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How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now Hardcover – September 11, 2007

4.6 out of 5 stars 281

A reader's companion to the Bible draws on classic interpretations as well as modern scholarship to explain how the Bible may also be a metaphorical reflection of anthropological history, in a guide that covers such topics as the fates of Israelites who remained behind in Canaan and the correlation between the commandments and the Code of Hammurabi. 30,000 first printing.

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From 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. (Sept.)
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From Booklist

Kugel intends his book as a tour through the Hebrew Bible based on an introductory course he taught at Harvard University for more than 20 years. His first aim is to acquaint readers with the contents of the Bible itself, and he points out that by the end of his introductory course, readers will have met all the major biblical figures: Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Miriam, Aaron, and Solomon, to name just a few. The book also covers all the major events, from the story of Adam and Eve to the Exodus from Egypt, the Babylonian exile, and Israel's eventual return to its homeland. The book not only focuses on what the text says but on the larger question of what a modern reader is to make of it. Geared to both the specialist and the general reader, this is an indispensable guide to a complex subject. Cohen, George

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Free Press; 3rd edition (September 11, 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 848 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 074323586X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0743235860
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.25 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.5 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 281

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James L. Kugel
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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

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
281 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2007
`How to Read the Bible' by the former Starr Professor of Hebrew at Harvard University is about as different from the similarly titled `How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth' by New Testament professor, Gordon D. Fee and Old Testament professor, Douglas Stuart, and still be a superb read for anyone, especially lay readers, who are interested in understanding the Hebrew scriptures.
Yes, this book deals exclusively with Professor Kugel's specialty, the Old Testament, while the Fee / Stuart book deals with both Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
Another huge difference is that Professor Kugel not only advises us on how to read the scriptures today, he outlines how they have been read since they were first gathered together, sometime around the return from the Babylonian exile in 538 BCE. The big surprise to us lay readers is that these scriptures were not taken as the perfect inspiration from God, with every statement literally, or at least figuratively true, given the right amount of interpretation. Professor Kugel does not make this comparison, but I suspect that the attitude toward much of the scriptures was very similar to the Achaeans' (early Greeks) attitude toward Homer's `Iliad' and `Odyssey', as national epic poems. Even without modern archeology, it would not have been difficult to detect anachronisms and downright errors when, for example, a Psalm attributed to King David describes events which happened 500 years after his death.
The attitude of `high reverence' for the scriptures developed shortly after the last book, `Daniel', was added to the canon, the era of the last prophet Ezra, and the Maccabean revolt. This fits remarkably into the picture we have of the state of Judaism at the time of Jesus, and Jesus criticisms of the priests and Pharisees for their excessive dedication to a strict reading of the scriptures and the intense interpretation to which the scriptures, especially the law of the Torah was put.
The overall plan of the book is based on instructing us on how to read the scriptures `by example'. Of the 36 chapters, all but the first and the last deal with books, such as Psalms, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel and individual episodes from books, such as chapters on the episodes of Cain and Able, Noah and the flood, and the tower of Babel from Genesis.
The first chapter introduces us, in a novel fashion, to the rise of modern Bible criticism over the last 200 years, by recounting the trial of Professor Charles Augustus Briggs by the ruling body of the American Presbyterian church, for making strongly positive comments about the type of scholarship he saw in Germany, where the strong tradition of Luther fueled critical studies of both old and new Testaments.
The last chapter summarizes all the points detailed in the individual studies throughout the rest of the book.
It is easy for those whose Christian beliefs run to the more conservative to dismiss this book and its findings out of hand. For those, I may point out that Professor Kugel is a devout Orthodox! Jew, now living in Jerusalem, who has no problem maintaining his faith and his analytical approach to his subject.
For the lay reader, Kugel's text is eminently readable, as almost all the scholarly impedimenta are relegated to endnotes and the usual index to the scriptures in an appendix. For the Christian reader, there is much here to enlighten. Even Luther had deep interest in much of the Old Testament, especially Genesis and Psalms. It would be really interesting to read Luther's commentary on Genesis in the light of Kugel's information.
If there is anything in this book which reaffirms my own inclinations to Bible study, it is the attention to external archeological information. This is most famously represented by the discovery, in the early 19th century, of the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh, which has a flood episode which predates the writing of Genesis by almost a thousand years. And, many passages in Genesis' account of the flood seem to almost be copied idea for idea, from the Gilgamesh. This `borrowing' is made more plausible by the fact that while the sub-desert heights of Judea received very little rainfall, the delta of the Tigris - Euphrates probably floods quite often, albeit not as often as the dependable Nile.
Anyone with any interest at all in understanding the Old Testament really needs to read this book to have the advantage of the broadest possible perspective on issues regarding the origins and interpretation of these scriptures.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2007
There's a phenomenon at large, prestigious colleges and universities that I think it peculiar to that kind of institution (although my experience of others is limited, and I can't be sure). I call it "Rock Star Professors." They are people whose lectures are performances in the best sense of the word. These professors are enlightening, amusing, and charismatic and a great many students sign up for their classes even if they don't have any interest in the subject matter.

James L. Kugel, now at Bar Ilan University in Israel, was just such a Rock Star Professor during the over 20 years he taught at Harvard. His introduction to the Bible course regularly drew 900 students, many of them not particularly interested in religion. When the enrollment for his course surpassed the similarly popular introductory economics course taught by John Kenneth Galbraith, the headline in the Harvard Crimson read "God Beats Mammon."

I've never had the opportunity to hear Kugel lecture, but if his new book How to Read the Bible is representative of his work, he is certainly engaging, enlightening and charismatic in print, as well. As it happens the subject matter is of great interest to me, but it's also something that can be written in a deadly dull style and Kugel completely avoids that.

His task in this book is to look at the Hebrew Bible (in English translation) from two distinct points of view: that of the people he calls the "ancient interpreters" (both Christian and Jewish) and that of modern biblical scholarship (incorporating linguistic, archaeological, and historical findings into our understanding). He begins by saying that, as an Orthodox Jew, the findings of modern scholarship that show that the Bible was written by a variety of people at a variety of times and that some of the "historical" sections could not represent actual history were very disturbing to him. He had some misgivings and indecision about entering into academic biblical scholarship as his life work. OTOH, Kugel expounds, he didn't feel he could just ignore what others had found out and he needed to come to some sort of modus vivendi that allowed him to continue to live an observant life and accept this information. From the totally opposite point of view, he points out that an understanding of how the Bible has been interpreted through history in both Jewish and Christian views is essential to understanding much of Western literature, art, and culture, so it's insufficient to just acquaint oneself with modern scholarship.

So Kugel compares and contrasts the two approaches, and does so with the genius of a great storyteller and showman. The Bible is - among other things - a collection of great stories and he tells them with aplomb and with an appreciation for the contrast between the traditional and scholarly views. Was the story of Adam and Eve one of the Fall of Man, as traditionally interpreted, or an etiological tale about the movement from hunter/gatherer society to a more agrarian culture, as archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests? Why are there three different "wife/sister" stories in the Bible, where a patriarch tries to pass his wife off as his sister? Who wrote the Psalms and what was their original purpose? Was David king of a great nation, protege of King Saul, and a flawed human being in his private life, or an upstart who launched a military coup and took over a small chiefdom? Did he even exist? Kugel expounds on all these questions with insight, skill, and frequent laugh-out-loud humor.

How to Read the Bible is a fascinating book and chock full of Fun Facts to Know and Tell. Most of all, I found it left me feeling like I'd love to have James Kugel for a dinner guest. Or, barring that, at least get to be one of those 900 students listening to the Rock Star Professor.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2009
This is a textbook of over 800 pages. The Bible is a foundation for the three major religions of the world whose adherents number some 50% of the entire world population. The authors are not well known and most of the text is attributed but not positively identified and many of the words are not entirely clear. The best attraction is the sense of order and law and not only for people but also for animals.

If you assume that the text was written or inspired by a superior intelligence then the task is to try to understand the source. Kugel's book is an excellent source of biblical knowledge. It is certainly worth the effort. At my present pace it will take several years. I have studied the Bible and taught it for a very long time as an avocation. Since my childhood studies in Hebrew the text has been something I never set aside.
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Top reviews from other countries

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GreenShoes
5.0 out of 5 stars Good commentary
Reviewed in Canada on April 19, 2018
Quite readable although he sometimes skips portions, just to keep the book from being 2,000 pages
Paulo Leite
5.0 out of 5 stars Poder-se-á chegar a Ele somente pela fé, e dificilmente pela razão sugere Kugel
Reviewed in Brazil on March 19, 2017
Não é novidade para ninguém - pelo menos para quem lê a Bíblia de forma um pouco cética - que o Livro está cheio de contradições e eventos inverossímeis. Ao invés de fazer uma desconstrução do Antigo Testamento, Kugel nos dá uma magistral turnê erudita (35 capítulos), ainda que muito espirituosa, por meio da pesquisa. Se ler a Bíblia exige uma suspensão da descrença - Moisés transformou o Nilo em sangue? Josué parou o sol ao meio-dia? Sansão matou 1.000 homens com a mandíbula de um burro? - então "como ler a Bíblia" levará o leitor a uma suspensão da crença. Kugel revisa a "hipótese documental" que demonstra de forma bastante conclusiva que os cinco primeiros livros da Bíblia não foram escritos por uma única pessoa (Moisés, de acordo com a tradição), mas na verdade foram quatro ou talvez cinco escritores diferentes. Kugel vai além ao apontar o plágio da Bíblia de fontes não-israelitas anteriores: leis copiadas do código de Hamurabi; pedaços da história da inundação de Noé levantada do “Épico de Gilgamesh (veja resenha); profecias de Ezequiel inspirado nos templos do Oriente Médio. Ele mesmo sugere que os Dez Mandamentos foram derivados em parte dos antigos tratados hititas. Enfim, Kugel propõe, em uma linguagem de fácil compreensão, duas maneiras diferentes de ler a Bíblia. Na primeira, ele nos mostra como a Bíblia foi lida pelos "antigos intérpretes", escritores que viveram cem anos antes e depois do nascimento de Jesus, quando ainda estava sendo codificada. A maneira de ler a Bíblia - a suposição de seus erros, a crença de que a escritura nos ensina lições morais, e a fé na autoria divina - é a maneira que muitos de nós ainda a vê nos dias de hoje. Na segunda, Kugel nos mostra como a Bíblia é entendida pelos estudiosos modernos, e de que maneira nos últimos 150 anos usou-se a arqueologia, a linguística, a história, a antropologia e todas as outras ferramentas da ciência para escavar a verdade sobre o “Bom Livro”. Kugel começa "Como ler a Bíblia" dando a noção de dar pesos iguais aos dois métodos, mas logo deixa de lado os antigos intérpretes e se concentra na academia moderna, que é muito mais provocativa. Boa leitura!
2 people found this helpful
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Attilio Pirino
5.0 out of 5 stars Testo molto interessante
Reviewed in Italy on April 28, 2015
Pur non essendo un testo superficiale spiega, in modo facilmente comprensibile, l'origine delle diverse parti della Bibbia alla luce dell'evoluzione dell'esegesi e delle ricerche storiche più recenti. Illustra effettivamente in modo chiaro una chiave di lettura moderna e accreditata nel mondo accademico.
Ohcci
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent guide to the Old Testament
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 3, 2014
Somewhat to my surprise (I'm neither a Jew nor a Christian), this book is a great read. While being erudite it is written is a down-to-earth yet never less than interesting style which makes it a pleasure to dip into (or indeed read from cover to cover). It should be required reading for all idiot fundamentalists who think that a "holy" book can be read literally. The author makes no secret of the fact that he is a believing Jew, but this does not stop him from advancing a wide range of theories about the background of all the most important themes and stories in the Old Testament - be warned it does not, for obvious authorial reasons cover the New Testament.
3 people found this helpful
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Edward Stang
4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of good stuff
Reviewed in Canada on October 25, 2019
Lots of good stuff, but too complicated for this lay reader. In my opinion Professor Kugel really intimate with the Bible.