Robert Alter OT translation

“In a landmark new translation, Robert Alter revives the literary power of a Hebrew masterpiece”

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For family devotions, we read large parts of this as it was being done including Psalms, 1 & 2 Samuel, and the Pentateuch. Generally very helpful although his first chapters of Genesis show his inability to face down the feminists, which is quite disappointing. When the whole point of the project is to restore literal meaning and protect the Hebraisms inherent in the text, which ordinarily he does quite well, why obliterate the meaning of Hebrew words with a male semantic meaning component? I mean, even if you don’t think the Bible is inspired by God and wish simply to protect your heritage as a Jew (as Alter is), would not the male inclusive be considered a pivotal part of your Hebrew cultural heritage?

That said, I commend the translation as very often giving the meaning of God’s inspired Word more closely and carefully than scholars who claim to hold to inerrancy.

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Yes, it was interesting that the article actually called him out for this.

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You got me to go to the article. Fascinating. Hopefully I can post on it over on Warhorn in the next week or two. Love,

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I’d make the same comment when it comes to the divine name. What use is a new translation that claims not to explain things, but rather render them in a different language, when it breaks its own rule for God’s very name?

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Interesting point. However, it’s worth noting that the idea of replacing* “Yahweh” with “Lord” is essentially an ancient Jewish modification to the text, if I understand it correctly. So it’s conceivable that he considers it part of the finalized text that he’s translating from. I wonder if he addresses it in his (copious) notes.

(*I know it’s not an actual replacement, but that’s the gist of the change vowel additions.)

In this interview Alter says:

My general guiding principle is that I try to be literal, but if it sounds weird or ridiculous in English, I have to forget about the literalness. That’s one kind of compromise. Let me tell you a place where I was literal. The result is a little bit awkward. But I decided it was worth paying the price of awkwardness. This is the painful compromise: Everybody talks about Adam and Eve. In fact, the figure that we represent is Adam is always called an article in Hebrew with a definite article, “the adam” meaning, it’s a common noun. It’s not a proper noun. And an adam is a person or a human being. And in fact, although grammatically all Hebrew nouns are either masculine or feminine—there’s no way of getting away from this, it’s gendered through and through. However, although it’s grammatically masculine, it’s not inflected as the gender.
How do I know that? The verse in Genesis 1—“In the image of God, he created them. He created the adam—male and female he created them.” So “the adam” includes female. So, even though I have sympathy with feminism, it wasn’t feminist principles, but rather what the language itself says, that led me to avoid translating “adam” as “man.”

Thus Genesis 2:7 is translated: “the Lord God fashioned the human, humus from the soil”. I admire the attempt made here to carry over the vivid playfulness of the Hebrew. It is awkward as he says, but it raises the question how should הָֽאָדָ֖ם be translated?

Another part of the interview covers Alter’s own feelings about the bible:

HODGES: Yeah so, how did your relationship to the Bible change?
ALTER: Well, I would begin by saying this. Of course there are things in the Bible that are hard to fit into our value system. That is, we don’t particularly like these episodes of thousands of Israelites being swallowed up or cut down by the sword because they’ve exhibited rebellious behavior. We don’t go in for stoning much these days—our culture doesn’t, some others do.
So, in grappling with the whole Bible, I realized that there are some things that are just not part of my values—nothing I can accept.

The fact that Alter does not accept or sympathize with parts of the Bible raises another set of questions. How inspired are translations? Should we expect a commitment to inerrancy from Bible translators? How can we avoid chronological snobbery when attempting to bridge the gap between ancient and modern means of expression? Or to put it another way, how do we preserve the same degree of “otherness” or decorum that would have been apparent to an original audience while being intelligible to a contemporary audience?

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(Edit: didn’t realise this was an old thread. My apologies!)

That may be (historically I think you’re correct), but it’s also something the New Testament does as well. Jesus and the Apostles didn’t seem to think us knowing exactly how to say ‘God’s personal name’ (as I’ve heard so many today say) was all that important.

I think the contemporary trend of emphasising the pronunciation of the Divine Name in Hebrew borders on a violation of the 3rd Commandment.

That said, I’ve always enjoyed whatever of Alter I’ve read. His theology irritates me, but his rendition of the text is usually helpful and often thought provoking.

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I believe the Septuagint translates the Tetragrammaton as “kurios,” but don’t quote me on that.

Perhaps some does, but avoiding God’s covenant name strikes me as Pharisaism. There are plenty of cases of mere humans using YHWH in ordinary speech.

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I get that. And we do want to avoid merely external measurements of piety. I don’t expect others to adopt my stance on this issue, even in my own congregation.

But I think it is an important question: if it’s really significant for us to know or even use a certain vocalisation, why didn’t Jesus or the Apostles give us God’s name?

He assures us it wasn’t feminism. He has sympathy for feminism, but it wasn’t feminism that caused him to change to a non-gendered, indeterminate, neutered word of our liking, “the human.” It must not be “the man” or “the adam,” but “the human,” and he indicates he is sympathetic to feminism’s concerns as he protests these concerns were not why he removed the male meaning component. Thus he admits his translation will be understood to be more sympathetic to feminism’s concerns.

Don’t we all have higher principles than peer pressure for the changes we make? None of us scratch itching ears, at least in our own self-judgment. And our self-judgment is, of course, inerrant because we are, after all, ourselves. Who knows ourselves but ourselves? Who knows me better than me, myself, and I? When I acquit myself of wrong motives, I’m to be trusted.

Now I like Alter and have used his translations for much Bible reading around our table after dinner, including all of the Pentateuch. But what a mishmash he makes of “the adam.” By translating it “the human,” he removes the male meaning component. Period. Yes, “human” has “man” within it (as does humanity), but the reason everyone has switched to them in our feminist world is to tip our hat to the new constitution, to take a bow to the new revolution. Everyone knows these words are used to communicate “not male-specific.”

For over two decades, I’ve been trying to get people to transliterate “adam,” maybe having “Adam” as the translation of “the adam,” maybe using capitalilzation of the initial “a” to indicate this and that. If they can’t handle the historic method of translating “man” and “Adam,” just give them the Hebrew. We transliterate thousands of words in Scripture.

Meanwhile, it is wrong to say “adam” is no proper noun. God named the race “adam”: “He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created.” ( זָכָר וּנְקֵבָה בְּרָאָם וַיְבָרֶךְ אֹתָם וַיִּקְרָא אֶת־שְׁמָם אָדָם בְּיוֹם הִבָּֽרְאָֽם׃ ס) (Genesis 5:2).

Let’s be careful to note that none of the modern Bible scholars understand or care to maintain the federal headship of Adam declared by the NT’s “one man,” “adam,” and “in Adam we all died.” This is fatal for proper retention in translation of the male meaning component of “adam.” The wonder of “adam” in Hebrew is how well it communicates Adam’s federal headship and therefore adam’s authority over woman. Love,

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I agree with this: It’s a very valid question. I’ve certainly been exposed to people who make way, way, way too big of a deal out of using God’s personal name. Many of them also make a huge deal out of using Jesus’s supposed Hebraic name.

But “Yahweh” or something very like it remains God’s revealed name.

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I hadn’t ever thought about it in the context of the 3rd Commandment, but now that you put it that way, I think it’s fitting to consider – especially when one considers the heresies that seem to reliably accompany those who make particular issue about proper names. Consider the Jehovah’s Witness’ insistence on the name of Jehovah, or the Hebrew roots folks insistence on the Tetragrammaton and Yeshua.

Paul warns multiple times about those who quarrel about words (2 Tim. 2:14), and though I don’t think this is the only kind of thing he would have had in mind in such exhortations, it certainly fits among the gamut. It seems to be a rule that those who insist on calling God or Jesus by “the right name” are often those who make shipwreck of their faith in bigger ways.

Yup. How about the name of Jesus? Is it not a transliteration of a transliteration, if not a transliteration of a transliteration of a transliteration? The Hebrew Yeshua/Yehoshua/Joshua taken to the Greek/Latin Iésous, morphed to Jesus for us uncultured English-speakers?

And while the Judaizers want to cry foul, they miss something very important and beautiful. The transliterated name, “Jesus,” bears witness that the salvation of Christ was to be for all the peoples – every tribe and tongue and nation. God’s plan was not to save the Gentiles and then turn them all into Hebrew speakers, rather from the day of Pentecost onward (where men heard the great works of God in their own languages) the work of God has been to spread his grace to every tongue.

Our third son is named Elias, the Greek variant of Elijah. Part of the reason we named him Elias was as a reminder of this very thing. God’s word is not for the Hebrew speakers only, but for the pagan Gentiles.

Years ago, I lost my dearest childhood friend to the heresies of the Hebrew roots “movement.” After months of painful pleadings with him concerning the heresies he and his wife were eating up, things ultimately came to such a place that I insisted that we could no longer have fellowship with one another. He had accepted a different gospel.

Later that year, my wife and I gave birth to our sixth child, our fourth son. Prior to that, all of my sons had been circumcised, as I had simply never thought about it before, and it’s just kind of the normal thing to do around here. But after having pleaded with tears with my friend so fervently, and taking him through the book of Galatians, for example, I had come out on the other end with a real indignation with the Judaizers.

We named our son Luke Titus. And he wasn’t circumcised (Galatians 2:3). Yes, my son’s middle name is Titus in testimony that he is an uncircumcised Gentile. Take that, Judaizers.

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” Galatians 5:6

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Because my eldest brother, Joseph, was circumcised and it almost killed him—he was a hemophiliac—my parents didn’t circumsize the rest of us. What joy! Love,

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Though the JWs are no laughing matter, it is genuinely hilarious that they insist on a name that is virtually the only version we know for certain is NOT the correct pronunciation, since neither Hebrew nor Greek have the letter j (or early Latin for that matter), and they use three syllables instead of two, and that with the wrong vowels! That one usually gets some interesting responses when I’m dealing with JWs.

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