Robert Alter, “On Writing ‘The Art of Biblical Narrative’”

BYU Ancient Near Eastern Studies Lecture—January 30, 2020

Robert Alter, “On Writing ‘The Art of Biblical Narrative’

In this lecture to students in Brigham Young University's ANES program, Dr. Robert Alter discusses how he came to write "The Art of Biblical Narrative," a book that inspired scholars to appreciate the craft and composition of one of the world's most widely-read texts.

ROBERT ALTER is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He has written widely on the European novel from the eighteenth century to the present, on contemporary American fiction, and on modern Hebrew literature. He is especially well-known for having written extensively on literary aspects of the Bible. His twenty-two published books include two prize-winning volumes on biblical narrative and poetry and award-winning translations of Genesis and of the Five Books of Moses. In 2019 he published The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary.

This lecture was co-sponsored by BYU’s Department of Ancient Scripture and the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.