Translating the Bible - A Conversation with Robert Alter

Award-winning biblical translator and acclaimed literary critic Robert Alter is the author of more than two dozen books including, most recently, "The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary." A masterpiece of deep learning and fine sensibility, Robert Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible, now complete, reanimates one of the formative works of our culture. Capturing its brilliantly compact poetry and finely wrought, purposeful prose, Alter renews the Old Testament as a source of literary power and spiritual inspiration.

In his brief new book "The Art of Bible Translation," Alter offers a personal and passionate account of what he learned about the art of Bible translation over the two decades he spent completing his own English version of the Hebrew Bible. Alter provides an illuminating and accessible introduction to biblical style that also offers insights about the art of translation far beyond the Bible. Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker called the book “hugely entertaining and irreverent.”

Alter appeared in conversation with Dr. Adriane Leveen, senior lecturer in Hebrew Bible at the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion, at the Center for Jewish History on April 8, 2019. Dr. Leveen received her Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible from the University of California at Berkeley under the supervision of Robert Alter. Dr. Leveen is a trained psychotherapist and practiced for 17 years in both Israel and the United States before getting her doctorate in biblical studies.