THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
30 Friday, December 6, 1985
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BY JOSEPH COHEN
Special to The Jewish News
However much or little we
read the Hebrew Bible, either in
the original or in translation,
we are universally aware of its
sustained power and its surpas-
sing beauty. From whence com-
eth that power and beauty?
They come from the skillful use
of language. Yet, because we
naturally concentrate our atten-
tion upon the Bible's theological
import, upon its emphasis on
moral conduct and upon its per-
vasive sense of history and de-
stiny, we tend to be altogether
too casual about the literary
qualities of its language.
In maintaining this casual
stance, we are shortchanging
ourselves. The extent to which
this is true first became appar-
ent to me in 1981 when I read
Robert Alter's The Art of Bibli-
cal Narrative. It was and is a
brilliant exposition of the narra-
tive techniques and structures
which give the Old Testament
its cohesive forcefulness in those
stories, many of them well
known to us, whose aesthetic
trappings we have blithely ig-
nored while we intently pursued
their meanings.
The value of Alter's book was
in narrowing the distance be-
tween meaning and structure,
which is to say that by provid-
ing us with the means of inter-
preting and thereby understand-,,
ing the form, we are enabled to
glean fuller meanings from the,
content than had been possible)
before.
Now, Alter, who is a professor
of Hebrew and Comparative Lit-
erature at the University or
California, Berkeley, and one of
the most astute literary schotars\
explicating texts today, has pro-
duced an equally if not more
important companion piece to
his earlier work, this is one
being an investigation into the,
nature and structure of biblica ri\
verse. Entitled The Art of Bibli- (
cal Poetry (Basic Books), this`
new book is a manifestly impor-
tant contribution both to con-
temporary literary criticism and
to biblical scholarship.
Neither ponderous nor heavy
as has so often been the case
with scholarly biblical tomes
the past, it nonetheless will re-
quire some familiarity with the
literary critic's working tools.
Once committed, the reader
will reap the rewards of close
study at every turn.
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