The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel pdf

Robert Bernard Alter is an American professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967.He published his translation of the Hebrew Bible in 2018. Robert Alter earned his bachelor's degree in English (Columbia University, 1957), and his master's degree (1958) and doctorate (1962) from Harvard University in comparative literature. He started his career as a writer at Commentary, where he was for many years a contributing editor. He has written twenty-three books, and is noted most recently for his translation of the entire Hebrew Bible. He lectures on topics varying from Biblical episodes to Kafka's modernism and Hebrew literature. One of Alter's important contributions is the introduction of the type scene into contemporary scholarly Hebrew Bible studies.

The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel pdf by Robert Alter

The story of David is the greatest single narrative representation in antiquity of a human life evolving by slow stages through time. In its main character it provides the first full-length portrait of a Machiavellian prince in Western literature. The beautiful, musical David, the resourceful slayer of Goliath, loved by all, reveals himself as a calculating political animal. To advance his own cause, he becomes a collaborator with the archenemies of Israel, the Philistines. Later he commits adultory with Bathsheba and compounds the betrayal with murder. He exposes himself repeatedly to humiliation, oscillates between noble sentiment and harsh vindictiveness, and with his dying breath charges his son Solomon to wreak bloody vengeance on his enemies. This translation and commentary enables a great literary work to emerge from the Bible and stand on its own.