The David Story: A Translation With Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393048039 ISBN 13: 9780393048032

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1999

Synopsis

One of the great characters of the Bible, and literature, is rendered fully in a new translation by the renowned biblical scholar, with helpful historical and literary commentary.

About this title

Review:

There are countless good reasons to read The David Story, Robert Alter's new translation of the story of King David (beginning in I Samuel and ending in I Kings 2). In the book's introduction, Alter contends that the story of David is "probably the greatest single narrative representation in antiquity of a human life evolving by slow stages through time, shaped and altered by the pressures of political life, public institutions, family, the impulses of body and spirit, the eventual sad decay of the flesh. It also provides the most unflinching insight into the cruel processes of history and into human behavior warped by the pursuit of power." Alter's translation is more literal than the King James version, which makes his rendering of Scripture newly immediate and jarring. (When Samuel anoints David in I Samuel 16, for instance, "the spirit of the LORD gripped David from that day onward.") This David Story is worth reading for the footnotes alone, which describe in vivid detail the mechanics of sheep-shearing festivals, sacrificial feasts, and other cultural phenomena that add depth and life to this familiar story. --Michael Joseph Gross

About the Author:

Robert Alter is Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Art of Biblical Narrative and other books on the Bible as literature.

About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0393048039
• ISBN 13: 9780393048032
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 410
• Editor: Alter Robert