting a young woman at a well, whom he goes on to marry; this scene occurs twice in Genesis and once in Exodus, and, according to Alter, distortedly in 1 Samuel and the Book of Ruth.
Robert Alter (1981). 046500427X, Basic Books. 046500427X
Honors
Alter has served as an active member of the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress and as the president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. He was a Guggenheim fellow in 1966 and 1978.
He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986.
In 2001, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.
He was a senior fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies in
Jerusalem, and Old Dominion fellow at Princeton University. He is a member of the
editorial board of the
Jewish Review of Books.
Selected Awards
Alter is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. In 2009, he received the Robert Kirsch Award (
Los Angeles Times) for lifetime contribution to American letters.
He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree by
Yale University in 2010.
He is a Doctor Honoris Causa of Hebrew University (2015).
His book The Art of Biblical Narrative won the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought.
Selected works
- Translations of the Hebrew Bible
-
The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel, 1999, W.W. Norton,
-
The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary, 2004, W.W. Norton,
-
The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary, 2007, W.W. Norton,
-
The Book of Genesis, translation by Robert Alter, illustrated by Robert Crumb, 2009, W.W. Norton (first edition, 1996),
-
The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentary, 2010, W.W. Norton,
-
Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings: A Translation with Commentary, 2013, W.W. Norton,
-
Strong As Death Is Love: Song of Songs Ruth Esther Jonah And Daniel: A Translation with Commentary, 2015, W.W. Norton,
-
, 2018, W.W. Norton,
- Other works
-
Rogue's Progress: Studies in the Picaresque Novel, 1965, Harvard University Press
-
Partial Magic: The Novel as a Self-Conscious Genre, 1975, University of California Press,
-
A Lion for Love: A Critical Biography of Stendhal, in collaboration with Carol Cosman, 1979, Basic Books,
-
The Art of Biblical Narrative, 1981, Basic Books,
-
Motives for Fiction, 1984, Harvard University Press,
-
The Art of Biblical Poetry, 1985, Basic Books,
-
The Literary Guide to the Bible Edited by Alter and Frank Kermode, 1987, Harvard University Press,
-
The Invention of Hebrew Prose: Modern Fiction and the Language Revolution, 1988, University of Washington Press.
-
Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age, 1990, W.W. Norton,
-
Necessary Angels: Tradition and Modernity in Kafka, Benjamin, and Scholem, 1991, Harvard University Press,
-
Imagined Cities: Urban Experience and the Novel, 2005, Yale University Press,
-
Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible, 2010, Princeton University Press,
-
The Art of Bible Translation, 2019, Princeton University Press,
-
Nabokov and the Real World: Between Appreciation and Defense, 2021, Princeton University Press,
-
Amos Oz: Writer, Activist, Icon, 2023, Yale University Press,
External links
