The Translation of Scripture
Robert Alter, translator of the Hebrew Bible, and David Bentley Hart, translator of the New Testament, join Notre Dame theology professors Francesca Murphy and Tzvi Novick, where they answer questions on staying faithful to the original Hebrew and Greek texts, on words which have accumulated layers of meanings over the course of centuries, as well as on translating ambiguities and connotations which are no longer accessible to us today.
Experience the Episode
Presented by College of Arts and Letters
Robert Alter, translator of the Hebrew Bible, and David Bentley Hart, translator of the New Testament, join Notre Dame theology professors Francesca Murphy and Tzvi Novick, where they answer questions on staying faithful to the original Hebrew and Greek texts, on words which have accumulated layers of meanings over the course of centuries, as well as on translating ambiguities and connotations which are no longer accessible to us today.
Interested in going even deeper on this topic? Join Professor Said Reynolds for his new online course Sacred Texts in Dialogue, offered through the Coursera platform, to explore the common points, and stark differences, between the Bible and the Qur’an. The course consists of six modules and assumes no previous knowledge of the two books. For more information, click here.
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Meet the Speaker: Robert Alter
Robert Alter (Ph.D., Harvard University) teaches courses on the 19th-century European and American novel, on modernism, and on literary aspects of the Bible, and he also teaches and writes on modern Hebrew literature. His publications range from critical biography (Stendhal) to literary theory (The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age) to two recent volumes of Bible translation accompanied by literary commentary —The Book of Psalms, and The Wisdom Books. His two most recent books are Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible (Princeton, 2010) and Strong As Death Is Love: The Song of Songs, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, Daniel (Norton, 2015). His translation with commentary of the complete Hebrew Bible has been published by Norton in 2018.
In 2009, he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for lifetime contribution to American letters.
Meet the Speaker: David Bentley Hart
David Bentley Hart, an Eastern Orthodox scholar of religion, is a philosopher, writer, and cultural commentator. His books include The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss and That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation. He lives in South Bend, IN.