I haven’t done book reviews before on reubenland.com, and perhaps this doesn’t really count. It’s more of a recommendation.

Robert Alter’s “Art of biblical narrative” is a well written and very helpful book for modern readers of the old testament. His aim is to help people read OT biblical narratives with sensitivity to the artistry in their composition. His chapters on type-scene, repetition and knowledge were particularly good.

If you’re at college, I reckon it’s a “must read” if you want to enjoy OT narrative more, learn to read it and to preach it. If you’re an interested reader of the Bible in another situation the writing is not particularly technical and all translations are in english. (no hebrew knowledge required!). You’ll definitely get it, and get a lot out of it.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the closing chapter:

…religious tradition has by and large encouraged us to take the Bible seriously rather than to enjoy it, but the paradoxical truth of the matter may well be that by learning to enjoy the biblical stories more fully as stories, we shall also come to see more clearly what they mean to tell us about God, man, and the perilously momentous realm of history