“That Hebrew word, nefesh, can mean many things. “Well,” Alter said, speaking in the unrushed, amused tone of a veteran footnoter. Nefesh, to the contrary, suggests the material, mortal parts, the things that make us alive on this earth. The problem with this “soul,” for Alter, is its Christian connotations of an incorporeal and immortal being, the dualism of the soul apart from the body. According to the King James Version, Jonah says that the Mediterranean waters “compassed me about, even to the soul” - or nefesh. But consider the Book of Jonah 2:6 in which Jonah, caught in the depths of a giant fish’s gut, sings about the terror of near-death by water. That word, which translates the Hebrew word nefesh, has been a favorite in English-language Bibles since the 1611 King James Version. Published this month, it represents the culmination of nearly two and a half decades of work.Īlter told me about his decision to reject one of the oldest traditions in English translation and remove the word “soul” from the text. He occasionally cast a probing eye on his brand-new, complete translation of and commentary on the Hebrew Bible - from Genesis to Chronicles - which, at more than 3,000 pages, in three volumes, occupied most of an end table. Behind him, a picture window looked out onto a blooming garden now and then a hummingbird appeared over his left shoulder, punctuating his thoughts with winged flourishes. Alter, who is 83, sat on a sofa with a long-limbed, feline watchfulness. One morning this fall, at his home high in the Berkeley hills, the literary critic and translator Robert Alter chatted with me about the dilemmas he faced while translating the Hebrew Bible.
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