The Five Books of Moses.
Robert Alter, W.W. Norton & Company
reviewed by Allan Gould
Robert Alter's Impressive New Translation of (Whose) Five Books of Moses Most Welcome
What if you opened a "new translation" of Melville's classic novel Moby Dick and read "Oh, everybody calls me Ishmael; why don't you?"
Of course, that's silly; who would translate English into English? But the longing to translate, from ancient Hebrew into a more modern vernacular, the first portion of the Tanach (a/k/a "The Old Testament" or "The Hebrew Testament," as I prefer to call it)-The Five Books of Moses-has been with us since those very talented, poetic Christian scholars did that exquisite translation-by-committee known as The King James Version exactly four centuries ago.
Translations-scholarly; unpoetic; but often wondrously insightful-of THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES have been coming hot-and-heavy over the past decade from some of the major Hebrew scholars of our era, such as Everett Fox's, and now, Robert Alter's, just published by W.W. Norton & Company, $58 in Canada, $39.95 in U.S. funds, in a stunning slip-cover and a far better, stronger binding than Fox's; my precious copy of the latter is in a dozen pieces now.
To begin at the beginning (pun intended, alas), let's look at the magnificently poetic, memorized-by-billions (but not particularly close to the original Hebrew) opening that King James's workers put out: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters...."
Bravo. Poetry! Here is Everett Fox's from 1995: "At the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth,/when the earth was wild and waste,/darkness over the face of Ocean,/rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters-" (I'll leave you in suspense, but here's a clue: the good Lord is about to make an order about turning the lights on).
Now comes Robert Alter's translation of the most famous opening in any book in history (with the exception, perhaps, of "Call me Ishmael" in Moby Dick): "When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God's breath hovering over the waters...."
Like, wow, as Britney Spears might say. The King James scholars had a distinct advantage, of course; they weren't tied down to Hebrew scholarship (especially 20th century scholarship); they were freely translating; and they lived and worked during the same decade as a rather well-known Englishman a few miles away was knocking off Hamlet and King Lear, among others plays: in other words, that one-in-every-hotel-room Bible translation known so well was developed at a time when even a poor guy in debtor's prison spoke "poetry" (well, compared with us today).
Fox is wonderful, and I refer to my copy of his translation weekly in my Torah studies. But if we were to base a (rave or harsh) review of the new, Robert Alter translation of THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES on those opening few words alone, one nearly falls in love: "God's breath" is a far-more-satisfying translation of the Hebrew ruach than Fox's awkward "rushing-spirit" (indeed, the latter scholar tends to use hyphens in his "poetry" more often than Jackie Chan uses karate chops in his Kung Fu movies). And, one must add, Alter's "welter and waste and darkness" is also more magical (and eerie) (and poetic) than Fox's earlier translation, "wild and waste"-both of them playing with the same Hebrew tohu-va-vohu.)
Robert Alter is a giant of Hebrew, the Bible, and Hebrew Literature, long a professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at U.C., Berkeley. Anyone who had read his Art of Biblical Narrative and Art of Biblical Poetry know what a true genius he is. One would expect greatness from his long-awaited translation of THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES, and one usually gets it. And weighing in at over 1,000 pages-nearly half of them footnotes of grand scholarship based on the Midrash, Talmud and rabbinic commentary through history-it's an admirable achievement.
But how does one approach this epic work? (One could say the same about the original, Hebrew Bible itself, bien sur). It may seem petty, but one of the best ways is for anyone-Biblical scholar or mere studious book reviewer-is to look up some of their favourite phrases, and see what Alter has done with them. In the case of straight translation from the Hebrew, I was satisfied with what he does that wonderful moment in the sedra B'shallach, in which the ancient Hebrews, only days out of Egypt, find themselves caught between a giant body of water (the Sea of Reeds, long-mistranslated as the Red Sea), and the approaching Egyptian army (You remember-lead by Yul Brenner, right?). As a humourist and lecturer on Jewish wit, I love to quote the amazing, viciously sarcastic cry of the terrified Hebrews: in Hebrew, it's AYN KEVARIM B'MITZRAYIM?, and Alter translates it as "Was it for lack of graves in Egypt [a nation and culture which was obsessed with death, the after-life, and rather large pyramids, built with rather cheap Jewish labour] that you took us to die in the wilderness?" I'm happy with Alter's translation, as it captures fairly well the joking nature of the Jews in a near-death situation-something our people would become rather well-known for, in many such life-and-death events over the next three-plus millennia.
But Alter's footnote crushed me in disappointment: "Now we see [the Israelites] as fearful and as recalcitrant as they were at the beginning." Recalcitrant? Feh! I vastly prefer the German footnote of the great 19th century Orthodox scholar Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, who noted "this is the first great example of Jewish humour in the Torah." Now THAT is insight, not Alter's mumblings!
I found similar disappointments in Alter's notes, far too often-as is perhaps inevitable in a massive book with literally thousands of footnotes. Another example, also from the book of Exodus: "...should men brawl and collide with a pregnant woman and her fetus come out but there be no other mishap...." (21:22), which, to me, is a pretty clear statement that, while a man who forces a woman to abort her child deserves financial punishment, it is hardly murder nor should the abuser be punished beyond "the reckoning" of the aggrieved woman's husband. (An argument that could be used by Scott Peterson's lawyer out in Calfornia, perhaps?) Alter's footnote? He refers to the Code of Hammurabi's similar concern "about the liability for induced miscarriages," but Alter shows no awareness whatsoever to the power this line has, in the fight for women's rights to control their own body, and the Bible's (God's?) lack of "mortal" upset over the death of a fetus. I would have liked to see more insight here.
When one approaches a new translation of any text (Dostoyevsky? Melville?) into another language, the longing to track down "old favourites" is almost impossible to resist, but it runs of the risk of a 100,000-word review. Yes, it's intriguing that Alter talks of Pharaoh's heart being "toughened," unlike the King James' justly-famous "hardened." You can look up what he does with the famous "multi-coloured coat" of Joseph. And I could do this a hundred more times with a hundred more best-loved lines.
More important to this critic is what Robert Alter does in many of his interminable (but usually welcome) footnotes (Fox's are often superb, but far, far shorter and fewer), and here are just a handful of one's I wish to highlight: I loved that Alter notes that "the etymological" origin of the word "interest," as your bank gleefully inflicts on your money daily (and that we Jews are forbidden to charge from our "brothers") is "bite." Thanks for that!
But thank you so much more, Professor Alter, for your recognition that the Jewish Bible radiates with laws which are pleasingly, even shockingly, modern, such as Deuteronomy's 21:11, which describes what to do if "you go out to battle against your enemies and...you see among the captives a woman of comely features and you desire her and take her for yourself a wife...." What the ancient Hebrews are told to do, some 3200 years ago-no, ordered to do-is marry her! Yes, "you shall bring her into your house, and she shall shave her head and do her nails, and she shall take off her captive's cloak and stay in your house and keen for her father and her mother a month of days."
Fellow feminists, please rejoice with me over that-and let us not forget the women being raped by the dozens, every hour, during wars taking place around the world at the very moment I am typing these words in my computer in early November, 2004 (Cheshvan, 5765). And God bless Robert Alter for not missing the astonishing kindness shown by the Jewish writer(s?) (God?) in his moving footnote to that wonderful line from the sedra Key Taytze: "Throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, captive women of vanquished peoples were assumed to be the due sexual prerogative of the victors (compare Briseus at the beginning of the Iliad). This law exceptionally seeks to provide for the human rights of the woman who falls into this predicament." And, a few footnotes later: "The period of thirty days-the set duration of all mourning-for the keening for the parents she has left behind is another indication that the law encodes a ritual of transition." You read this, and your head shakes over the continued slur by millions of Christians that, while the "New Testament" is "a book of love," while the Hebrew Bible is merely "a book of laws"! Guilty as charged: but what laws are included there! We Jews are still waiting for the rest of the world to catch up to the morality and justice in so many of them.
A translation of what is arguably The Most Important Book in Human History, which probably took decades of the life of one of the past century's most brilliant scholars of Hebrew language and literature, deserves far more than a 1800 word essay. But no one-including the Five Books of Moses, as we all know-ever said that life was fair. (Indeed, it's the very unfairness of life, and the savagery of human beings, which so much of the 613 laws of the Torah are determined to mitigate, soften, and, dare I say it, humanize. (Is it by chance that the order to "be kind to the stranger" because we were strangers in the Land of Egypt is mentioned 36 times in those five books? I think not!)
Robert Alter's THE FIVE BOOKS OF MOSES is an extraordinary achievement. As was Everett Fox's, nearly a decade ago. As was the deeply-flawed (etymologically) but glorious (poetically) translation by nearly five dozen scholars and priests who slaved over the King James' version, four centuries ago this year.
I am glad that I now possess all three. I shall refer to all of them countless times every year for the rest of my life. And-with many exceptions, of course; we Jews are always complaining about one thing or another; see what we said, when still a raggedy group of recently-freed slaves when we found ourselves trapped between sea and army, above-I love much of what Alter has put into his footnotes. This is a very important new work of scholarship, and one which should be in every Jewish home. Along with Fox's, and the Jewish Publication Society's, and....
