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The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary. By Robert Alter. New York: WW. Norton, 2007. xl + 518 pp. $35.00 (cloth).
Praise Seeking Understanding: Reading the Psalms with Augustine. By Jason Byassee. Foreword by Robert W Jenson. Radical Traditions. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007. xiv + 290 pp. $32.00 (paper).
This review should begin with an admission that it is not written from the perspective of a scholar of the Hebrew Bible but from that of a person who says the daily offices and hoped to be enabled to read the Psalms more profoundly with the help of these two books, a hope that was fulfilled in large measure.
Robert Alter is one of the leading theorists of the literary interpretation of the Bible. He teaches Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California and is the author of many books of criticism of both sacred and secular literature. Alters introduction to his translation prepares readers well for what is ahead. After supplying historical-critical information about the poems collected in the Psalter, he tells how the poetry of the Psalms differs from that in other biblical books. Noting the parallelism that is the most familiar trait of the Psalms, he adds that it is seldom synonymous; rather, there tends to be an intensification of meaning that concentrates emphasis in the second verset of a line.
To me the most helpful section of the introduction was "The Challenge of Translating Psalms" (pp. xxviii-xxxv). The way that Hebrew treats pronouns, not bothering to have separate words for many and including subjects and objects in the verb, means that English translations are bound to have more syllables. They tend to be less compact and certainly less rhythmic - a serious defect in rendering poetry. Another difference between the Psalms in Hebrew and their English translations has been that concrete words have been translated as abstract ones, a trend that Alter tries to reverse in his version. Instead of "iniquity" or "transgression," he says "crime"; and "offense" usually appears in place of "sin." Nefesh, traditionally translated as "soul," has a range of meanings, from "life breath" to "I," "life," "my being," and even "neck" or "throat." And "salvation" becomes "rescue." Something else that has...