Robert Alter is a distinguished scholar both of literature and of Hebrew, who has recently completed a fresh and acclaimed translation of the whole Hebrew Bible. Strikingly, Alter gives strong and consistent praise to the translators of the King James Version. Of course, Alter himself is under no obligation to be religiously interested in the Bible (though as a Jew who speaks of "Abram our forefather" (p. 8) he is evidently fully at home in it).