Maxwell Institute Podcast

It isn’t every day that a scholar publishes a book that changes the entire landscape of a field of study, but that’s exactly what Robert Alter did in 1981 with his book, The Art of biblical Narrative. For centuries and more, scholars had meticulously studied the Bible to tease out the voices those who compiled it, but Robert Alter paid attention to the finished product to see what the stories had to say in their completed form. It’s hard to overestimate Alter’s influence on literary studies of the Bible—looking at plot, genre, character, and more. And now Alter has finished his own complete translation of the Hebrew Bible—a mammoth task that took quarter of a century. In this episode, Robert Alter joins us to talk about the challenges and surprises of biblical translation. He visited the Maxwell Institute earlier this year to deliver a set of guest lectures which you can watch here. About the Guest Robert Alter is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, wher