The Literary Guide to the Bible

Robert Alter, Frank Kermode

Harvard University Press, Sep 1, 1990 - Literary Criticism - 696 pages

Rediscover the incomparable literary richness and strength of a book that all of us live with an many of us live by. An international team of renowned scholars, assembled by two leading literary critics, offers a book-by-book guide through the Old and New Testaments as well as general essays on the Bible as a whole, providing an enticing reintroduction to a work that has shaped our language and thought for thousands of years.

Contents

• GENERAL INTRODUCTION Robert Alter and Frank Kermode I: 1
• GENESIS J P Fokkelman: 36
• EXODUS J P Fokkelman: 56
• LEVITICUS David Damrosch: 66
• NUMBERS James S Ackerman: 78
• DEUTERONOMY Robert Polzin: 92
• JOSHUA AND JUDGES David M Gunn: 102
• JEREMIAH AND EZEKIEL Joel Rosenberg: 184
• THE TWELVE PROPHETS Herbert Marks: 207
• JONAH James S Ackerman: 234
• PSALMS Robert Alter: 244
• PROVERBS AND ECCLESIASTES James G Williams: 263
• JOB Moshe Greenberg: 283
• THE SONG OF SONGS Francis Landy: 305
• RUTH Jack M Sasson: 320
• LAMENTATIONS Francis Landy: 329
• ESTHER Jack M Sasson: 335
• DANIEL Shemaryahu Talmon: 343
• EZRA AND NEHEMIAH Shemaryahu Talmon: 357
• AND 2 CHRONICLES Shemaryahu Talmon: 365
• INTRODUCTION Frank Kermode: 375
• MATTHEW Frank Kermode: 387
• MARK John Drury: 402
• LUKE John Drury: 418
• JOHN Frank Kermode: 440
• ACTS James M Robinson: 467
• THE PAULINE EPISTLES Michael Goulder: 479
• THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS AND: 503
• REVELATION Bernard McGinn: 523
• THE HEBREW BIBLE AND CANAANITE LITERATURE: 545
• THE NEW TESTAMENT AND GRECOROMAN WRITING: 561
• FISHING FOR MEN ON THE EDGE OF: 579
• THE CAΝΟΝ Frank Kermode: 600
• THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ANCIENT HEBREW: 611
• MIDRASH AND ALLEGORY Gerald L Bruns: 625
• ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE Gerald Hammond: 647
• GLOSSARY: 668

About the author

Robert Alter is Professor in the Graduate School and Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Nabokov and the Real World, Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible, and Necessary Angels: Tradition and Modernity in Kafka, Benjamin, and Scholem, among other books. Award-winning translator of the complete Hebrew Bible, Alter has received the National Jewish Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, the PEN Center Literary Award for Translation, and the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for lifetime contribution to American letters.

Frank Kermode (1919–2010) was a British literary critic and the author or editor of more than fifty books, including The Sense of an Ending, a defining work of fiction theory. A regular contributor to London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, Kermode was knighted in 1991. He was King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at University of Cambridge.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Literary Guide to the Bible
• Editors: Robert Alter, Frank Kermode
• Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1990
• ISBN: 0674261410, 9780674261419
• Length: 696 pages
• Subjects: Literary Criticism / Ancient & Classical; Reference / General; Religion / Biblical Criticism & Interpretation / General