The Five Books of Moses

Through a distinguished career of critical scholarship and translation, Robert Alter has equipped us to read the Hebrew Bible as a powerful, cohesive work of literature. The culmination of this work, his masterly new translation and probing commentary combine to give contemporary readers the definitive edition of The Five Books of Moses.

The Five Books is an enduring source of literary and spiritual renewal. In its powerful narrative we find the primal stories of the Creation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The intimacies of Genesis portray the tortuous relations between fathers and sons, husbands and wives. The grand historical narrative of Exodus and Numbers conveys a still-resonant drama of enslavement and liberation. Leviticus and Deuteronomy codify a culture and ensure its transmission over generations.

Alter’s majestic translation recovers the mesmerizing effect of these ancient stories-the profound and haunting enigmas, the ambiguities of motive and image, the distinctive cadences and lovely precision of the Hebrew text. Other modern translations either recast these features for contemporary clarity, thereby losing the character of the original, or fail to give readers a suitably fluid English as a point of contact. Alter’s translation conveys the music and the meaning of the Hebrew text in a lyrical, lucid English. His accompanying commentary illuminates the text with learned insight and reflection on its literary and historical dimensions.

Our age has been graced by brilliant English translations of Homer, Dante, Cervantes, and others. We can now add The Five Books of Moses to the list of great literary works reanimated for our time.