A fine, useful resource for lay scholars, clergy and serious Bible readers.
A fresh translation of six historical books of the Hebrew Bible.
Venerable scholar Alter (Hebrew and Comparative Literature/Univ. of California; The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes: A Translation with Commentary, 2010, etc.) continues a decade of biblical-translation work with this new look at Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. These core historical texts explain the history of ancient Israel, including such famous figures as Samson, Elijah, David and Solomon. Each translation is accompanied by an introductory essay and extensive commentary in footnotes. Though Alter does not address the obvious question—why another translation?—his translation is unique enough and his commentary extensive and erudite enough to render the question rather moot. The author has a definitive respect for the ancient writers who first wrote these texts; he sees them not as “schools” or abstract conveyors of legend but as real people who knew they were doing an important service by recording this history, as best they knew it. Alter also reads the texts with a sharp eye for moral lessons and ethical dilemmas. Rather than ignoring ethical issues or chalking them up to cultural differences, he grapples with them, understanding the text to be an ethical and religious work. Yet he does so without snobbishness. Alter’s translation has an earthy quality, sticking closely to the text without bending it to fit modern preferences for grammar and language flow.
A fine, useful resource for lay scholars, clergy and serious Bible readers.Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-393-08269-2
Page Count: 928
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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