ALTER'S PENTATEUCH AGAIN: On a more serious note, Martin Sieff has a review in the Washington Times of Robert Alter's new translation of the Pentateuch. Excerpt:

Mr. Alter's work, however, is in a class by itself. Over the past 25 years, this professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley has established himself as the grandmaster of style, translation and literary criticism par excellence in the English-speaking world in such definitive studies as "The Art of Biblical Poetry" and "The Art of Biblical Narrative." His vast new work is the worthy fruition of a lifetime's outstanding labors.

What Mr. Alter has always understood is that the formative texts of the Old Testament are as rich in word-play and complex literary coding and style as any of William Shakespeare's greatest plays and that the ultimate challenge of any translator ought to be to convey all that subtle and precise richness and elegance of style into English - or any other language.

The Nephilim and the assumption of Enoch are also mentioned.