Is the Alter Bible Jewish, in Some Definable Sense?

In his elegant review of Robert Alter’s English-language version of the Hebrew Bible, and in his extensive interactions with Alter’s word choices, Hillel Halkin has provided Mosaic readers with invaluable access to this new and important literary achievement. While generally appreciative of Alter’s guiding principles—with the exception of a significant caveat at the very end of his essay—Halkin’s word-by-word analysis of some of Alter’s renderings demonstrates that, even by the translator’s self-imposed standards, there is room for improvement.

Early on in his essay, Halkin introduces, as points of comparison, a half-dozen other English-language versions by single authors ranging in time from the mid-19th century to a decade or so ago. For the most part, however, these translations are little more than singular oddities that add little if anything to our appreciation and assessment of Alter’s work.

In my view, it would have been more productive to compare Alter with other Jewish Bible translators. In this connection, I’m puzzled that Halkin omits any reference to Isaac Leeser, whose 19th-century version, The Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures, was his alone and, to boot, the first English-language version of the Bible produced specifically for American Jews.