The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary

by Robert Alter, Alter, R. Alter

Overview

A brilliant new translation and commentary of one of the Bible's most cherished and powerful books.
Like the Five Books of Moses a cornerstone of the scriptural canon, the Book of Psalms has been a source of solace and joy for countless readers over millennia. The cleansing purity of its images invites reflection and supplication in times of sorrow. The musicality of its powerful rhythms moves readers to celebration of good tidings. So today as it has been throughout our past, this is a book to be cherished as the grounding for our daily lives.This timeless poetry is beautifully wrought by a scholar whose translation of the Five Books of Moses was hailed as a "godsend" by Seamus Heaney and a "masterpiece" by Robert Fagles. Robert Alter's The Book of Psalms captures the simplicity, the physicality, and the coiled rhythmic power of the Hebrew, restoring the remarkable eloquence of these ancient poems. His learned and insightful commentary shines a light on the obscurities of the text.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393337044
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/19/2009
Pages:	518
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Robert Alter's ongoing translation of the Hebrew Bible, the magnificent capstone to a lifetime of distinguished scholarly work, has won the PEN Center Literary Award for Translation. His immense achievements in scholarship ranging from the eighteenth-century European novel to contemporary Hebrew and American literature earned Alter the Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, Alter is the Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.

Editorial Reviews

The achievement of this new translation is to present the Book of Psalms as a wonder of ancient literature.

The Tablet

In his compelling and swiftly moving translations, Alter has thrust the reader back to the place where the monotheistic religions were born out of even more ancient beginnings.

Jewish Book World

Every reader of this translation will be led towards fresh thoughts and will discover favorites that inspire the imagination in new, rich ways.

Walter Brueggemann - Christian Century

A considerable achievement.... Alter holds me to his darkly economical texts.

Harold Bloom - New York Review of Books

Alter is musically and poetically sensitive.... [He] takes us back to the essence of the meaning.

James Wood - The New Yorker

You think you know these texts . . . until you read Alter, who reignites their beauty in bracing and unexpected ways.

Malcolm Jones - Newsweek

One of the best outcomes of Alter's translation is a sense of an abrupt, muscular intensity; he restores to the Psalms a kind of strangeness that emanates from an encounter with a culture we recognize yet is distinctly alien to us, far removed in time and frame of mind.

Mark Doty - Los Angeles Times

It is impossible to overstate the depth, the versatility, and the value of Alter's contribution.

Barbara Berman - San Francisco Chronicle

Extraordinary.... We never forget, with Alter's Psalms, that the text we are reading is the work of human hands—not Holy Writ, but something at once less and more than that, great poetry.

Adam Kirsch - New Republic

You think you know these texts . . . until you read Alter, who reignites their beauty in bracing and unexpected ways.— Malcolm Jones

Newsweek

A considerable achievement. . . . Alter holds me to his darkly economical texts.— Harold Bloom

New York Review of Books

Alter takes us back to the essence of the meaning. . . . Everything is clearer, seeming to have been rinsed not in the baptismal waters of the New Testament but in the life-giving water of the desert.— James Wood

The New Yorker