(NYT) After More Than Two Decades of Work by Robert Alter, a New Hebrew Bible to Rival the King James

No book has been retranslated as often as the Bible, because no book has been as widely republished. The Bible isn’t just the all-time best seller, it’s consistently so, especially in the United States, where in a typical year about half a billion dollars’ worth are sold. Legions of Bible readers hunger endlessly for new versions. One of these, which Alter finds endearing, is a loose, vernacular rendition titled “The Message,” by the Rev. Eugene H. Peterson, which describes the uncreated world at the beginning of Genesis as a “soup of nothingness” and has God command his new creation by exclaiming, “Earth, green up!”