/lit/ - Literature

Has anyone read Robert Alter's translation of the Old Testament? I downloaded it recently and am going to start reading it soon because of how many positive reviews it has. Basically, his main opinion is that modern English translations always fail to capture the beauty of the writing of the bible and that the KJV was the best attempt but still too different to be called faithful to its poetic beauty.

>The King James Bible . . . remains an imposing achievement, yet . . . it has its drawbacks.
>But why have English translators in our age fallen so steeply from this grand precedent?
>To begin with, I would note a pronounced tendency among them to throw out the beautiful baby with the bathwater. Those companies convened by King James, their modern successors assume, got it altogether wrong.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/robert-alter-modern-bible-translations-stay-king-james-stream/

Otherwise RSV with apocrypha has been my main go-to since it's simply the first one I got, since a couple catholic bible scholars noted it as a well rounded option.