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How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now Hardcover – September 11, 2007
- Print length848 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFree Press
- Publication dateSeptember 11, 2007
- Dimensions6.5 x 1.5 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-10074323586X
- ISBN-13978-0743235860
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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
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,105,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,129 in Hebrew Bible
- #1,277 in Old Testament Criticism & Interpretation
- #3,031 in Old Testament Bible Study (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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.
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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.
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.
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.






