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| Author: Robert Alter
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $16.50
Buy New: $15.44
You Save: $1.06 (6%)
Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 24084
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 046500427X
Dewey Decimal Number: 221.44
EAN: 9780465004270
Publication Date: August 2, 1983
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Fascinating Way to Read the Bible May 29, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Modern Biblical scholarship has tended toward a process of atomization: how many editors were involved in the creation of the Bible? How many different strands of tradition can we find in a given story? Robert Alter's "The Art of Biblical Narrative" at once provides a corrective to this tendency, and a striking alternative way of understanding the Good Book.
Although recent scholarship has emphasized historical- and textual-critical methodologies, Alter chooses a literary-critical approach; that is, he asks how we should read the Bible first and foremost as literature. Ancient Hebrew storytelling conventions were often radically different from those we use today, so we must learn to be attuned to things like a character's silence, or minor, telling variations in a scene that is repeated several times. In this way, Alter takes much of what may make the Old Testament (or Hebrew Bible) seem "boring" today--its Spartan narrative style, the apparent redundancy of many of its stories--and shows how these elements are actually integral to how the Bible tells its story.
Alter's prose style is scholarly without being suffocating. It is, however, dense with ideas. I often found myself reading as little as five pages at a sitting, as each sentence seemed so full that it was all I could take in before I had to stop for a mental breather. (I recommend reading the Conclusion first, which ten pages provide an excellent summary of the book's main ideas and may make it easier to digest them as the author investigates each one in detail in the rest of the book.) His examples are profuse, and well-chosen to illustrate his points.
Alter mostly steers clear of ideological disputes about what the Bible is or isn't, sticking to his purely literary analysis of the text. He occasionally makes comments to the effect that he sees the stories of the Bible as "historicized fiction," but his approach can still fit into any faith framework; it is just as possible for a devout Christian and an atheist to read the Bible as literature. What's more, Christians will not only find an enriching way of appreciating their sacred text here, but may even gain comfort in the face of some scholars who seem to think that a Bible with editors is inherently an unreliable Bible. Alter, to the contrary, shows that the Biblical author-editors must have been very sophisticated storytellers, and that what are often taken for mere inconsistencies today may well represent a deeply thoughtful approach to depicting the moral and social ambiguities the authors saw in their world.
"The Art of Biblical Narrative" takes effort to read, but those willing to take the time to absorb it may find their understanding of the Bible enhanced, deepened, even changed.
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The literary approach deepens our understanding of the Bible December 8, 2004
This is a pioneering work. Robert Alter uses the techniques of literary criticism to deepen our understanding of the Biblical text. He shows us methods and themes which illuminate the text in a way we have not seen before. This is not in my opinion a question of his having found the right interpretation, but rather of revealing yet another of the ' panem' the various faces, seventy, traditionally through which the Biblical text is interpreted.
Alter interprets the text in a clear non- jargoned language that is refreshing .
Here he explains something about his approach," This sort of critical discussion, I would contend far from neglecting the Bible's religious character, focuses attention on it in a more nuanced way. The implicit theology of the Hebrew Bible dictates a complex moral and psychological realism in biblical narrative because God's purposes are always entrammelled in history, dependent on the acts of individual men and women for their continuing realization. To scrutinize Biblical personages as fictional characters is to see them more sharply in the multi- faceted , contradictory aspects of their human individuality, whichis the biblical God's chosen medium for His experiment with Israel and history. Such scrutiny, however, as I hope I have shown , cannot be based merely on an imaginative impression fo the story but must be undertaken through minute critical attention to the biblical writer's articulations of narrative form. " p. 12
This work as Alter makes clear is intended for both students of narrative, and students of the Bible. There is much to learn here.
Alter Illuminates Biblical Narrative November 12, 2007
Robert Alter's "Art of Biblical Narrative" provides illuminating insights into the artful literary structure of the stories in the Hebrew Bible, and into human nature itself. Always respectful of the text, Alter reveals techniques of purposeful characterization and structure that are at work to achieve the effect of these ancient, yet ever-timely narratives. Never overly technical, written in clear and skillful prose, Alter's criticism is top-notch. I recommend this work highly.
 Dense but good December 15, 2007
This book is dense with fairly small print, small margins and long chapters without section breaks; but, it is well written and does a good job showing the complexities and intricacies of scripture that lend credence to its inspiration. The author's perspective that scripture is historicised fiction can be ignored for the rest of the benefits of reading this book. Frankly, the argument for historicised fiction could just as well be used to suggest its inspiration.
Needless to say, as a result of reading this book, I bought Alter's book on Biblical Poetry.
This book hits the mark! March 2, 2008
love this book. I am only on page 40 but am really enjoying every bit of it. Anyone interested in the Bible should read this book or any books by Robert Alter. He illuminates subtle literary devises in the text that you wont find anywhere else in Biblical scholarship, except maybe if you were a Torah Scholar and studied the Midrash Tanchuma (Hebrew commentary on the 5 Books of Moses) and understood it completely. But then Professor Alter translates all this into understanding the structure of well-written prose or poetry. Anyone who writes plots or makes film, or is interested in Joseph Campbell will find this extremely rich in content. He suggests that the Bible is not fictionalized History, but historicized fiction, a proposal too blasphemes for most "believers" to entertain, yet in reading this book, we find that it is not so blasphemes at all. This book will push your study of ancient Hebrew texts to a new level. All educators should read and be familiar with Professor Alters work. I think he is a breath of fresh air that encourages, not dissuades, people from going deeper into study of the Bible, from the secular to the ultra orthodox. It is densely written so if you have trouble with big words or lofty word filled sentences, this might be a problem, but I found each sentence strangely palpable and easily digested even for the non-scholar, mostly illiterate-type like myself. The book is magical and I am ordering it for a few of my same-minded friends
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