The Literary Guide to the Bible [Paperback]

Robert Alter (Editor), Frank Kermode (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1990

Rediscover the incmparable literary richness and strength of the Bible. An International team of renowned scholars offers and book-by-book guide through the Old 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Professor Alter is one of our foremost lay readers and expositors of the poetic and narrative genius of the Bible. He brings to his commentaries a knowledge of Hebrew and of Judaism together with an exceptionally wide literary awareness and authority of judgment. Professor Kermode has long been eminent among teachers and critics of English and European literatures from the Renaissance to Romanticism and the moderns...[The volume] contains much that is enlightening, convincing and finely argued.
--George Steiner (New Yorker )

Robert Alter, an outstanding biblical scholar, and Frank Kermode, one of the most notable of the literary scholars, have edited a virtual encyclopedia of literary approaches to the Bible. Readers looking for an overview of the literary turn in biblical studies could do no better than read the general introduction to The Literary Guide to the Bible (a fine, compact presentation by the editor of the book's justifications and goals)...The editors' stated purpose is to help individuals 'attune themselves' to the Bible in an age when literate people no longer have a daily intimacy with it on the basis of shared belief...Even though the task set for this book is enormous and enormously important, it is accomplished well, if not quite flawlessly...The publication of The Literary Guide to the Bible, however, marks an important moment in the history of Bible studies...This book invites the general reader, religious or not, to join in that discussion, to experience how new questions are opening up understandings of an old book.
--Elizabeth Struthers Malbon (New York Times )

This volume is a needed contribution to our appreciation of the Bible as a powerful work of literature and will quickly find its place on the shelves of those who respond to its ambitious themes. If this book does nothing else but restore the scriptures to their rightful place in our cultural consciousness, it will justify the honors that, on so many other grounds, it richly deserves.
--Eugene Kennedy (Chicago Tribune )

Robert Alter and Frank Kermode are literary critics of wide experience and formidable learning, and each has made considerable contributions to what they call the literary study of the Bible...I do not hesitate in awarding them the palm as the best guides we have so far in English.
--Harold Bloom (New York Review of Books )

One of the virtues of this book is that it sends one back to the reading of the Bible with clear eyes and critical instincts alert.
--Anthony Burgess (The Observer )

More than two dozen scholars in the United States (11), Great Britain (7), Israel (4), Canada (2), and continental Europe (2) contributed to this volume, representing a variety of academic disciplines such as English, comparative literature, and religion, under the direction of Robert Alter (Old Testament) and Frank Kermode (New Testament)...Far from being a reactionary return to the old ways of thinking, The Literary Guide to the Bible stands as a radical challenge to the scholarly establishment that has for so long dominated biblical studies...[The book] is...a distinct success in what it seeks to accomplish....Looking back over the experience of reading this remarkable volume of essays, I am inclined to recommend it highly--not so much for beginners, but rather for students acquainted with modern biblical exegesis who need another perspective. For readers frustrated by the disintegrative effect of modern commentaries it is a balm for the soul.
--David C. Fowler (Modern Language Quarterly )

Frank Kermode and Robert Alter, two critics who have given a new rigour and seriousness to the 'Bible as literature' movement, have brought together a constellation of literary and Biblical specialists, from both sides of the Atlantic, to explain the Bible from a literary standpoint...It is hard to see how the task could be performed better. At its best, the Guide does not merely introduce lines of interpretation unfamiliar to the nonspecialist, it also breaks new ground.
--John Barton (London Review of Books )

About the Author

Robert Alter is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of numerous critical works, the most recent of which is the prize-winning book The Art of Biblical Narrative.

Frank Kermode is Julian Clarence Levi Professor of English Literature, Columbia University, and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

Product Details

• Paperback: 696 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (September 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674875311
• ISBN-13: 978-0674875319
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #92,855 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sir Frank Kermode has been a prominent figure in the world of literary criticism since the 1960s. He has been King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at Cambridge and Professor of Poetry at Harvard. He was knighted in 1991.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Massive, insightful and a little daring, March 9, 2005

By 

Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Literary Guide to the Bible (Hardcover)

It's a major task "analysing" a book with so many variations and long historical scope. Limiting the parameters to "literary" aspects is hardly a pruning - even when historical elements are essentially stripped away. Alter and Kermode saved themselves some of the labour by farming out much of the analysis required for this job. The result is a collection of essays readable only in selected bits. The variety of approaches will perplex the reader experienced in biblical analysis. The newcomer, however, who perseveres with patience and a willingness to consult other resources, will find the full scope of the collection a worthwhile investment.

Selecting authors for these essays must have been daunting. They should each be familiar with the books and with the essentials of literary criticism. It's said that "anyone can be a critic", but approaching books held in such awe and reverence by large segments of the population takes a certain level of finesse. Most of these authors exhibit that capability. Alter and Kermode note that they don't demand "uniformity of style" in the entries, but the approach is uniformly constrained, but not narrow. The essays are not buried in arcane literary movements, such as structuralism, feminism or post-modernism, which were prevalent when this book was published. Alter and Kermode, in their introductory essays, acknowledge these movements, but they and most of the authors return to more a classical framework in their analyses. This approach is likely motivated by the use of the King James Version, with which most of their readers have at least passing familiarity.

The KJV foundation, however, restricts much of the appeal of this collection to Protestant Christianity. Anything else would be chaotic, but the reader may find a few authors use circular reasoning as they attempt to retrieve literary elements. It becomes "what is said, was said". The KJV, at a midpoint between biblical events and modern times, presents an atmosphere out of joint with the subjects dealt with. The editors caution the reader about this, but once past their introductory comments the individual authors strive, sometimes successfully, to place occurrences in a proper frame of reference. Omitting the historical environment tends to make the literary analyses fragile and incomplete. It limits "literary" aspects to what the modern reader can understand and utterly omits what a reader of the times might perceive. How would people of that era have viewed the various stories and the characters they portray?

The editors make a final attempt to preserve the historical framework in a half-dozen general essays that conclude the book. These writings address the issues of assembling the books into a "canon" - the establishment of the books into a voice of authority - biblical poetry and the impact of Greco-Roman writing techniques and use of accepted mythologies in that world. A serious and scholarly collection, the volume provides an excellent foundation for understanding biblical literary aspects. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

41 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars About what I wanted, August 13, 2002

By 

Jerry W. O'Dell (Ypsilanti, MI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Literary Guide to the Bible (Hardcover)

I haven't read the bible for 40 years. I decided to reread it, and found that even the new jazzy translations are often undecipherable. Most it them sound stupid, to be blunt.

I asked my pastor about a Bible Commentary. He suggested the Harper, which I found at a local bookstore. You need a truck for that one.

I simply wanted to know things such as "Who was Matthew?" and other minor, but interesting questions. And I didn't want to ruin my abdominal muscles carrying a Concordance or Commentary.

I find this took to be just about what I wanted. It's superficial, but good lord, to get all the material in the bible, with depth, you need a huge book.

In short, this is just right for me. It doesn't appear to be biased, it isn't filled with cloying hosannas to God. By the way the paperback version is a[lot less expensive.] [$].

Jerry O'Dell