23 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. The Crossing of the Red Sea or Parting of the Red Sea (Hebrew: קריעת ים סוף, romanized: Kriat Yam Suph, lit. "parting of the sea of reeds")[1] is an episode in the origin myth of The Exodus in the Hebrew Bible.
  2. Oct 2023
    1. Shulevitz, Judith. “‘The Five Books of Moses’: From God’s Mouth to English.” Book Review of The Five Books of Moses: A Translation With Commentary by Robert Alter. The New York Times, October 17, 2004, sec. Books. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/books/review/the-five-books-of-moses-from-gods-mouth-to-english.html.

    2. Biblical Hebrew has an unusually small vocabulary clustered around an even smaller number of three-letter roots, most of them denoting concrete actions or things, and the Bible achieves its mimetic effects partly through the skillful repetition of these few vivid words.
    1. Goldfajn, Tal. “Thou Shalt Show: On Robert Alter’s Translation of the Hebrew Bible.” Book Review of The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter. Los Angeles Review of Books, June 2, 2020. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/thou-shalt-show-on-robert-alters-translation-of-the-hebrew-bible/.

    2. Let me illustrate by examining a well-known passage, Genesis 7:17–18, in which the flood comes and Noah’s ark is lifted up above the earth. The example involves the Hebrew syntactic tendency to open each sentence in narrative with “and,” to order the words in parallel clauses by coordination (“and” + “and” + “and”), rather than by subordination (“because,” “so,” or “although”). This biblical syntactic feature, known as parataxis, affects the text’s rhythm, its temporal interpretation, its layers of cohesion and ambiguity. Here is Alter’s rendering of this passage: “And the Flood was forty days over the earth, and the waters multiplied and bore the ark upward and it rose above the earth. And the waters surged and multiplied mightily over the earth, and the ark went on the surface of the water.”
    3. Alter’s approaches the Bible as great literature first and foremost — an approach almost inconceivable before the mid-20th century.
    1. Bruce, James. “The Godless Bible.” Book Review of The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary by Robert Alter. Law & Liberty, July 15, 2022. https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-godless-bible/.

    2. Alter says he avoids the phrase “‘like the son of man’ because of its strong, and debatable, tilt toward a messianic interpretation.”

      Of course Alter's alternate translation of "son of man" allows one a closer meaning of Jews prior to the first century and Jesus, which adds a lot of undue baggage which may be seen as retconning the Hebrew Bible. It is after all, titled The Hebrew Bible and specifically not The Old Testament, thus placing it into the tradition of Christianity.

  3. Feb 2023
  4. Jan 2023
    1. Benjamin Richler’s Guide to Hebrew Manuscript Collections is the basicreference work for navigating the different libraries and collections of He-brew manuscript collections

      Benjamin Richler, A Guide to Hebrew Manuscript Collections (Jerusalem, 1994), 2nd rev. ed. (Jerusalem, 2014). For an entry on the Geniza, see ibid., 79–81. See also entries for specific libraries and collections.

  5. Oct 2022
    1. Scholem’s, given their own reading room at the National Library of Israel.

      Hebrew University Jewish mysticism scholar Gershom Scholem's zettelkasten has its own reading room at the National Library of Israel.

      Gershom Scholem (1897-1982)

  6. Aug 2022
  7. Sep 2021
  8. Mar 2021
  9. Oct 2018
    1. Lowth seems to have been the first modern Bible scholar to notice or draw attention to the poetic structure of the Psalms and much of the prophetic literature of the Old Testament.
  10. Dec 2014
    1. כיצד ההרחבה מסייעת לכתיבה של הערות בגוף התוכן של האתר בו אני צופה כעת?