Alter’s translation of the Hebrew Bible is now generally considered the gold standard of scholarship, both in terms of his textual translation, as well as the commentary and annotations that he provides. It is the capstone of Alter’s illustrious career working closely with these texts. Instead of reviewing or summarizing such a well known work, I will simply point out a few points of interest to me as I went along. In his own introduction, Alter reveals how contemporary scholarship has aided his work. “This [modern] period, moreover, is one in which our understanding of ancient Hebrew has become considerably more nuanced and precise than it once was, thanks to comparative Semitic philology aided by archaeology.” On his style of translation, Alter notes, “A translation that respects the literary precision of the biblical story must strive to reproduce its nice discrimination of terms, and cannot be free to translate a word here one way and there another, for the sake of variety or for the sake of context…. It becomes feasible to reproduce most of the Hebrew reconfigurations of syntax, preserving the thematic or psychological emphases they are meant to convey.” A specific note on Alter’s translation of biblical verse, as opposed to prose, “It has long been recognized by scholarship that biblical poetry reflects a stratum of Hebrew older than biblical prose…. No previous English translation has made a serious effort to represent the elevated and archaic nature of the poetic language in contradistinction to the prose, though that is clearly part of the intended literary effect of biblical narrative…. Biblical Hebrew, in sum, has a distinctive music, a lovely precision of lexical choice, a meaningful concreteness, and a suppleness of expressive syntax.”
On the Book of Genesis, particularly, Alter comments, “The Primeval History, in contrast to what follows in Genesis, cultivates a kind of narrative that is fablelike or legendary, and sometimes, residually mythic…. The style tends much more than that of the Patriarchal Tales to formal symmetries, refrainlike repetitions, parallelisms, and other rhetorical devices of a prose that often aspires to the dignity of poetry, or that invites us to hear the echo of epic poetry in its cadences.” He contrasts the Patriarchal Tales where, “The unfolding history of the family that is to become the people of Israel is seen… as the crucial focus of a larger, universal history…. National existence, moreover, is empathetically imagined as a strenuous effort to renew the act of creation.”
In Genesis 1:26, “Let us make a human in our image.” Alter observes, “a human. The term ‘adam, afterward consistently with a definite article, which is used both here and in the second account of the origins of humankind, is a generic term for human beings, not a proper noun. It also does not automatically suggest maleness, especially without the prefix ben, “son of,” and so the traditional rendering “man” is misleading.”
Alter comments on Genesis 2:4, “God now called YHWH ‘Elohim instead of ‘Elohim as in the first version, does not summon things into being from a lofty distance through the mere agency of divine speech, but works as a craftsman, fashioning (yatsar instead of bara’, “create”), blowing life-breath into nostrils, building a woman from a rib. Whatever the disparate historical origins of the two accounts, the redaction gives us first a harmonious cosmic overview of creation and then a plunge into the technological nitty-gritty and moral ambiguities of human origins.”
In Genesis 3:1, Alter remarks on the style and playfulness of the text, “cunning. In the kind of pun in which the ancient Hebrew writers delighted, ‘arum, “cunning,” plays against ‘arumim, “naked,” of the previous verse.” In Genesis 3:12, Alter cannot help but noting, “gave by me, she gave me. The repeated verb nicely catches the way the first man passes the buck, not only blaming the woman for giving him the fruit but virtually blaming God for giving him the woman. She in turn of course blames the serpent. God’s curse, framed in verse, follows the reverse order, from serpent to woman to man.”
Often Alter’s annotations deal with history, as much as with textual precision. In Genesis 3:24, he relates, “The cherubim, a common feature of ancient Near Eastern mythology, are not to be confused with the round-cheeked darlings of Renaissance iconography. The root of the term means either “hybrid” or, by an inversion of consonants, “mount,” “steed,” and they are the winged beasts, probably of fearsome aspect, on which the sky god of the old Canaanite myths and the poetry of Psalms goes riding through the air. The fiery sword, not mentioned elsewhere but referred to with the definite article as though it were a familiar image, is a suitable weapon to set alongside the formidable cherubim.” In Genesis 10, Alter notes, “The Table of Nations is a serious attempt, unprecedented in the ancient Near East, to sketch a panorama of all known human cultures—from Greece and Crete in the west through Asia Minor and Iran and down through Mesopotamia and the Arabian peninsula to northwestern Africa.”
In Genesis 14:13, Alter describes the use of the term Hebrew, “Abram the Hebrew. Only here is he given this designation. Although scholars have argued whether “Hebrew” is an ethnic or social term or even the name for a warrior class, it is clear that it is invoked only in contexts when Abraham and his descendants stand in relation to members of other national groups.” Alter also points out a discrepancy in Genesis 24:10, “camels. The camels here and elsewhere in Genesis are a problem. Archaeological and extra biblical literary evidence indicates that camels were not adopted as beasts of burden until several centuries after the Patriarchal period, and so their introduction in the story would have to be anachronistic. What is puzzling is that the narrative reflects careful attention to other details of historical authenticity: horses, which also were domesticated centuries later, are scrupulously excluded from the Patriarchal Tales, and when Abraham buys a gravesite, he deals in weights of silver, not in coins, as in the later Israelite period. The details of betrothal negotiation, with the brother acting as principal agent for the family, the bestowal of a dowry on the bride and betrothal gifts on the family, are equally accurate for the middle of the second millennium B.C.E. Perhaps the camels are an inadvertent anachronism because they had become so deeply associated in the minds of later writers and audiences with desert travel.”
Alter disputes the correctness of the common translation “ladder” in Genesis 28:12, “a ramp. The Hebrew term occurs only here. Although its etymology is doubtful, the traditional rendering of “ladder” is unlikely. As has often been observed, the references to both “its top reaching the heavens” and “the gate of the heavens” use phrases associated with the Mesopotamian ziggurat, and so the structure envisioned is probably a vast ramp with terraced landings. There is a certain appropriateness in the Mesopotamian motif, given the destination of Jacob’s journey. Jacob in general is represented as a border crosser, a man of liminal experiences: here, then in his return trip when he is confronted by Laban, and in the nocturnal encounter at the ford of the Jabbok.”
Alter often notes key and first moments in the biblical text. In Genesis 32:29, ““Not Jacob shall your name hence be said, but Israel”…. Whereas Abraham is invariably called “Abraham” once the name is changed from “Abram,” the narrative continues to refer to this patriarch in most instances as “Jacob.” Thus, “Israel” does not really replace his name but becomes a synonym for it—a practice reflected in the parallelism of biblical poetry, where “Jacob” is always used in the first half of the line and “Israel,” the poetic variation, in the second half.” In Genesis 32:33, Alter continues, “Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sinew. This concluding etiological notice is more than a mechanical reflex. For the first time, after the naming-story, the Hebrews are referred to as “the children of Israel,” and this dietary prohibition observed by the audience of the story “to this day” marks a direct identification with, or reverence for, the eponymous ancestor who wrestled through the night with a man who was no man.”
Alter also points out the etymology of words and their historic import. Throughout this work, he is also quick to give previous scholars their due. In Genesis 41:1, Alter remarks, “by the Nile. Given the Nile’s importance as the source of Egypt’s fertility, it is appropriate that this dream of plenty and famine should take place on its banks, a point made as long ago as the thirteenth century in Narbonne by the Hebrew exegete David Kimhi. As this story set in the pharaonic court unfolds, its Egyptian color is brought out by a generous sprinkling of Egyptian loanwords in the Hebrew narrative, “Nile” (ye’or), “soothsayers” (hartumim), “rushes” (‘ahu) “ring” (taba’at), “fine linen” (shesh).”
In Genesis 46:4, Alter points out the unique nature of the monotheistic project in the Bible, “I Myself will go down with you. The first-person pronoun is emphatic because God uses the pronoun ‘anokhi, which is not strictly necessary, followed as it is by the imperfect tense of the verb conjugated in the first-person singular. The reassurance God offers—which is already the kernel of a theological concept that will play an important role in national consciousness both in the Babylonian exile and after the defeat by the Romans in 70 C.E.—is necessary because in the polytheistic view the theater of activity of a deity was typically imagined to be limited to the territorial borders of the deity’s worshippers. By contrast, this God solemnly promises to go down with His people to Egypt and to bring them back up.” Finally, in Genesis 50:26, Alter comments on the book’s final line, “and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. The book that began with an image of God’s breath moving across the vast expanses of the primordial deep to bring the world and all life into being ends with this image of a body in a box, a mummy in a coffin. (The Hebrews in Canaan appear not to have used coffins, and the term occurs only here.) Out of the contraction of this moment of mortuary enclosure, a new expansion, and new births, will follow.”
No comments:
Post a Comment