Biblical Hebrew Forum

["David Kummerow" <farmerjoeblo AT hotmail.com>]

Don't know if it has already been mentioned, but a review of Alter's 
translation of Genesis, which is much longer and more indepth than 
Ackroyd's, is:

de Regt, L.J. "Hebrew Syntactical Inversions and Their Literary Equivalence 
in Robert Alter's Translation of Genesis." The Bible Translator 54 (2003): 
111-121.

David Kummerow.



Message: 8
Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2005 09:33:02 +1300 (NZDT)
From: Bill Rea
Subject: [b-hebrew] Review Alter's translation
To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Message-ID:

Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

B-Hebrewers,

There is a review of Alter's translation of the Torah at:-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-1419595,00.html

Those who like paraphrases like the New Living "Translation"
you will probably dislike this review. I haven't purchased Alter's
translation yet, I expect when I buy my next batch of statistics
textbooks in February from Amazon I'll add a copy to my list then.

It seems to me, from what I've read about Alter's work, it is a welcome
counter-balance to the excesses of paraphrases posing as translations
which are striving for originality and novelty in English. In the words
of the reviewer:-

> There is nothing worse than a religious translation that reaches down to
> its intended audience with modernisms and colloquialisms; for one thing,
> modernisms and colloquialisms date so quickly.

I heartily agree.

Bill Rea, IT Services, Canterbury University \_
E-Mail bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz Phone 64-3-364-2331, Fax 64-3-364-2332 /) 
Zealand
Unix Systems Administrator (/'