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Many Religions, One Covenant: Israel, the Church,
and the World
by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
In Many Religions, One Covenant, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spans
the deep divides in modern Catholic scholarship to present a
compelling biblical theology, modern in its concerns yet classical
in its breadth. It is his classical mastery, his ressourcement, that
enables the Cardinal to build a bridge.
Cardinal Ratzinger seeks to deepen our
understanding of the Bible's most fundamental principle. The
covenant defines religion for Christians and Jews. We cannot discern
God's design or his will if we do not meditate upon his covenant.
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The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary
by Robert Alter
This brilliant and rigorous book by Alter, who teaches Hebrew and
comparative literature at Berkeley, strikes the perfect balance. It
delves into literary and biblical scholarship, yet is accessible to
the general reader. It argues forcefully and persuasively, but is
never arrogant, even when Alter is detailing the inadequacies of
other biblical translations. It points to the ways a single Hebrew
word can make all the difference in our understanding of the text,
but it never loses the forest for the trees. In a stimulating and
thorough introduction, Alter makes a case for the coherence of the
Torah (the first five books of the Bible) as a whole, while
acknowledging that it is "manifestly a composite construction" that
was written and edited by many people over several centuries. He
discusses why we need yet another translation, contending that every
existing English translation has an anemic sense of the English
language, while the King James Version—the most beautiful and
literary English-language translation—is unreliable and sometimes
inaccurate with the original Hebrew. After this energizing
introduction, Alter proceeds with his eminently readable translation
and fascinating footnotes on various Hebrew terms. This may well be
the best one-volume introduction to the Torah ever published in
English. |
