Robert Alter

Robert Alter is a Biblical scholar and the Class of '37 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967.^[1] He has written seventeen books, and is noted most recently for his translations of sections of the Bible. His works have garnered positive reviews from such publications as The New Yorker and The Washington Post.

Known for his wide range of expertise and appealing use of language, he lectures on topics varying from Biblical episodes to Kafka's modernism. One of his more important contributions is the introduction of the type scene into contemporary scholarly Hebrew Bible studies. An example of a type scene is that of a man meeting a young woman at a well, whom he goes on to marry; this scene occurs twice in Genesis and once in Exodus, and, according to Alter, distortedly in 1 Samuel.^[2]

Alter earned his bachelor's degree in English (Columbia University, 1957), and his master's (1958) and doctorate degrees (1962) from Harvard University in comparative literature. He started his career as a writer at Commentary Magazine, where he was for many years a contributing editor.

He has served as an active member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, and is currently serving as president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. He has twice (1966, 1978) been a Guggenheim Fellow,^[3] has been a Senior Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jeruselem, and Old Dominion Fellow at Princeton University. His The Art of Biblical Narrative won the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought.^[4] In 2009, he was the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award (Los Angeles Times) for lifetime achievement.^[5][6]

Selected Works

• Motives for Fiction, 1984, Harvard University Press
• A Lion for Love: A Critical Biography of Stendhal, in collaboration with Carol Cosman, 1986, Harvard University Press
• The Literary Guide to the Bible Edited by Alter and Frank Kermode, 1987, Harvard University Press
• Necessary Angels: Tradition and Modernity in Kafka, Benjamin, and Scholem, 1991, Harvard University Press
• The Five Books of Moses, ISBN 0-393-01955-1
• The David Story (1 and 2 Samuel), ISBN 0-393-32077-4
• Psalms, ISBN 978-0-393-06226-7
• The Art of Biblical Narrative, ISBN 0-465-00427-X
• The Art of Biblical Poetry, ISBN 0-465-00431-8

References

External links

• Listing in UCBerkeley's faculty pages
• Biography at Washington University in St. Louis
• The Five Books of Moses review at The New Yorker
• The Five Books of Moses review at The Washington Post
• The Five Books of Moses review by Alan Jacobs in First Things (Aug/Sept. 2005)
• The Book of Psalms review at The New Yorker