Constantine Panunzio Distinguished Emeriti Award

Robert Alter took up emeritus status in 2011 after an illustrious career on the Berkeley campus that began in 1967. He has officially been retired for eight years, but this period has actually been one of his most productive decades since he began his prolific association with our campus. With the publication this year of his three-volume The Hebrew Bible: a Translation with Commentary (by W. W. Norton & Co.), a staggering 3,500 pages, Alter accomplished the mammoth project that he began in 1996 with his acclaimed translation with commentary of Genesis. The Hebrew Bible volumes are the first complete English translation of the Old Testament since the King James Bible in the early seventeenth century! This is an extraordinary achievement, as has already been acknowledged worldwide. Alter has done remarkable work both as a translator and as a literary and historical critic of Biblical literature.

During this same eight-year period Alter published books on the Former Prophets and on the Biblical books of Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Daniel, which are now incorporated in his complete translation. Since retirement, he has received numerous honorary degrees and other prestigious awards. He continues to teach and since 2013 has directed our Center for Jewish Studies.

He has achieved the greatest possible distinction as a literary critic of the novel, and has single-handedly created the fields of Biblical narrative and Biblical poetry. With his translation of the Hebrew Bible he has published a masterpiece. He was eminent long before he retired but he has augmented that status as an emeritus professor in a quite remarkable way.