I'll try to keep this short and to the point. Thus, numbers.
1) Two of the volumes are massive: a couple of decades ago, I used to justify buying paper books because one couldn't curl up with a fiche reader at home. Alter's Prophets and Writings volumes, however, are actually worse than fiche readers; kick back with these things in bed, and you will hurt yourself and/or your partner.

2) It's Alter's vanity project: He's an old man these days, and I'm convinced that this was intended to be his last great contribution. It certainly sold well.

3) He did this all himself: Yup, a project on this scale usual involves at least a little bit of outside help, but this is all Alter. That's good and bad. Check out Edward L. Greenstein's review in Review of Biblical Literature 3/20 (Sorry I don't have the full citation; I printed the article off assuming that the full citation was there and, alas, it's not). Greenstein's not too impressed, and he makes some solid points, but you get the sense that he's angry because he wasn't invited to the party. See for yourself.

4) All save for the latter prophets were published before but ...: All of the material here save for Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zeke, and the 12, were published earlier. Indeed those earlier volumes are much more manageable than the current three volume set, but know this: those earlier volumes have editorial errors in them, and those errors were cleaned up in the 3 volume set. For instance, in the earlier version of the Torah (Five books of Moses. New York: Norton, 2004. ISBN 9780393019551) Exodus 20:17 on p.432 the text reads "You shall not covet your fellow man's wife, or his male slave ... etc." For those of you familiar with the 10 commandments this should feel like it's missing something. It is. The new and improved reading in the 2019 edition (volume 1, pp. 297-298) reads "You shall not covet your fellow man's house. You shall not covet your fellow man's wife, .. etc.) Errors like this are understandable, and the best effort has been made to correct them, but keep it in mind should you opt for a more manageable, earlier edition.

5) No bibliography: Think about that one for a while. I'm sure you'll be able to draw some conclusions about the translator's personality.

Finally, Alter's my go-to translation these days. No, it's not perfect, and yes, in person he's aloof and dickish, but still his sensibility both with Hebrew and with English shored up with a literary critical eye make it a very, very desirable armature when one is plugging away at the MT. It's more than worth the price of admission. ( )

Well, six months and ten days later, here we are.

No idea how to use the rating or reviewing features for this one, folks.

More later.

I've only seen the first volume, The Five Books of Moses - Torah, and only read the many introductions and a large part of Deuteronomy and related texts, but I've found the translation and commentaries and explanations very informative. I'm happy to see that, while he disapproves of most modern translations, he's OK with Everett Fox's.

I do have one concern, and that is not with book, but with the Common Knowledge aspect of LibraryThing! Characters and Events have been listed that are not in The Hebrew Bible. Just as I would not include, say, Abraham smashing the idols in his father's store, because, while the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah) notes this important event in Abraham's life, it is not mentioned in the actual text of the Torah, similarly, no one should include Jesus or Timothy and use as a proof text a reference from the New Testament. I must confess I'm not sure how to handle this: do I delete names and events I don't think are relevant? This is quite different from wondering if I add a middle name to a character who appears in several books.

Additional notes: I've now started the second volume, The Prophets. It continues to be most informative. But it is excessively large and unwieldy: 1,394 pages of text after a xlix-page (49-page) introduction. Some of this is available separately as The David Story, with both books of Samuel, and Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings: A Translation with Commentary. ( )

Reviewing the Bible itself is somewhat superfluous, so this is really a review of the translation.

I've always been interested in Bible translation and the differences between translations. I can read the Bible in Hebrew, but I'm not fluent, so if I want detail and nuance, I need the English. That's aside from the historical and literary importance of various translations. My go-to for years has been the JPS translation. (The KJV has literary value for its influence on the English language, but not as a working translation for understanding source text.) I prefer it to the Artscroll, which is prone to ideological bias.

Alter's translation makes use of the Septuagint as well as the Masoretic text and he uses historical evidence outside of traditional Jewish sources to determine meaning, which will be controversial for some Jews. However, his commentary is extremely informative regarding his choices and his reasoning, and was enlightening. He does consider himself to be *the* expert--there's a touch of arrogance--but his opinions are interesting.

His style strikes a good balance. It has an appropriate feel of formality, unlike some contemporary Christian translations, but is not archaic, and he seeks to preserve a sense of the Hebrew--for example, by preserving the conjunctions and long sequences of verbs that are used for narrative flow.

I've read the Bible before, though I don't think I've ever managed to read it all in order rather than one book at a time, but I enjoyed the re-read. I would have liked to have seen it paired with the Hebrew source for easy comparison, but given the length of the text as is, that would be quite the set. ( )