The author of "The Art of Biblical Narrative" provides a fresh interpretation of the poetry of the Old Testament and a lucid, original account of how biblical poetry works.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
Alter is a brilliant guide to the Bible:
This companion volume to "The Art of Biblican Narrative" is equally illuminating although the subject matter is very different. Still, Alter is to my mind the deepest and most perceptive literary analyst I have ever read. His writing is not easy and I sometimes have to look up words he uses -- but he reads so closely and with such sympathy and sensitivity that his insights are often simply revelatory. Here he examines Biblical poetry with close readings from selections of the prophets, the Song of... more info
Great Purchase for Serious Study:
Alter is beyond a good scholar. He tears apart hebrew poetry and shows you how it works. the only drawback is it is a slow process. the writing is good but difficult.
A literary approach to reading Biblical poetry:
Alter continues here what he started in ' The Art of Biblical Narrative' and applies the techniques of literary criticism to the Biblical text. He does not discard Lowth's discovery of parallelism as the key technique of Biblical poetry but rather sharpens and intensifies the meaning of this concept. He shows the way different kind of parallelism operate in the text. He illustrates how intensification of meaning comes through repetition and variation. He closely reads some of the great Biblical poetry.
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This book should never be out of print:
This is one of the books that I was supposed to read for a class but didn't get around to it until now. I am halfway through this book and it is one of the most readable academic books that I've read. It is no wonder that Robert Alter has set and will set the standards by which Biblical litery criticism is judged.
The Bible comes alive under his translations and his insights into the text make this old book new and exciting.
