Strong As Death Is Love: The Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel, A Translation with Commentary

The five stars are for Robert Alter's wonderful footnotes; I can't exactly give a rating to the Bible.....Since childhood I loved these stories in the carefully redacted Disney versions that I was taught. Reading the originals, even as a now cynical adult, I still find them quite shocking. What were they thinking? After averting genocide against the Hebrews, beautiful wise Queen Esther not only gets revenge on her enemy Haman, she has all ten of his sons, all gleefully listed by their exotic names, impaled on stakes. Time to party. Then the text explains that after they killed off the entire Haman clan, the Hebrews were too ethical to loot the family's goods....is that supposed to be noble or is it some kind of ancient humor? (Like the country western song: I shot the sheriff, but I didn't kill his deputy...) Robert Alter carefully explains that none of this is at all historical. The Persian empire was famously tolerant of different religions, the threatened genocide would not have been possible, and neither was the revenge. The biblical authors just needed a story to justify a little carnival celebration at the Purim time of year since other biblical texts didn't already provide a pretext for partying. That's a relief. Alter is quite comfortable with the expansive eroticism of the Song of Songs, and provides a wonderful gloss. His take on Ruth is interesting: The only book in the Old Testament where all the characters are well-intentioned, and the most radical book in the Old Testament for its approval of intermarriage, and even with a happy ending, and no one gets impaled on a stake. Of course the poetry of Ruth and Naomi is genuinely noble, my favorite still. But it probably did not sit well with traditionalists who opposed what Alter antiseptically calls "exogamy." Like other scholars, Alter places late works Jonah and Daniel as transitional between the ancient world of the Old Testament and the world of New Testament Christianity. Jonah anticipates a monotheistic god that should work for all ethnic groups, also anticipates the idea of eternal life, not a commonly accepted notion in the older books, and Daniel comes up with an eternal kingdom and resurrection from the dead. All handy concepts for the Christian era. Alter carefully and succinctly identifies the wild mythological characters in Daniel's visions with the corresponding historical names, like Alexander the Great and Antiochus. Just enough information so the curious can go to Google and get some traction. He really gets the role of footnotes as guideposts. He clues you into each genre as the reader encounters them: what is vaguely historical, what is wish fulfillment, what is fairy tale, what is folk lore. For those with an interest, there are quick references to the previous scholarship, without getting too technical. I still find the Old Testament shocking, but with Alter's guide, I can better appreciate "what they were thinking," and see it as a remarkable human document, a letter washed up in a bottle from the distant human past.

Alter's translation is beautifully written and enjoyable to read. His commentary adds a deeper understanding to the text including the nuances of various translations, culture of the initial audience, and literary structure of each book.

Robert Alter provides excellent commentary to the English translation. He expertly explains the use of Hebrew poetry and language developments.

Strong as Death is Love is a continuation of a series of translations by the renowned Hebrew Bible scholar Robert Alter (Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley). He is most well known for The Art of Biblical Narrative (1981) which reads the Hebrew Bible through the eyes of a literary critic and significantly influenced how we read the Hebrew Bible. This work applies his literary criticism to the Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel with a thoughtful translation of the books and brief commentary. Most valuable, of course, is the option to read alternative translation. Although Strong as Death is Love only focuses on translating five books, it reflects a valuable contribution of his ongoing translation of the entire Hebrew Bible. Beyond offering an alternative translation for scholars to work with, an important accomplishment in and of itself, it offers translation and commentary which non-specialists are able to read. Rather than being caught up in academic mumbo-jumbo and theological focuses, his translation emphasizes the literary strengths and nuances of the Hebrew Bible and helps non-specialists to appreciate the literature. I do hope he eventually merges all of his translations into one translation of the entire Hebrew Bible in a single publication, for it would make a translation sensitive to literary style more readily available. The only problem with Alter’s translation is the lack of information regarding what “some scholars or interpreters” say. As a single example, he says regarding that Song of Songs that “many interpreters understand this entire sequence as a dream” (19). While his book is written for non-specialists, the lack of reference to who those interpreters are is problematic to people hoping to continue exploring the text. It also prevents the reader from more fully exploring the text with his book as a starting point. Similarly, there is no bibliography of any sort, making it difficult to see what scholarship potentially influenced his comments and translations. While this critique does demonstrate a difficulty for scholars approaching his translation, it is nonetheless an excellent alternative translation for scholarship and non-specialists alike. His sharp eye as a literary critic allows him to seem beyond the typical theological, text critical, and linguistically focused translations and consider the greater ramifications of the literature for humanity. Thus, as an alternative translation, I recommend his work to scholars. And even more so, I recommend that non-specialists and scholars alike read his work simply to appreciate the literary quality which his translations emphasize. Originally Posted at The Biblical Review: [...]

Robert Alter's translations and commentaries always display tremendous sensitivity to the conventions of ancient writing and the key themes of biblical writers. I found this book and all his writings to be great tools for serious biblical scholarship and useful in giving non-scholarly readers who do not know Hebrew insights into the nuances of the language and how language conveys the message of the biblical text.

Diciamo che il nome di Alter è una garanzia. La lettura è piacevole e le note anche. Lo consiglio a chi vuole leggere una bella traduzione in inglese di questi libri della Bibbia senza affaticarsi o annoiarsi.

This translation brings this poetry to life

Alter is always good values and deserves space on the bookshelf

Interesting and very informative.