Robert Alter’s monumental translation of the Hebrew Bible, the subject of Mosaic’s February essay and the responses to it, aims above all to preserve the literary qualities of the original. In his own review, Meir Soloveichik points to instances where Alter succeeds in “captur[ing] the cadences of the Bible . . . better than anyone who has attempted it before,” and even exceeds the King James. Nonetheless, to Soloveichik the new translation’s “astonishingly insightful renderings,” based on “sensitive readings” of the text do not make up for its deficiencies. Just one example comes from the translation of the book of Psalms:

This week, after the International Atomic Energy Agency announced its suspicions that the Islamic Republic is hiding nuclear materials from its inspectors, the White House decided to lift some sanctions on Iranian oil, and still plans to forge ahead with nuclear negotiations. Meanwhile, Iran will hold its presidential elections next week. The exercise is not particularly democratic—the supreme leader approves the candidates in advance, and his minions have from time to time fixed the results—but neither is it entirely meaningless. While there are important differences among the candidates, not one can be dubbed a moderate, even by the standards of this brutal Islamist theocracy. Reuel Marc Gerecht explains why this matters: