Robert Bernard Alter (born 1935) is an American professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He published his translation of the Hebrew Bible in 2018. Biography Robert Alter earned his bachelor's degree in English (Columbia University, 1957), and his master's degree (1958) and doctorate (1962) from Harvard University in comparative literature. He started his career as a writer at Commentary, where he was for many years a contributing editor. He has written twenty-three books, and is noted most recently for his translation of the entire Hebrew Bible. He lectures on topics varying from Biblical episodes to Kafka's modernism and Hebrew literature. Biblical studies One of Alter's important contributions is the introduction of the type scene into contemporary scholarly Hebrew Bible studies. An example of a type scene is that of a man meeting a young woman at a well, whom he goes on to marry; this scene occurs twice in Genesis and once in Exodus, and, according to Alter, distortedly in 1 Samuel and in the Book of Ruth. Honors Alter has served as an active member of the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, and as the president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1966 and 1978. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986. In 2001, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. He was a Senior Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, and Old Dominion Fellow at Princeton University. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Jewish Review of Books. Awards His book The Art of Biblical Narrative won the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought. In 2009, he was the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award (Los Angeles Times) for lifetime contribution to American letters. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree by Yale University in 2010. He is a Doctor Honoris Causa of Hebrew University (2015). Berkeley Citation (2010) Selected works Translations of the Hebrew Bible The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel, 1999, W.W. Norton, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary, 2004, W.W. Norton, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary, 2007, W.W. Norton, The Book