The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible [Hardcover]

James L. Kugel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2003

The God of the modern world -- all-powerful, all-knowing, invisible, and omnipresent -- has been a staple of Western civilization. Yet in this remarkable book, James Kugel shows that this God is not the same as the God of most of the Hebrew Bible, the God who appeared to Abraham, Moses, and other biblical heroes. That God, the "God of Old," was actually perceived in a very different way -- a way that has much to teach modern believers.

James Kugel is renowned for his investigations into the history of the biblical era, a time beginning more than three thousand years ago, when the Bible's earliest parts first took shape. Now he goes even deeper, attempting to enter the spiritual world of ancient Israelites and see through their eyes God as they encountered him.

The God of Old appeared to people unexpectedly; He was not sought out. Often He was not even recognized, at first mistaken for an ordinary human being. The realm of the divine was not as it is today -- a spiritual dimension set off from the material world. The spiritual and the material overlapped, and the realm of the dead was a real domain just beyond the world of the living. Ordinary reality was in constant danger of sliding into something else, something stark but oddly familiar. God was always standing just behind the curtain of the everyday world.

Kugel suggests that this alternative spirituality is not simply an archaic relic, replaced by a "better" understanding. Kugel's picture of the God of Old has much to tell us about God's very nature, and about the encounter between Him and human beings in today's world. This is a book to treasure side by side with the Bible, and for years to come.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kugel (The Bible As It Was) again exerts his considerable command over a wide array of biblical texts and topics to provide a masterful survey of the way ancient Israelites understood God. Biblical texts written around the time of late Judaism, he says, tend to portray God as a universal, omnipresent, but remote deity. Not so with the earliest biblical texts; the Genesis stories about angels or the Exodus commandments against the worship of false gods depict God as a deity who is close to this world and to humanity. Far from being remote, this God hears the cries of the victims of oppression and responds in physical ways by sending the divine presence. So close is the God of old to the people of Israel that this God breaks through the thin veil dividing the spiritual and material world to reveal itself. Thus, this God, according to Kugel, gets close enough to Moses that Moses hears God proclaim the name of the Lord. The prohibition against idols indicates that this God is a different kind of God than those in surrounding cultures, one who appears in a privileged moment and space not confined to a statue. In glimmering prose, Kugel leads us on a mesmerizing tour of the differences between early and modern conceptions of God.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Kugel, a professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard, delves into the Bible to find the answer to this question: Why is the God of the ancient texts, who walked and talked with the patriarch, so different from the more distant God of today? When did the change take place and why? Kugel suggests that there was a time when Israelites perceived God as near and dear, but that, during the Babylonian exile, he took on a more omniscient role. Named angels such as Gabriel and Michael then came to the fore, preserving a holy personification. Less clear is Kugel's effort to explain his passion for understanding the ancient worship of God in terms of something he calls "the Project," which he defines as a commitment to getting to the bottom of a particular experience, "to see how far it goes." Unlike many biblical scholars, Kugel has an engaging writing style, and although he tends to meander a bit through the centuries, his enthusiasm and insight will attract anyone interested in Old Testament studies. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (March 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743235843
• ISBN-13: 978-0743235846
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,042,946 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James L. Kugel, Starr Professor of Hebrew at Harvard from 1982 to 2003, now lives in Jerusalem. A specialist in the Hebrew Bible and its interpretation, he is the author of The God of Old and The Great Poems of the Bible. His course on the Bible was regularly one of the two most popular at Harvard, enrolling more than nine hundred students.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, insightful, and very clear, May 18, 2003

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J. A Magill (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible (Hardcover)

James Kugel assured his place as a giant of biblical studies with his opus, The Bible as it Was, which examined various secondary texts to understand the way Israelites read the Bible during the Second Temple Period. Here, Kugel examines a subject that, in his own words, is far thinner. Looking at the Bible, particularly the Five Books of the Torah, he tries to gain insight into how Israel perceived G-d in the Biblical period. He does not disappoint. Examining the occasions when individuals encountered the divine or His messengers, Kugel builds a persuasive case that ancient Israelites understanding of the divine stands as remarkable different from what modern readers seek to project backwards through time.

Some may take offense at some of Kugel's assertions, that the ancient Israelites saw G-d as corporeal and did not embrace monotheism as early as modern interpreters argue. However, the modern quirk projecting back modern concepts as far back as possible, while a comforting fiction, bellies our attempts to truly understand our ancestors. The development of Monotheism, easily one of the greatest and most impactful achievements of human history, should not be taken for granted as something that came in a preverbal flash.

Kugel does a wonderful job presenting complex material in an accessible format. His sensitivity to the potentially controversial thesis he espouses only further coxes the reader along for this fascinating journey. People interested in this subject should also read Kugel's other work and consider reading the works of Bill Dever and Baruch Halperin, both also excellent.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-written and insightful, April 20, 2003

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mrliteral - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible (Hardcover)

A few years back, James Kugel wrote a wonderful book called The Bible as It Was, which dealt with how people in ancient times interpreted the Bible. With The God of Old, Kugel once again takes up to pre-Christian times and gives us new insight as to the meanings of certain items in Bible.

In this brief book, Kugel has assembled what is essentially a collection of a half dozen essays around a common theme: how did the people in Old Testament times actually view God. Dealing with topics such as divine justice, the nature of angels and the existence of the afterlife, he shows that God was an evolving figure in history and the ancient concept is often quite different from the modern one.

Kugel has written a clear, thoughtful work with the occasional bits of humor. Sometimes - as he himself admits - his interpretations may be stretches, but they are all thought-provoking. As any book dealing with religion, this book will definitely have its detractors; nonetheless, if you are open to new ways of viewing an old book, this will be a good read.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, contemplative, well-written, September 8, 2004

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SPH - See all my reviews

This review is from: The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible (Hardcover)

Few people can write as well as Kugel. In discussing the starkness of Psalm 90, Kugel compares the summation of one's life to a painting:

"This canvas is the only thing of our existence that endures. To be sure, it does not endure in any tangible way, since nothing tangible endures in any case. [...] But it is no less real for being intangible--that is the essence of the stark world--in fact, it is only thanks to its intangibility that it does endure, and it is the only thing that matters. [...] when it is done it is ours forever--it is all that is ours, on into howling eternity."

If "on into howling eternity" doesn't conjure up an image of starkness for you, I doubt any words can.

The God of Old examines how our modern concept of God differs from early biblical descriptions. The God of Old will be of interest to anyone who has contemplated this question. An in-depth knowledge of the Old Testament is not required or assumed. It is not excessively long or difficult to read, however you may find yourself re-reading some paragraphs to fully absorb the meaning. If you have any interest in the subject matter, you will enjoy this well-written book.