The Jewish Studies Program at Penn State is pleased to present the 2019 Joanne and Paul Tanker Lecture.

Robert Alter recently completed an award-winning translation of the Hebrew Bible that seeks to capture the literary power of the original Hebrew in a three-volume set: The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (2018). In this talk, Professor Alter will discuss the many challenges and rewards of devoting more than two decades to translating the Bible.

Robert Alter’s many other publications on the Hebrew Bible include the prize-winning books The Art of Biblical Narrative and The Art of Biblical Poetry, and most recently, The Art of Bible Translation (2019). In 2009 he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for lifetime contribution to American letters and in 2013 the Charles Homer Haskins Prize for career achievement from the American Council of Learned Societies. In 2019 the American Academy of Arts and Letters conferred on him an award for literature.

The talk is free and open to the public.