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How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now
by James L Kugel
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Synopses & Reviews Scholars from different fields have joined forces to reexamine every aspect of the Hebrew Bible. Their research, carried out in universities and seminaries in Europe and America, has revolutionized our understanding of almost every chapter and verse. But have they killed the Bible in the process?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 today's 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. What's 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 Bible's 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 naïve, these interpreters consciously set out to depart from the original meaning of the Bible's 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, insider's look at the work of today's 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. Review: "'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. (Sept.)' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: "Surely the Bible can teach and inspire. But has it lost the ability to startle? To make us gasp? In our society, where 90 percent of households possess a Bible and more than a third of American adults say they've read from it in the past week, it's hard to see the text with fresh eyes. Even if you're in the small minority that admits to never having read it, you probably know something about it. Maybe ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) too little to embrace it. Or maybe too much. Eighty years ago, the Jewish philosopher and Bible scholar Martin Buber maintained that modern man cannot, if he is honest with himself, approach the Bible with the solid faith of previous generations. At the same time, Buber judged that one loses all that is biblical if one takes what the Bible has to say as merely figurative, metaphorical or allegorical. His solution was that 'modern man' must 'read the Jewish Bible as though it were something entirely unfamiliar, as though it had not been set before him ready-made, as though he has not been confronted all his life with sham concepts and sham statements that cited the Bible as their authority. He must face the Bible ... as something new.' Within the Jewish tradition, which emphasized reading the Bible through the interpretative lens of the ancient rabbis, this was a radical break. Part of Buber's rationale rested on his assessment of the Bible as literature. It is not that Buber viewed the Bible as mere literature; being literature was not incompatible with being a source of revelation. Rather, he argued that scripture 'uses the methods of story-telling to a degree ... that world literature has not yet learned to use.' And so, he said, 'it remains for us latecomers to point out the significance of what has hitherto been overlooked, neglected, insufficiently valued.' Despite the title, 'How to Read the Bible,' James Kugel does not offer us latecomers a new way to read the Bible. Instead, over some 700 well-written pages, Kugel goes through the Hebrew Bible (which Christians have traditionally called the Old Testament) 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. But what really drives Kugel — a former Harvard professor who says he's been writing this book for 30 years — is his need to reconcile modern knowledge with his own religious practice; he is an orthodox Jew committed to fulfilling all 613 commandments traditionally found in the Hebrew Bible. Essentially, Kugel exemplifies the quandary of 'modern man' that Buber discussed. For Kugel, biblical scholarship has played a decisive role in undermining the traditional view of the Bible as God's inerrant word. It has done this in myriad ways: by exposing traces of diverse human authorship, by showing the connection between biblical ordinances supposedly revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai and other codes embraced by earlier Near Eastern peoples, and by disputing the historical truth of key stories, such as that the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt or that they conquered Canaan. But, in fact, we don't need modern biblical scholarship to doubt divine authorship. If we read the Bible free from the assumptions that religion brings to the text, we find that the first several books neither assert nor suggest God's authorship. On the contrary, they often portray Yahweh in such a critical light that it is difficult to believe this is how Yahweh would have presented himself. The ever-startling fact about the Hebrew Bible is that, from the Creation to the conquest of the Promised Land, it is dominated by a conception of God which is at odds with how God is understood in Judaism and Christianity. Kugel is aware of this, introducing the term 'God of Old' to refer to the earlier conception and focusing on God's lack of omnipresence and omniscience in Genesis and Exodus. But what Kugel does not take up is what immediately engages anyone who reads the Bible as a fresh story: the moral character of Yahweh. It is not merely that the Bible sometimes presents God anthropomorphically, but that Yahweh is presented as a distinct individual with a distinct personality and very human character flaws. The ability of Judaism (and subsequently Christianity) to conceive of the Bible as divine scripture, authored by a God who loves and deserves to be loved, rests upon a disciplined distortion of the core story. Kugel, who is remarkably clear-eyed about these early interpreters, has a different way of putting it. He explains that 'the very idea of the Bible' — a divinely inspired and perfect text that tells us what to think and do — is the product of an 'interpretive revolution' that took place in the last three centuries before the birth of Jesus. 'Most of what makes the Bible biblical is not inherent in its texts,' he writes, 'but emerges only when one reads them in a certain way.' And further, 'It was this way of reading, as much as the texts themselves, that Jews and Christians canonized as their Bible.' Kugel's lucid explanation of this point is a major contribution to popular understanding. In contrast to Kugel's tight focus on ancient interpreters vs. modern researchers, Karen Armstrong's 'The Bible: A Biography' tackles the entire history of both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament in scarcely more than 200 pages. Her volume belongs to a series of short primers on 'Books That Changed the World' and may have suffered from that format. Nonetheless, it has definite strengths. Not least is her success in describing the radical freedom that the early rabbis took in their non-literal approach to the Bible. She relates one tale in which Rabbi Akiva's fame reached Moses in heaven, and Moses decided to come down to earth to attend one of the rabbi's classes: 'He sat in the eighth row behind the other students, and to his dismay found that R. Akiva's exposition was incomprehensible to him, even though it was said to have been part of the revelation he had received on Mount Sinai.' As he returned to heaven, Moses proudly mused, 'My sons have surpassed me.' Armstrong's final chapter is on 'Modernity,' which she dates from the late 17th century. Like Kugel, she sees modern-day biblical literalists as breaking with centuries of religious interpretation. Implicit is her agreement with both Kugel and the ancient interpreters that the Bible should be read as a guide to life. But for Armstrong, crucially, each reader is an agent, and interpretive choices must be set within the political realities of our world. Thus she writes, 'Because scripture has been so flagrantly abused ... Jews, Christians and Muslims have a duty to establish a counter-narrative.' In a far lighter spirit is A.J. Jacobs' zany project, 'The Year of Living Biblically.' He set out to spend 12 months following all the rules in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. He began by making a list of more than 700. These he intended to follow literally, except where they are clearly figurative. Jacobs is a humorist, and at times he had me laughing out loud. To stop ogling women, he silently recited Bible verses; when his 2-year-old son hit him, he chose to overlook Exodus 21:15 ('Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death.'). Still, his focus on following the commandments is in the long Jewish tradition of putting doing before understanding. In the end, he emerged from his year without experiencing revelation, but in the perfectly sound place of embracing Shabbat — or in his closing words, 'a quiet Friday night.' Yet if one gets serious about this lighthearted book, one must ask about its key presupposition, that the Bible should be read as God's guide to life. This brings us back to Kugel's problem: how to accept modern scholarship and 'yet not lose sacred Scripture in the process.' Kugel's answer is that the purpose of Scripture, to show us how to serve God, is more important than its historic truth. Believing that the Bible is, at least in part, divinely inspired, he views it as 'the most accessible avenue' to God and 'a basic program for the service of God in everyday life.' Kugel is content with this, but for skeptics, I would suggest an alternative way of approaching the Bible. Don't assume that it is a guide to life, and don't worry about modern research. Instead, try to read the Bible as you would an unknown novel. You may be startled. You may, in fact, gasp. And its human power may even transform you. Jerome M. Segal is the author of 'Joseph's Bones: Understanding the Struggle Between God and Mankind in the Bible.'" Reviewed by Jerome Segal, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Synopsis: A renowned scholar and professor of biblical studies presents this essential introduction and companion to the Bible that combines the controversial discoveries of modern scholarship with the wisdom of ancient interpreters. Table of Contents Preliminaries
1. The Rise of Modern Biblical Scholarship
2. The Creation of the World — and of Adam and Eve
3. Cain and Abel
4. The Great Flood
5. The Tower of Babel
6. The Call of Abraham
7. Two Models of God and the "God of Old"
8. The Trials of Abraham
9. Jacob and Esau
10. Jacob and the Angel
11. Dinah
12. Joseph and His Brothers
13. Moses in Egypt
14. The Exodus
15. A Covenant with God
16. The Ten Commandments
17. A Religion of Laws
18. Worship on the Road
19. P and D
20. On the Way to Canaan
21. Moses' Last Words
22. Joshua and the Conquest of Canaan
23. Judges and Chiefs
24. The Other Gods of Canaan
25. Samuel and Saul
26. The Psalms of David
27. David the King
28. Solomon's Wisdom
29. North and South
30. The Book of Isaiah(s)
31. Jeremiah
32. Ezekiel
33. Twelve Minor Prophets
34. Job and Postexilic Wisdom
35. Daniel the Interpreter
Picture Credits A Note to the Reader Notes Subject Index Verses Cited
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780743235860
- Subtitle:
- A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now
- Author:
- Kugel, James L
- Author:
- Kugel, James L.
- Publisher:
- Free Press
- Subject:
- Bible - Biography - Old Testament
- Subject:
- Biblical Biography - Old Testament
- Subject:
- Biblical Criticism & Interpretation - Old Testament
- Subject:
- Biblical Studies - General
- Publication Date:
- September 2007
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 819
- Dimensions:
- 9 x 6 in
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