Landscape in the Hebrew Bible (The Book of Ruth and the Love of the Land)

Abstract

In the Introduction to his and Frank Kermode's collection Literary Guide to the Bible, the critic Robert Alter describes the Hebrew Bible as a work of "extreme heterogeneity," and speculates that the selection of the canon "was at least sometimes impelled by a desire to preserve the best of ancient Hebrew literature rather than to gather the consistent normative statements of a monotheistic party line ... In fact, the texts that have been passed down to us exhibit not only extraordinary diversity but also a substantial amount of debate with one another."