The Literary Guide to the Bible - Hardcover

Alter, Frederic G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674875303 ISBN 13: 9780674875302

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1987

Synopsis

In a literary critique of the Bible, an international and interdenominational team of biblical and literary scholars analyze the structures, themes, narrative techniques, and poetic forms of the Old and New Testaments.

About this title

Review:

Professor Alter is one of our foremost lay readers and expositors of the poetic and narrative genius of the Bible. He brings to his commentaries a knowledge of Hebrew and of Judaism together with an exceptionally wide literary awareness and authority of judgment. Professor Kermode has long been eminent among teachers and critics of English and European literatures from the Renaissance to Romanticism and the moderns...[The volume] contains much that is enlightening, convincing and finely argued.--George Steiner "New Yorker "

This volume is a needed contribution to our appreciation of the Bible as a powerful work of literature and will quickly find its place on the shelves of those who respond to its ambitious themes. If this book does nothing else but restore the scriptures to their rightful place in our cultural consciousness, it will justify the honors that, on so many other grounds, it richly deserves.--Eugene Kennedy "Chicago Tribune "

Robert Alter and Frank Kermode are literary critics of wide experience and formidable learning, and each has made considerable contributions to what they call the literary study of the Bible...I do not hesitate in awarding them the palm as the best guides we have so far in English.--Harold Bloom "New York Review of Books "

One of the virtues of this book is that it sends one back to the reading of the Bible with clear eyes and critical instincts alert.--Anthony Burgess "The Observer "

Robert Alter, an outstanding biblical scholar, and Frank Kermode, one of the most notable of the literary scholars, have edited a virtual encyclopedia of literary approaches to the Bible. Readers looking for an overview of the literary turn in biblical studies could do no better than read the general introduction to The Literary Guide to the Bible (a fine, compact presentation by the editor of the book's justifications and goals)...The editors' stated purpose is to help individuals 'attune themselves' to the Bible in an age when literate people no longer have a daily intimacy with it on the basis of shared belief...Even though the task set for this book is enormous and enormously important, it is accomplished well, if not quite flawlessly...The publication of The Literary Guide to the Bible, however, marks an important moment in the history of Bible studies...This book invites the general reader, religious or not, to join in that discussion, to experience how new questions are opening up understandings of an old book.--Elizabeth Struthers Malbon "New York Times "

More than two dozen scholars in the United States (11), Great Britain (7), Israel (4), Canada (2), and continental Europe (2) contributed to this volume, representing a variety of academic disciplines such as English, comparative literature, and religion, under the direction of Robert Alter (Old Testament) and Frank Kermode (New Testament)...Far from being a reactionary return to the old ways of thinking, The Literary Guide to the Bible stands as a radical challenge to the scholarly establishment that has for so long dominated biblical studies...[The book] is...a distinct success in what it seeks to accomplish....Looking back over the experience of reading this remarkable volume of essays, I am inclined to recommend it highly--not so much for beginners, but rather for students acquainted with modern biblical exegesis who need another perspective. For readers frustrated by the disintegrative effect of modern commentaries it is a balm for the soul.--David C. Fowler "Modern Language Quarterly "

Frank Kermode and Robert Alter, two critics who have given a new rigour and seriousness to the 'Bible as literature' movement, have brought together a constellation of literary and Biblical specialists, from both sides of the Atlantic, to explain the Bible from a literary standpoint...It is hard to see how the task could be performed better. At its best, the Guide does not merely introduce lines of interpretation unfamiliar to the nonspecialist, it also breaks new ground.--John Barton "London Review of Books "

From the Back Cover:

The Bible is a book which all of us, in some sense, live with, and many live by. It has played as great a part in the development of our literature and culture as it has in that of Christianity or Judaism. But it is a book, which, whether we are believers or non-believers, we need constantly to re-learn how to read.

'The Literary Guide to the Bible' contains a critical essay by a biblical scholar on each book of the Bible, and a number of general essays which relate to the Bible as a whole. The insights that are to be found here by bringing the approaches of modern literary analysis to this greatest of all works of literature allow every reader to make an enlightened reassessment of this familiar yet elusive book.

"Frank Kermode and Robert Alter ... provide evidence that biblical scholarship and literary criticism can be united."
PETER ACKROYD, 'The Times'

"This guide is incisively thorough. The non-specialized student, the educated general reader, and the over-worked rather bookless vicar will learn just what they need to know."
PETER LEVI, 'Independent'

"Few books in recent years have so stimulated my thinking and my imagination."
MOELWYN MERCHANT, 'Times Educational Supplement'

"For people who may well have toiled through 'Das Kapital' or 'Ulysses', but were put off the Bible by Sunday School, or never got round to reading it at all, 'The Literary Guide to the Bible' provides an enticing way back in."
SEAN FRENCH, 'New Society'

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0674875303
• ISBN 13: 9780674875302
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 688