Customer Reviews

The Great Poems of the Bible: A Reader's Companion with New Translations

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A reader's companion to some of the poems of the Bible, with Kugel's insights into their hidden beauties of deeper meanings. What do the Psalms tell us about the nature of the soul? What do the shirim/songs and proverbs tell us about monotheism and the afterlife? Kugel is a Professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard, and a Professor at Bar Ilan University. He is also the former poetry editor of Harper's Magazine. The book includes new translations for Psalms 104, 42, 29, 51, 23, 137 and 119; Deborah's Song from Judges 5; Job 28; David's Lament from Samuel 2(How the mighty have fallen); as well as poems from Jeremiah, Isaiah, Song of Songs; Micah, Ecclesiastes and others. An example of Kugel's illumination is a chapter on Amos' prophecy on "But Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters / And righteousness Like a Mighty Stream." In addition to bringing the poem's language to greater life, Kugel explains the nature of prophecy in ancient Israel, Amos' background as a common citizen, the hidden idea of calling Amaziah's Beth-el a Beth-Sorrow. The chapter continues by discussing the use of two sentence structure in Hebrew prophecy, as in the sentence, "An ox knows its owner, and an ass it's master's trough." From structure, Kugel moves to word choice. For example, why use ox? An animal that is dull witted but readily plows with a yoke. Why use an 'ass' which is smart but cannot be controlled? The word 'knows' also means 'devoted to' and 'obeys', while the word 'master' also means 'Creator' and is an allusion to a Canaanite diety. Thus we discover the hidden beauty of the sentence. All this illumination, and just one sentence. So buy the book and in Hillel's words, "go and learn."

The Great Poems of the Bible could also have been titled: "Wisdom in the Bible". In his book, James Kugel shows the depths of thought and feeling that one can encounter in these texts when one takes the time to ponder their words and rhythms. The Wisdom which is put forth is far from the sanctimonious moralizing of some. Rather it is an endeavour to picture the universe as a whole, where in the end harmony triumphs. Kugel's prose itself is a tour de force of poetry and most probably it took a poet to reveal the Poems of the Bible from the all encompassing cries of the Prophets to the "one-liners" of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. One cannot finish this book without desiring to read it over again.

Kugel's book provides wonderful insight into some of the subtleties that lie behind these 'poems' of the Bible so often lost in translation and literalized in this overly scientific day and age of ours.

The poems, with the commentary provided by Kugel, come alive on the page and Kugel's knowledge and enthusiasm for the material is obvious on each and every page. A worthy addition to any collection.

This book (interestingly enough written as a textbook for the second half of Professor Kugel's Introduction to the Bible Course) is a beautiful book examining the wonders of Biblical Poetry. As Kugel notes, the poems have none of the classic poetic elements in English of meter or rhyme, but do have this wonderful ____A____|____B____|| element to them. He carefully walks the reader through how the bridge between A and B is important, and develops in a scholarly but totally readable way how the poem generates meaning. Anyone interseted in understanding further how the Bible works, and how it applies to our life should read this book.

Kugel provides his own translations of various poems from the Hebrew bible and discusses their historical background, theological issues, literary features, and issues pertaining to translation. When relevant, he brings in related verses. So, for example, the discussion of psalm 104 calls up similar verses in psalms 147, 139, 33, and 8 so the reader can compare and contrast them. I don't know any Hebrew so I can't judge the quality of the translations but I found them revealing.

The chapter on psalm 23 is worth the price of the book on its own as it provides many insights into how Hebrew words get converted into English. He explains, for example, the line translated in the King James version as "I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever" could be more literally translated as dwelling or perhaps returning for a length of days! He then goes on to explain why the King James version of this line is correct and the theological implications of that statement.

On occasion, he offers opinions that seem, to me, to be unconventional but all of the opinions are pious. A few chapters are less satisfactory; I was mystified, for example, by his discussion of The Song of Songs.

Kugel's writing is clear, even lucid. He assumes only minimal knowledge of the Bible. General readers should find it easy to follow.

Non-fiction- a series of essays.

While this book dwells on forms of Biblical poetry, it's main focus is on taking the more famous poetic sections of the Old Testament and using them to examine the beliefs, ideals and lives of the people of ancient Israel. It definitely introduced me to what scholars consider are the best poems of the Old Testament. However it's not so much about poetry itself but about interpreting religion through poetry. Interesting, but not what I expected.

All in all, Great Poems of the Bible is a smart, thoughtful and well-written tome. Although, at times, it gets a little dry and academic. To be fair, I think it was written with academic readers in mind.

I got this book because I wanted to learn more about the writing of the Old Testament, and it definitely helped in that department. I also learned a lot about life and philosophy and theology of the times in which the Old Testament was written.

Some interesting ideas that I ran across:

People who lived in ancient times felt much closer to God than we do today. (Their God was not in some far off heaven, removed and looking down)

Some ancient theologians believed that our souls are on loan to us from God- and when we die he gets them back.

That ancient Hebrew and Near-Eastern scholars regarded wisdom not as a personal quality, but as a mysterious, static pattern or puzzle either created by or discovered by God. So- in their world view- getting wisdom didn't make you any smarter than anyone else, it just meant that you had somehow discovered or gained a glimpse of the master pattern/ puzzle. Thus "getting wisdom" was less like learning something and more like going somewhere. An easier way to understand the distinction between our modern view of wisdom and their ancient one is that, in their estimation, wisdom would still be around whether or not there was anyone around to learn about it.

That rather than use long discourses like their Greek counterparts, ancient Hebrew and Near Eastern thinkers preferred their knowledge in tiny two-part sayings and poems called "meshalim". Meshalim sounds (to me) like a kind of like modular knowledge: highly portable, easy to memorize and to disseminate. It's like knowledge with a different, heartier DNA structure than what we're used to. Although (again) simply knowing these proverbs didn't make you wise, but it might give you a chance to glimpse wisdom.

Learned that big chunks of the original Book of Lamentations were written in an acrostic style. Which is to say the first line begins with the old Hebrew letter equivalent of the letter A. The next line begins with the Hebrew letter B and so on.

Overall, a good read, although a little clunky and dry in places, and I thought it might have been helpful for Kugel (the author) to maybe have consulted with a poet so there could be more written about the lanuage and play of the wordcraft itself.

though often they seemed to me to display a keen grasp of the obvious. I liked the first couple of essays the best: these focused on the theological "big picture" emphasizing that ancient Jews were more aware than many moderns of God's bigness and humans' own smallness, and describing the soul as God's "double agent" within us (i.e. the part of us most connected to the Divine).

James Kugel is one of the world's great experts on Biblical literature. In this work he translates a selection of Biblical poetry with the hope of providing a real introduction and feeling of the subject. He makes the point that there are Biblical texts which it is difficult to really classify either as poetry or prose but others which have clearly the special vitality and intensity of poetry. He does not translate all of Tehillim( Psalms) but chooses those which have special meaning for him, 104, 42, 29, 51,23, 137,119. He also translates what he calls Biblical ' one- line poetry' primarily from Ecclesiastes and Proverbs.He has a section from the Song of Songs, from Micah, Isaiah, Ecclesiastes, Jeremiah,Amos, Job, Judges, Samuel I. In an illuminating introduction he talks about the various styles of Biblical poetry from the pastoral direct country style of Amos to the magnificent overwhelming sophistication of Isaiah. He also speaks insightfully about the difficulties of translation and makes the interesting point that peoples of another time 'see and feel things through the language' that we do not. His love of the poetry and knowledge of it is apparent.

A wonderful book.

Some examples from the section on one- line poetry.

" Like the sound of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools." Ecclesiastes

"If a tree falls to the sourth or to the north, wherever it falls, there it is. " Ecclesiastes

" A good man's name is a blessing, but a wicked man's name rots. Proverbs.

" One who grabs a dog by the ears, a passerby who meddles in a dispute not hi own."

" The north wind gives birth to the rain , and secret speech to an angry face." Proverbs

"A name is better than scented oil, and the day of death than the day of one's birth . Ecclesiastes.

The best part of the book is the discussion of the problems in

Bible translation and the need to be sensitive to Biblical idiom.

As to the Bible translation itself, I focus most significantly on the problems in the Song of Solomon. Here, the author concedes that he flagrantly deviates from the text on the ground that no one (e.g. himself) understands the poet's motives in choice of words. This is absurd Bible translation. Indeed

in just several verses of the poem, I discovered no less than

twenty serious errors.