Sunday, July 24, 2005
Five Books
Years ago I read Jack Miles' Pulitzer Prize winning God: A Biography with admiration. The melding of scholarship and literary analysis seemed clever — Miles gave a fresh reading to an ancient text. Miles treated God as a literary character — examining the “character development” — the seemingly different presentations provided by the Hebrew Bible.
I've just been reading Robert Alter's The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary . Alter's book, although clearly different in intent and not strictly comparable, did put Miles' book in context for me. Alter's brilliant commentary and translation made Miles' book seem brittle and gimmicky.
To have an impressive scholar like Alter by your your side as you ride the ancient rhythms, to have a sure and discreet understanding provide you with background for the often confounding narrative, to have the difficulties of translation explained - the sensitivity and wisdom of choice required of great translators approaching great texts — is to feel as a reader that you can fully relax with a reliable companion and absorb the resonant, mysterious text.