Whether rendering the Bible as wondrous or as strangely familiar, David Rosenberg's magisterial translation forces us to ask again--and at last in literary terms--why the Bible remains a crucial foundation of our culture.

Until today, translators have presented a homogeneous Bible in uniform style--even as the various books within it were written by different authors, in diverse genres and periods, stretching over many centuries. Now, Rosenberg's artful translation restores what has been left aside: the essence of imaginative creation in the Bible.

In A Literary Bible,...