Can you rewrite the Bible? This man has made it his mission

Many of us were raised on the early 20th century translation of the Jewish Publication Society of America — used for example in the United Synagogue standard, the Hertz Chumash — a translation he considers “a pretty dreadful, Judaised version of King James”.

He has tried to remain true not only to the meaning of the words but alive to the Bible’s style and rhythm. For example, he translates the words tohu vavohu, which refer to the elemental void preceding Creation, as “welter and waste,” trying to reflect the Hebrew sound-play.

Since he began, fittingly, with Genesis, which came out in 1996, over the years he has published nearly two-thirds of the Tanach in separate volumes. Influental figures like Lord Sacks now cite him.

His translations of the Books of Samuel brought the story of King David “masterfully to life,” wrote Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet, then principal of London’s Leo Baeck College. The “lucid” prose of his edition of Kings and Judges allowed us to read the Bible “afresh”, said the writer and scholar Gabriel Josipovici.

James Wood, one of today’s most prominent literary critics, said Alter’s work was characterised by “eloquence, scholarly scrupulousness and a desire to convey in English the concrete ferocity of the Hebrew”.

But Alter says it was only because of a couple of “happy accidents” that he completed the Tanach. That was far from his mind when he first embarked on Genesis.

He grew up in a Conservative Jewish congregation in the mid-sized town of Albany, New York. “I had a typical American barmitzvah education, which meant that I knew almost nothing at the age of 13. I could read the Hebrew alphabet, knew a few words and could chant my haftarah. That was pretty much it,” he recalls.

What set him on the path to become one of the foremost Judaic scholars of his generation was joining a small class of post-barmitvah boys, which began seriously to study Hebrew. Since he was no great fan of cheder, what motivated him to go was “a bit of a mystery”, he says. “My retrospective suspicion is that I thought it would please my mother if I gave it a whirl just for one year — and then it grabbed me.”

By the time he was in New York, studying for a BA in English at Columbia University, as a sideline he was also taking courses at the Jewish Theological Seminary, some of which were delivered in Hebrew. It fuelled an enchantment with biblical narratives and when he went to Harvard to do a doctorate, he started reading modern Ivrit writers too. “I was pretty much an autodidact in modern Hebrew literature, there was nobody to study with at Harvard.”

Back at Columbia, teaching 18th century literature — his first book was on English and French picaresque novels — he kept up his Hebrew, writing articles on Bialik, Tchernichovsky and other modern Hebrew poets — “somewhat to the disapproval, I think, of my senior colleagues at Columbia because that is not what they hired me for”.

But when the new department of comparative literature at Berkeley, California was looking for a modern Hebraist, they found their man and he moved there in 1967. Although now officially retired, he still teaches a course or two there and remains on the executive of its Centre for Jewish Studies, launched five years ago.

It was not until several books later that he turned to the Bible, with a study of its narrative art, published in 1981, the result of a first “happy accident”. A regular contributor to the magazine Commentary, he had been “shopping around for topics — it occurred to me I had always been fascinated by biblical narrative but couldn’t really explain what was so remarkable about it because it seemed so simple — it’s so spare.”

Attempting to answer his own questions, he produced a “feisty” article in which “I took to task modern scholars for spending all their time hunting down Akkadian loan words while they showed no ability to read a story.”

More articles followed, ultimately giving birth to the book. “Even then, I was saying to myself I’m not really a Bible scholar — I’ll get this book out of my system and go back to writing on Nabokov and Saul Bellow.”

Although he wrote a second book on biblical poetry a few years afterwards, it took another “happy accident” nearly a decade later before he started translating. He had just produced a book on Franz Kafka, Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin when he was visited by Steve Forman, an editor with the publishers WW Norton.

University English students will be familiar with Norton editions of classic literary works such as Shakespeare. When Forman suggested an edition of something from Kafka or perhaps the Bible, Alter thought of Genesis.

Since he had problems with the existing translations, he realised “were I to do this, I’d have to produce my own translation.”

One difficulty he has with modern translations is their handling of Hebrew syntax. “The syntax of Hebrew is predominantly what’s called paratactic— parallel clauses connected by vav in Hebrew. The modern translations think for some reason that people are incapable of reading this and to make it accessible, they should repackage everything as though it were written the day before yesterday. That goes true in the diction as well.

“By doing that, they obliterate many of the important literary effects of the Hebrew style.”

So he set out to “try to convey in English considerably more of the stylistic power and beauty of the Hebrew than was available in preceding translations. Something in me said this was not feasible, because the two languages are so disparate in structure, in the semantic range of terms and so forth — it just can’t be done. It is probably an experiment that will not work.”

But after the first chapter of Genesis, he began to feel a little more confident. “Any translator who thinks his work is perfect is suffering from serious delusions of grandeur but it was a better approximation of what I had in mind than I thought it would be.”

It took him around two and half years to finish the Bible’s first book and the positive reception brought more invitations from Norton - though it still seemed “absurd to think of doing the whole Tanach”. When Forman suggested the idea, he responded “Give me a break”.

He did agree to the Five Books of Moses, though, despite reservations about Leviticus — “I don’t even like to go into butchers’ shops — all those instructions for carving up sacrifices were not quite my thing.”

When the Nobel-winning poet Seamus Heaney chose it as one of his books of the year in 2004, “I thought, Wow, if a great poet can pick this up, I have done something.”

But while the book was a success, it did attract one “rather querulous” review in the New Yorker from the novelist John Updike, who complained the commentaries made it too heavy and that the King James hadn’t needed any.

That was a “very Protestant approach to the Bible”, Alter felt. “We Jews do commentaries.”

And there was a very good political reason why the King James had no commentary, he adds. The earlier Geneva Bible, produced by Protestant refugees, had “a commentary in the margin which was anti-monarchic. King James was having none of this.”

Still, it took a few more books before he finally told himself “I can finish this”.

Not so long ago, any university student of literature would be expected to come with a decent foundation knowledge of the Bible. But that can no longer be taken for granted. Archaic or uninspired translations can hardly have helped.

Alter is candid in saying he doesn’t detect “any evidence of widespread resurgence of interest in the Bible” in America.

Nevertheless he does hope “my translation with the commentary would at least engage the attention of a substantial audience and maybe broaden the readership of the Bible. And the reason I think it isn’t entirely quixotic is that over the years, especially with email, I have got a lot of response from readers.”

Not only churchgoers of various denominations, but secular readers too. “I get a sense from those responses the Bible seems more vivid and accessible in what I have done with it — at least to some readers.”

Alter will be visiting the UK in March for Jewish Book Week and a number of other speaking dates including at the British Library. His next book will be a little volume about translating the Bible — and he does mean “little”, he promises, “after the behemoth” — fine biblical word— “of the three volumes”.

 

The Hebrew Bible is published this week by W W Norton & Co (£90)