This is Spectator Radio and you're listening to The Books Podcast with Sam Leith.

Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Books podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the Literatured for The Spectator.

This week I'm very pleased to be joined by Professor Robert Alter, who has just completed,

or recently completed, a titanic work of scholarship in translating the whole of the Hebrew

Bible into English. Robert, welcome.

I'm happy to be here.

Thank you. How long has this taken? I mean, it's such a huge undertaking.

Well, I think I count a total of 24 years.

And it sort of started by accident, didn't it?

I mean, you did a couple of books and then were encouraged, as it were, or pushed on.

That's it.

I began Genesis, I think around 1994, as a kind of experiment.

And I was skeptical about it because I wanted to get something of the Hebrew style,

which I think is quite wonderful, into English.

And I thought it really was not feasible because the structure of the two languages

is so different and I thought well maybe when I finish Genesis everybody will hate it and I

will hate it but it was better than I thought it could be and so then I was encouraged to do more

and the reception was good I mean what's

terrific for as it were lay readers is you've you've published a book called the art of

Bible translation that's come out around now around the same time as your your

monumental version thing right I think it's officially going to be out in a month or so.

Sure. And that has the great virtue of providing a sort of map and a rationale and an explanation of,

...