James L. Kugel - How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now
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- Book:How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now
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How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now: summary, description and annotation
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In How to Read the Bible, Harvard professor James Kugel leads the reader chapter by chapter through the quiet revolution of recent biblical scholarship, showing time and again how radically the interpretations of todays researchers differ from what people have always thought. The story of Adam and Eve, it turns out, was not originally about the Fall of Man, but about the move from a primitive, hunter-gatherer society to a settled, agricultural one. As for the stories of Cain and Abel, Abraham and Sarah, and Jacob and Esau, these narratives were not, at their origin, about individual people at all but, rather, explanations of some feature of Israelite society as it existed centuries after these figures were said to have lived. Dinah was never raped -- her story was created by an editor to solve a certain problem in Genesis. In the earliest version of the Exodus story, Moses probably did not divide the Red Sea in half; instead, the Egyptians perished in a storm at sea. Whatever the original Ten Commandments might have been, scholars are quite sure they were different from the ones we have today. Whats more, the people long supposed to have written various books of the Bible were not, in the current consensus, their real authors: David did not write the Psalms, Solomon did not write Proverbs or Ecclesiastes; indeed, there is scarcely a book in the Bible that is not the product of different, anonymous authors and editors working in different periods.
Such findings pose a serious problem for adherents of traditional, Bible-based faiths. Hiding from the discoveries of modern scholars seems dishonest, but accepting them means undermining much of the Bibles reliability and authority as the word of God. What to do? In his search for a solution, Kugel leads the reader back to a group of ancient biblical interpreters who flourished at the end of the biblical period. Far from nave, these interpreters consciously set out to depart from the original meaning of the Bibles various stories, laws, and prophecies -- and they, Kugel argues, hold the key to solving the dilemma of reading the Bible today.
How to Read the Bible is, quite simply, the best, most original book about the Bible in decades. It offers an unflinching, insiders look at the work of todays scholars, together with a sustained consideration of what the Bible was for most of its history -- before the rise of modern scholarship. Readable, clear, often funny but deeply serious in its purpose, this is a book for Christians and Jews, believers and secularists alike. It offers nothing less than a whole new way of thinking about sacred Scripture.
James L. Kugel: author's other books
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A 2007 NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Kugel goes through the Hebrew Bible alternating a discussion of how ancient interpreters understood key passages with what modern scholarship can tell us about the origins and accuracy of the text. This is wonderfully interesting stuff, extremely well presented.... Kugels lucid explanation is a major contribution to popular understanding.
The Washington Post
Kugel has a fine ear for narrative, a lifelong scholars discipline, and a wonder and confidence fed by his beliefs. His gathering up of a lifes work gives readers a chance to brush up against genius, and perhaps examine those beliefs we claim for ourselves.
The Seattle Times
Propounds a stark and challenging thesis.
Peter Steinfels, The New York Times
Who should we believe about the Bibleour Sunday-school teachers or our university professors? James Kugel cuts through this dilemma with a breathtaking new look at the worlds most popular book.... No writer on the Bible has wrestled so profoundly with the most basic, important questions raised by our conflicting knowledge and desires.
The Best Books We Read in 2007, The Onion
Kugel has written a wonderful book, one that lays bare the worlds both of modern biblical scholarship and of ancient biblical interpretation with wit and erudition.
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How to Read the Bible is, quite simply, the best, most original book about the Hebrew Bible in decades. James Kugel guides the reader chapter by chapter through the quiet revolution of recent biblical scholarship, introducing the host of research findings that have fundamentally challenged the long-standing interpretations of the ancient texts. All this leads him to the question that troubles everyone who takes the Bible seriously nowadays: Has modern scholarship killed the Bible? Or is there some way to salvage its message despite all that we now know about how the Bible came to be? How to Read the Bible offers nothing less than a whole new way of thinking about sacred Scripture.
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Praise for How to Read the Bible
It is true that all the familiar figures and events of the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament are here: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets. But the book also propounds a stark and challenging thesis, namely that contemporary Bible readers are confronted with two radically different ways of approaching scripture and that both approaches are impressive and admirableand fundamentally incompatible.
Peter Steinfels, The New York Times
To say that this would be the college course you never got to take about the Bible would be damning with faint praise; it would be the college course, the graduate seminar, and reading for comprehensive exams you never got around to, all in one. It may be the best popular book about these modern critics ever written; its certainly one of the best popular books on the Bible in many years.
Jeremy Dauber, Haaretz
Kugel is surely right... These days it is plain to see that modern interpretation does not train its readers to hear the Word of God in the Bible, even in its darkest corners. Ancient interpreters read with the assumption that the Bible has the power to make us insiders. It is the path that faithful Jews and Christians continue striving to walk down.
R. R. Reno, First Things
A tour de force of biblical scholarship... [and] a fresh, even strange, and very rich view of everything from the Garden of Eden to Isaiahs dream vision of God. Refreshingly undogmatic and often witty, Kugel brings an intimate knowledge of the Hebrew Bible to illuminate small points as well as large... The result is a stunning narrative of the evolution of ancient Israel, of its God and of the entire Hebrew Bible.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
An indispensable guide to a complex subject.
Booklist
Written in a lucid colloquial style, seasoned with humorous anecdotes and ample illustrations, How to Read the Bible aspires to provide not only an accessible and comprehensive scholarly introduction to the Hebrew Bible and its modern and ancient study, but also a contemporary model of how to read sacred scripture amidst the oppositional pulls of modern scholarship and tradition.
Jewish Book World
This is the kind of volume, like The Gnostic Bible, that I will sample off and on for the rest of my life.
Chauncey Mabe, Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Florida)
ALSO BY JAMES L. KUGEL
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
FREE PRESS
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright 2007 by James Kugel
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Free Press trade paperback edition October 2008
FREE PRESS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Kugel, James L.
How to read the Bible : a guide to scripture, then and now / James Kugel.
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Bible. O.T.Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.
BS1171.3.K84 2007
221.6dc22 2007023466
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-3586-0
ISBN-10: 0-7432-3586-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-3587-7 (pbk)
ISBN-10 0-7432-3587-8 (pbk)
ISBN-13: 978-1-45168-909-9 (eBook)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Though it is a bit late in life for me to be thanking my teachers, I must nonetheless begin by acknowledging the great debt I owe to two former colleagues from whom I learned a great deal during our time together. Brevard Childs of Yale and Frank M. Cross of Harvard probably do not see eye-to-eye on many of the things discussed in this book, but each has, in different ways, left his mark on the pages that follow. Along with them I must mention my first teacher at Harvard and my colleague for many years after, Isadore Twersky of blessed memory.
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