How to Read the Bible
A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $1.99
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
James Kugel’s essential introduction and companion to the Bible combines modern scholarship with the wisdom of ancient interpreters for the entire Hebrew Bible.
As soon as it appeared, How to Read the Bible was recognized as a masterwork, “awesome, thrilling” (The New York Times), “wonderfully interesting, extremely well presented” (The Washington Post), and “a tour de force...a stunning narrative” (Publishers Weekly). Now, this classic remains the clearest, most inviting and readable guide to the Hebrew Bible around—and a profound meditation on the effect that modern biblical scholarship has had on traditional belief.
Moving chapter by chapter, Harvard professor James Kugel covers the Bible’s most significant stories—the Creation of the world, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and his wives, Moses and the exodus, David’s mighty kingdom, plus the writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other prophets, and on to the Babylonian conquest and the eventual return to Zion.
Throughout, Kugel contrasts the way modern scholars understand these events with the way Christians and Jews have traditionally understood them. The latter is not, Kugel shows, a naïve reading; rather, it is the product of a school of sophisticated interpreters who flourished toward the end of the biblical period. These highly ideological readers sought to put their own spin on texts that had been around for centuries, utterly transforming them in the process. Their interpretations became what the Bible meant for centuries and centuries—until modern scholarship came along. The question that this book ultimately asks is: What now? As one reviewer wrote, Kugel’s answer provides “a contemporary model of how to read Sacred Scripture amidst the oppositional pulls of modern scholarship and tradition.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kugel's tour de force of biblical scholarship juxtaposes two different ways of reading the Bible: the ancient biblical interpretations, ranging from the Book of Jubilees to Augustine, that he explored in The Bible as It Was, and the modern historical approach that challenges the historical veracity of scripture and seeks instead to find its writers' original sources and purposes. It can be a jarring journey for those schooled in traditional views, but what emerges is a fresh, even strange, and very rich view of everything from the Garden of Eden to Isaiah's 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. He discusses who the ancient Israelites were; the resemblances between YHWH and Canaanite gods; the unique role of the prophet in Ancient Near Eastern religions; the nature of ancient wisdom literature; and what the Bible means when it calls Solomon the wisest of men. The result is a stunning narrative of the evolution of ancient Israel, of its God and of the entire Hebrew Bible, contrasted with ancient interpretations that aimed to uncover hidden meanings and moral lessons. So, for example, for the ancients, the story of Cain and Abel is a tale of good versus evil. For the moderns, it was originally a story of origin, about the relation between ancient Israelites and the fierce Kenites to their south. While Kugel is a traditional Jew, he sees the modern approach as compelling, so the dilemma is whether a person of faith can read scripture in both the old way and the new. Drawing on Judaism's nonfundamentalist approach, Kugel's proposed answer is that the original purpose of the texts and their lack of historical accuracy matters less than their underlying message: to serve God.
Customer Reviews
Wonderful and Fascinating
This book was a wonderful trek through the Bible and an overview of the scholarship work behind it. Fascinating to peel back the layers of this onion. It doesn’t make the Bible less authoritative to understand the process by which it came to be anymore than understanding evolution makes us less of an image bearers of God.
A Guide to the Perplexed
James Kugel’s “How to Read the Bible” is an excellent guide for the lay reader (and here I include myself) to both the classical and modern approaches to reading and understanding the Hebrew Bible. It compares and contrasts the assumptions underlying the traditional method with that of contemporary scholarship, and concludes that while these approaches are in some ways irreconcilable, they also inform each other. Kugel provides a basis for criticism of the classical understanding without finding in that criticism grounds for disposing of a way of an interpretation that has served for millennia as the basis of two great religions. Most importantly it highlights the futility of the search for the true, “original“ meaning of the Bible, noting that ancient interpreters, beginning in the last few centuries before the Common Era, had already moved beyond this limited view. It’s a long read, but a worthwhile one.
Extraordinary Research
Update: I grabbed a copy off of iBooks at 7AM (overslept) and have noticed that the errata has been fixed, so the eBook is better ... I am very happy having this version now on my new iPad ... Actually, a ten-star reading experience.
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I have a hard copy, which is a treasure since it is signed by Professor Kugel. I assure you that I will be buying this eBook come 12:01AM, May 1, so that I can immerse myself deeper into his excellent study of the Hebrew Bible.