The Art of Biblical Poetry

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Summary: A literary approach to reading Biblical poetry
Review: Alter continues here what he started in ' The Art of Biblical Narrative' and applies the techniques of literary criticism to the Biblical text. He does not discard Lowth's discovery of parallelism as the key technique of Biblical poetry but rather sharpens and intensifies the meaning of this concept. He shows the way different kind of parallelism operate in the text. He illustrates how intensification of meaning comes through repetition and variation. He closely reads some of the great Biblical poetry.
This is a wonderful work for all those who love the Bible and all those who love Poetry.

Rating:
Summary: This book should never be out of print
Review: This is one of the books that I was supposed to read for a class but didn't get around to it until now. I am halfway through this book and it is one of the most readable academic books that I've read. It is no wonder that Robert Alter has set and will set the standards by which Biblical litery criticism is judged.

The Bible comes alive under his translations and his insights into the text make this old book new and exciting.