James L. Kugel - In the Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief

Where Kugel is really brilliant is in teasing out of his own brush with death, as well as out of religious texts and artifacts, an account of what intimations of God feels like.

The New York Times Book Review

In the Valley of the Shadow

On the Foundations of Religious Belief

James L. Kugel

Author of How to Read the Bible

How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now

The Ladder of Jacob

The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible

The Great Poems of the Bible: A Readers Companion with New Translations

The Bible as It Was

Traditions of the Bible

On Being a Jew

In Potiphars House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts

Early Biblical Interpretation

The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History

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Copyright 2011 by James L. Kugel

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First Free Press hardcover edition February 2011

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DESIGNED BY ERICH HOBBING

Jacket design by Eric Fuentecilla

Jacket photograph John Knox/The Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation/The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty

Author photograph Erwin Schenkelbach

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-4391-3009-4

ISBN 978-1-4391-5055-9 (ebook)

For R.

Write!For whom?Write for the dead ones whom you loved in the past.Will they read me?No.

Sren Kierkegaard, Diary

Dear Brooke, Elisabeth, Hanan, Michael, Yehuda,

Although I have spent most of my life as a professor, this book is not intended as a work of scholarship, but something that is at the same time more personal and more wide-ranging than the things that I usually write. Of course, some of what follows inevitably draws on my academic specialty, the Hebrew Bible, as well as on some wider readings in the related fields of religious studies and anthropology. In the end, however, what pushed me to write this was a desire to integrate what I have studied over a long period of time with what I have personally seen and felt. It hasnt always been easy, but throughout I have tried to be faithful to both

I n the summer of the year 2000, I began writing a book that would eventually be published as The God of Old. I had been working on it for about a week when I drove into Cambridge for my annual physical exam, and when I emerged an hour and a half later, I knew I had a pretty serious case of cancer. I was scheduled for a series of further tests the next week, so I didnt do anything (or tell anyone) right away; but eventually I had to break the news to my wife, and we went together to get the doctors report on the tests.

The tests were not particularly encouraging. Todays doctors areI suppose, largely as a result of malpractice lawsuitsextremely careful not to raise false hopes in their patients. They told us that the degree of degeneration in the cancerous cells taken in the biopsy was alarming, since it revealed a particularly aggressive form of the disease. I confess I dont remember much of the rest of what they saidsomething about cells piercing the capsule and making the prognosis even grimmer. We probably cant cure the cancer, they said, but we can treat it. They told us that, with proper care, I could expect to live at least another two years without debilitating symptoms, and that with all the new research and drugs becoming available, they hoped it would be possible to extend my life for two or three years more, perhaps even longer. I was 54 at the time.

The reason I am relating all this is because I want to recapture a certain state of mind that one enters under such circumstances. (I am sure many people who have gone through a similar experience will recognize what I am about to say.) After the initial shock, I was, of course, disturbed and worried. But the main change in my state of mind was thatI cant think of a better way to put itthe background music suddenly stopped. It had always been there, the music of daily life thats constantly going, the music of infinite time and possibilities; and now suddenly it was gone, replaced by nothing, just silence. There you are, one little person, sitting in the late-summer sun, with only a few things left to do. What should I do? Try to keep working on that book? You think: If I could make it through five more years, that would be generous. That would certainly be fair.

This was definitely a different perspective. But how could I have ever thought that life would just go on forever? I did, of course; thats what the music does, and everyone is caught up in it. The marvelous, often ironic writer William Saroyan is reported to have said on his deathbed: I know everyone has to die, but somehow I always thought an exception would be made in my case. Its what we all think.

You learn all the shortcuts to the hospital and the best places to park in the underground garages. For some reason, hospital parking lots in Boston all seem to be staffed by recent immigrants from Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, refugees from a festering conflict. You get to know them, and after a while you even learn to say, Hellohow are you this morning? in their language (which is not Amharic, but either Tigrinya or Tigre). They smile in appreciation. You kid around with the nurses. But all this is just self-deception, trying to make this horrible, multiplex service center for the dying into something less ominous than it is.

Chemotherapy can be easy or not so easythere are dozens of different regimes that go by that name, and in any case, different individuals respond differently to the same mix of drugs. It did not go very easily for me, and while this is not ultimately connected to the music, it certainly had a role in what I thought and felt during those difficult days. I tried to get back to writing, but I just didnt have the strength. Life became very local: the bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen. The people who love you loom large; their love is as tangible as bread. As for you, you are small. Your life is winding down now, and you can clearly see its end point; your life has become a compact, little thing. Good-bye. I have subsequently gone to many funerals, and I am always astonished by the smallness of the freshly dug, open holes you see here and there in the cemetery grounds. Can a whole human being fit in there, a whole human life? Yes. No problem.

Do not rely on the mighty to save you, or on any human being.