Robert Alter

Wikipedia: Robert Bernard Alter (born 1935)[1] is an American professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967.[2] He published his translation of the Hebrew Bible in 2018. Read more

Biography Robert Alter earned his bachelor's degree in English (Columbia University, 1957), and his master's degree (1958) and doctorate (1962) from Harvard University in comparative literature. He started his career as a writer at Commentary Magazine, where he was for many years a contributing editor. He has written twenty-three books, and is noted most recently for his translations of sections of the Bible. He lectures on topics varying from Biblical episodes to Kafka's modernism and Hebrew literature.

Biblical studies One of Alter's important contributions is the introduction of the type scene into contemporary scholarly Hebrew Bible studies. An example of a type scene is that of a man meeting a young woman at a well, whom he goes on to marry; this scene occurs twice in Genesis and once in Exodus, and, according to Alter, distortedly in 1 Samuel and in the Book of Ruth.[3]

Honors Alter has served as an active member of the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, and is currently president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics.