The Alter Bible

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/279344/robert-alter-bible

by diodorus • 7 years ago

95 72 7 years ago

Fascinating that this made it on to the front-page of HN. I feel sorry for this fellow in as much as his surname must cause some terrific confusion.

The King James version has remained popular as a result of its wonderful prose - to see someone approach the Hebrew Bible from a modern angle with the same intent is very interesting - I'll be having a read.

arethuza• 7 years ago

Trivia: the discussions that led to the suggestion to King James VI to create a new bible were held in a church a couple of miles from where I am currently sitting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burntisland_Parish_Church

_uhtu• 7 years ago

Kink James VI

Quality Freudian slip here.

rc_kas• 7 years ago

Right! I did not expect hacker news to produce some bible nerdery. Kind of cool, I'll take it.

whatshisface2• 7 years ago

Then there is Alter’s preference for “between his legs” rather than “between his feet,” which is used in all three of the earlier versions quoted above. A staff between Judah’s feet sounds like it is planted firmly on the ground, but a mace between his legs has a distinctly more phallic implication, as Alter acknowledges in his note: “the image of the mace between the legs surely suggests virile power in political leadership.” This is a vivid image of patriarchy, entirely appropriate for a speech in which a father is passing sovereignty down to his sons.

It sounds like the ancient culture wasn't living up to the modern reader's expectations for how ancient literature was supposed to be read, so they burried some nuts so that the other modern readers could find them as they expected to.

baldfat2• 7 years ago

Well it even gets better.

1 Kings 12:10 The young men who had grown up with him replied, "These people have said to you, 'Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter.' Now tell them, 'My little finger is thicker than my father's waist.

Little finger means his penis.

sorokod• 7 years ago

The Hebrew version does not mention a finger. It just says "my little" - קָֽטָנִּ֥י

te_platt2• 7 years ago

I've always been fascinated by the difficulties of translation.

There is the issue of expressing the original thought. Already I've edited this post several times.

Then there is the issue of the surrounding context which will be different for different people. Even for people in the same culture at the same time in the same place.

Then the issue of the attitude of the reader. It's not uncommon to get different meanings from the same text on different days.

Now with the Biblical text we have copies of text from a different time, culture, and language. I like how this article shows how hard it is to handle even one sentence.

nestorD• 7 years ago

And that's just meaning. I found that preserving the style can be an equally hard thing to do from a language to another.

te_platt2• 7 years ago

As well as sarcasm, emphasis, irony, puns....

I really like this sentence from Douglas Hofstadter: "Every word in this sentence is a gross misspelling of the word 'tomato'."

There are so many ways a translator could go with that.

JoeAltmaier3• 7 years ago

I'd prefer a translator that just gave me the words and sentences. As a receiver of that information I can learn to do my own interpretation. Imperfectly and only after some thought and experience, but at least the translator won't be 'in the way' changing the message.

yjftsjthsd-h2• 7 years ago

I happen to personally agree, not least because I don't necessarily trust the motivations of some alterations, but it is worth remembering that this raises the bar for reading and understanding. There is the difference between something that any lay person can read and get a reasonable understanding, and something that requires you to be a scholar of ancient Greek to understand.

licebmi__at__• 7 years ago

It's impossible to not have the translator on the way. Even if you reduce the translation to words and sentences, the are plenty of ways to translate a word or a sentence that while being gramatically correct, could alter the meaning, you would still need the translator to pick the right one and not change the message.

So, in your translation, you'll still have the main disadvantage of relying on the translator, while gaining nothing.

larkost• 7 years ago

I am left jumping to the conclusion that you don't speak a second (living) language. There are very often thoughts in one language that can not be directly expressed in another specific language. I have those problems quite often between English and German (meaning the modern versions). Sometimes you need multiple sentences to explain, even in approximate terms, things that need only a single word in the other language (e.x.: "genau" or "gemutlichkeit" in German, or "subtle" in English). And here I am not talking about idiom (which can change rapidly). And German and English are contemporary languages, with cultures that are driving them together (think all of the U.S. films that are translated into German).

Now add that the Bible was written in a few now-dead languages, with 1900-2200 years since it was first written, and you are going to get a lot of differences in thought, much of which requires you to have knowledge that you are not going to be able to come up with thinking through it yourself.

Two examples of how fast things can change: 1. When I first went to Germany the word "geil" explicitly meant someone who was attractive, or good at sex. So it was not really part of polite speech. 10 years later I went back to the same part of Germany and the word now was used in normal conversations and meant "really good", without any sexual connotations. 2. If you look at American Pilgrim literature you see a lot of references to "God is great", usually alongside the phrase "God fearing" when talking about religious people. This is because just a few hundred years ago the word "great" in English specifically meant "powerful" in a violent way. Nowadays if you listen to a Christian sermon in the U.S. they will still say "God is great", but will be talking about how gentle and loving God is.

Language can move really fast, and thinking that you understand something that someone wrote hundreds of years ago without a good interpreter is unrealistic. There is always going to be an interpreter in the way. And one who just "translates the words" is not doing you any favors.

undershirt• 7 years ago

There are two versions of the poem “Ozymandias”[1][2]. They tell the exact same story but in two completely different ways. After reading both, I’m almost certain you will find one more effective than the other. So I hope you reconsider that some ideas are not simply reducible to plain statements.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias#Comparison_of_the_t...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdQKUvv3bew (recited)

lqet4• 7 years ago

Very interesting, and although I have little to no experience with reading the bible, I have to say that everything Alter is quoted as saying in this article makes obvious sense to me.

The difficulties translators have with any text should be a reminder of how painfully inadequate any language is as a mediator between two different brains. So much depends in context.

Perhaps the first person to openly suggest otherwise was Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century Jewish philosopher, who daringly wrote that the books of the Bible ought to be studied in just the same way we would study Greek and Italian poetry.

This, 100 times. I am not a religious person at all. However, it makes me extremely sad if self-proclaimed "atheists" make fun of the the Bible / Torah / Koran by pointing out how unrealistic almost all of the texts are. Of course they are unrealistic - but so are the works of Shakespeare, or Dante, or Goethe, or any great poet in the last 3000 years. Yet nobody would ridicule Dante for assuming that hell lies in some cave in Tuscany. If you just dismiss these religious texts as opium for the dull medieval masses, you might miss some deep poetical truths about mankind that just cannot be stated explicitly because of the shortcomings of any human language described above.

xkcd-sucks• 7 years ago

A thousand years from now, perhaps Harry potter fans will be literally waging war on star wars fans

0_gravitas2• 7 years ago

And that the star wars religion will be split into three sects, one for each trilogy (all hail the prequels)

lisper• 7 years ago

L. Ron Hubbard fans are already waging war on anyone who crosses them.

gus_massa• 7 years ago

The difference is that nobody was ever burn for proclaiming that Dante's work was just fiction. If you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, saying that these texts are "unrealistic" would get you in trouble.

lqet4• 7 years ago

You cannot blame the texts for being universal enough to be used as state philosophy during various times in the last 4000 years. And you certainly cannot use your point as an argument against religious texts in general. It was entirely possible to be executed for saying that Hitler's, Lenin's or Mao's texts were just fiction.

tomohawk3• 7 years ago

The fact that people were burnt alive says more about the people in power than about any text. Certain people in power will always find ways to persecute people that disagree with them. See also, the French Revolution, Bolshevik Revolution, Mao's Great Leap, and many other sad episodes where nasty people achieved power.

There is no motivation in the teachings of Christ to burn people alive. Quite the contrary.

krapp4• 7 years ago

However, it makes me extremely sad if self-proclaimed "atheists" make fun of the the Bible / Torah / Koran by pointing out how unrealistic almost all of the texts are.

I don't think atheists would have a problem with anyone treating the Bible (or any religious text) as literature, since there would be a lot less religious violence in the event that religious doctrine couldn't be cited as an absolute authority.

But, many modern Christians insist that the Bible must be taken literally, and that it should be taught as science, or presented as an alternative to science. Those are the people atheists are making fun of, and they deserve the ridicule.

If you just dismiss these religious texts as opium for the dull medieval masses, you might miss some deep poetical truths about mankind that just cannot be stated explicitly because of the shortcomings of any human language described above.

What Karl Marx meant by that is not that religion makes people stupid and compliant (although sometimes it kind of can,) but that people use religion to soothe the burdens of life in an unjust and cruel world... and that the illusory comfort offered by religion often stands in the way of making real societal progress. People who believe that God alone will punish the wicked and reward the righteous and that every event, no matter how capricious or unjust, is part of some divine plan, will simply tolerate the world and trust God to change it, rather than try to change it themselves.

And yet much of what could be considered progressive moral change in society has occurred in spite of religion, either through secular or scientific ideas pushing against religious authority and supernaturalism, or through reform within the religious community itself.

lqet4• 7 years ago

I completely agree, and my paraphrasing of Marx was not against him, but against people using his quote blindly. But my original post was not about religion - again, I am no expert in any religion and don't consider myself religious - but about religious texts. But I might have massively (and shockingly) underestimated how much they are connected to the religion itself in the minds of many people.

jackbravo• 7 years ago

What Karl Marx meant by that is not that religion makes people stupid and compliant (although sometimes it kind of can,) but that people use religion to soothe the burdens of life in an unjust and cruel world... and that the illusory comfort offered by religion often stands in the way of making real societal progress. People who believe that God alone will punish the wicked and reward the righteous and that every event, no matter how capricious or unjust, is part of some divine plan, will simply tolerate the world and trust God to change it, rather than try to change it themselves.

This, a thousand times.

war1025• 7 years ago

But, many modern Christians insist that the Bible must be taken literally, and that it should be taught as science, or presented as an alternative to science. Those are the people atheists are making fun of, and they deserve the ridicule.

I think where people went wrong with this is that what at the heart of it people really want to mean is that the Bible is something they use to base their life around. Then other people come along and tell them that science is what they base their lives around. And instead of realizing that the two are different and there is inherent value in both, they responded by saying, "Well, my Bible is science."

At their heart, religious texts are accumulated wisdom that has held up over many generations. It is different from science in its ability to predict the world, but fairly similar in the way it can guide personal experience and expectations within the world.

tomohawk3• 7 years ago

Karl Marx, whose ideas have been used to justify so much mayhem, misery, and death - all in the name of 'progress'. I think we do without more of that sort of progress.

ohithereyou2• 7 years ago

Of course they are unrealistic - but so are the works of Shakespeare, or Dante, or Goethe, or any great poet in the last 3000 years.

Last time I checked, there weren't nations willing to go to war and religious orders wiling to persecute and murder people based on the works of Shakespeare, Dante, or Goethe.

ConceptJunkie2• 7 years ago

What about Hitler or Marx or Engels? It isn't just religious texts that result in wars.

scarecrowbob2• 7 years ago

"If you just dismiss these religious texts as opium for the dull medieval masses, you might miss some deep poetical truths about mankind that just cannot be stated explicitly because of the shortcomings of any human language described above."

I generally agree with your take on how we should read these texts.

However, nobody (that I know of) has been using Shakespeare to justify preventing me from buying whiskey on a Sunday.

These texts are read as literal truth by the people where I live (rural Texas) and used to justify some pretty heinous things.

So at the same time that we might wish to read these books as literature, I understand the impulse to dismiss certain modes of reading these texts as harmful.

I don't know many folks who hate the literature itself, though I'm sure they exist somewhere; however, dismissing some exegetical modes seems reasonable to me.

lqet4• 7 years ago

These texts are read as literal truth by the people where I live (rural Texas) and used to justify some pretty heinous things.

As a European who is pretty naive on this issue, I am slowly realizing how controversial my original post was as I am reading the responses here. I now regret writing it.

DiffEq2• 7 years ago

Except nowhere in the Bible does it say that you can not buy whisky on Sunday.

pax• 7 years ago

how else would/could be an atheist (or believer, for that matter) if not self-proclaimed? Does an atheist need external vetting to be a proper atheist? Also, what was the reason for the ironic quotation marks, do you imply those aren't real atheists?

Retra6• 7 years ago

To be fair, there is an argument to be made that a person's beliefs are better represented by their actual behavior under the conditions of life, rather than what they profess about them in hypotheticals. In that perspective, the best way to be an atheist would be to simply act like one.

nyolfen• 7 years ago

in my experience, the atheists that mocked the unrealism of the scripture did so as a reaction to christian fundamentalists, who interpreted it literally and until recently wielded considerable political power

xamuel• 7 years ago

Alter’s Bible doesn’t seek that kind of canonical status; it is not out to replace the Hebrew Bible, but to engage in a dialogue with it.

The idea of engaging in a dialogue with the Bible is very important. It should not be viewed as books set in stone, but as living documents that speak to us today.

'Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.' (Matthew 13:52)

otterpro• 7 years ago

Translating Bible is a difficult task. There are usually two camps of philosophy of Bible translation. There's the word-for-word style where words are translated literally, rather than its intended meaning -- such as the classic King James Version (1611 AD), and more modern NKJV, NASB and ESV. Then there's thought-for-thought style, where it is translated based on its connotation, intention, and geared for modern English -- such as the popular NIV, NLT, and more paraphrase-style translations. I prefer the more literal Bible, but it also makes reading certain passages more difficult, since the original word used may not have the same connotation in English, and there are ancient idioms that may not make sense in English.

yjftsjthsd-h2• 7 years ago

Then went to be preferable to have a literal translation plus translator's notes alongside? There's already a long tradition of putting commentary alongside the original text, and this seems like a perfect fit for it.

verylittlemeat• 7 years ago

Understanding the Bible by Stephen L. Harris is a great comprehensive textbook for any person trying to understand the historical and metaphorical meaning in the Bible. It's formatted like a college textbook but i found it very readable for casual learning.

jki275• 7 years ago

The KJV is not a word-for-word literal translation, nor is the NIV a paraphrase.

There's a lot more nuance involved.

Reading the KJV gives you difficulty because the translation was made in 1615 and the English language has changed significantly since then.

stared• 7 years ago

It reminds me of "The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb" (https://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0...), which I enjoyed.

He, as an atheist, tries to present it in the raw form, without "explaining the hidden message" or any religious interpretation (neither Jewish nor Christian).

habeyer• 7 years ago

Orthodox Jew here who went through the Yeshiva system (~10 years of full-time study).

If you haven't read the Bible in the original Hebrew here's an analogy: imagine the tactile, raw feel of Robert Frost, how the language he employs and the deliberate choice of words makes his poems feel as if they rhyme. Now compact all that into the extreme terseness of Emily Dickinson.

My weekly highlight is the public reading of the Prophets in the synagogue every Sabbath. The language, the rhythm, it's beautiful.

The Alter Bible

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