James L. Kugel's Books

The Bible As It Was

By: James L. Kugel

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This is a guide to the Hebrew Bible unlike any other. Leading us chapter by chapter through its most important stories--from the Creation and the Tree of Knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land--James Kugel shows how a group of anonymous, ancient interpreters radically transformed the Bible and made it into the book that has come down to us today. Was the snake in the Garden of Eden the devil, or the Garden itself "paradise"? Did Abraham discover monotheism, and was his son Isaac a willing martyr? Not until the ancient interpreters set to work. Poring over every little detail in the Bible's stories, prophecies, and laws, they let their own theological and imaginative inclinations radically transform the Bible's very nature. Their sometimes surprising interpretations soon became the generally accepted meaning. These interpretations, and not the mere words of the text, became the Bible in the time of Jesus and Paul or the rabbis of the Talmud. Drawing on such sources as the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Jewish apocrypha, Hellenistic writings, long-lost retellings of Bible stories, and prayers and sermons of the early church and synagogue, Kugel reconstructs the theory and methods of interpretation at the time when the Bible was becoming the bedrock of Judaism and Christianity. Here, for the first time, we can witness all the major transformations of the text and recreate the development of the Bible "As It Was" at the start of the Common era--the Bible as we know it.

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700

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674265238

ISBN 13

9780674265233

The Ladder of Jacob

Ancient Interpretations of the Biblical Story of Jacob and His Children

By: James L. Kugel

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The Ladder of Jacob

Ancient Interpretations of the Biblical Story of Jacob and His Children

By: James L. Kugel

Rife with incest, adultery, rape, and murder, the biblical story of Jacob and his children must have troubled ancient readers. By any standard, this was a family with problems. Jacob's oldest son Reuben is said to have slept with his father's concubine Bilhah. The next two sons, Simeon and Levi, tricked the men of a nearby city into undergoing circumcision, and then murdered all of them as revenge for the rape of their sister. Judah, the fourth son, had sexual relations with his own daughter-in-law. Meanwhile, jealous of their younger sibling Joseph, the brothers conspired to kill him; they later relented and merely sold him into slavery. These stories presented a particular challenge for ancient biblical interpreters. After all, Jacob's sons were the founders of the nation of Israel and ought to have been models of virtue. In The Ladder of Jacob, renowned biblical scholar James Kugel retraces the steps of ancient biblical interpreters as they struggled with such problems. Kugel reveals how they often fixed on a little detail in the Bible's wording to "deduce" something not openly stated in the narrative. They concluded that Simeon and Levi were justified in killing all the men in a town to avenge the rape of their sister, and that Judah, who slept with his daughter-in-law, was the unfortunate victim of alcoholism. These are among the earliest examples of ancient biblical interpretation (midrash). They are found in retellings of biblical stories that appeared in the closing centuries BCE--in the Book of Jubilees, the Aramaic Levi Document, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and other noncanonical works. Through careful analysis of these retellings, Kugel is able to reconstruct how ancient interpreters worked. The Ladder of Jacob is an artful, compelling account of the very beginnings of biblical interpretation.

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302

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Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691121222

ISBN 13

9780691121222

Traditions of the Bible

A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era

By: James L. KUGEL,James L Kugel

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Traditions of the Bible

A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era

By: James L. KUGEL,James L Kugel

From the creation and the tree of knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and the journey to the promised land; James Kugel shows us how the earliest interpreters of the scriptures radically transformed the Bible.

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1078

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Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674039769

ISBN 13

9780674039766

In the Valley of the Shadow

On the Foundations of Religious Belief

By: James L. Kugel

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In the Valley of the Shadow

On the Foundations of Religious Belief

By: James L. Kugel

The author invites readers to witness the exploration on religion that he undertook after being diagnosed with an aggressive, and likely fatal, form of cancer.

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Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1439130108

ISBN 13

9781439130100

How to Read the Bible

A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now

By: James L. Kugel

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How to Read the Bible

A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now

By: James L. Kugel

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.

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850

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

0743235878

ISBN 13

9780743235877

The Idea of Biblical Interpretation

Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel

By: James L. Kugel,Judith H. Newman,Judith Hood Newman

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The Idea of Biblical Interpretation

Essays in Honor of James L. Kugel

By: James L. Kugel,Judith H. Newman,Judith Hood Newman

In this Festschrift, James Kugel's creative scholarship in biblical interpretation provides the inspiration for a wide-ranging collection of essays that treat the history of Jewish and Christian scriptural interpretation from antiquity to the present

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632

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BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004136304

ISBN 13

9789004136304

How to Read the Bible

A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now

By: James L. Kugel

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How to Read the Bible

A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now

By: James L. Kugel

James Kugel’s essential introduction and companion to the Bible combines modern scholarship with the wisdom of ancient interpreters for the entire Hebrew Bible. As soon as it appeared, How to Read the Bible was recognized as a masterwork, “awesome, thrilling” (The New York Times), “wonderfully interesting, extremely well presented” (The Washington Post), and “a tour de force...a stunning narrative” (Publishers Weekly). Now, this classic remains the clearest, most inviting and readable guide to the Hebrew Bible around—and a profound meditation on the effect that modern biblical scholarship has had on traditional belief. Moving chapter by chapter, Harvard professor James Kugel covers the Bible’s most significant stories—the Creation of the world, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the flood, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and his wives, Moses and the exodus, David’s mighty kingdom, plus the writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other prophets, and on to the Babylonian conquest and the eventual return to Zion. Throughout, Kugel contrasts the way modern scholars understand these events with the way Christians and Jews have traditionally understood them. The latter is not, Kugel shows, a naïve reading; rather, it is the product of a school of sophisticated interpreters who flourished toward the end of the biblical period. These highly ideological readers sought to put their own spin on texts that had been around for centuries, utterly transforming them in the process. Their interpretations became what the Bible meant for centuries and centuries—until modern scholarship came along. The question that this book ultimately asks is: What now? As one reviewer wrote, Kugel’s answer provides “a contemporary model of how to read Sacred Scripture amidst the oppositional pulls of modern scholarship and tradition.”

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850

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1451689098

ISBN 13

9781451689099

But Where Is the Lamb?

Imagining the Story of Abraham and Isaac

By: James Goodman

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But Where Is the Lamb?

Imagining the Story of Abraham and Isaac

By: James Goodman

“I didn’t think he’d do it. I really didn’t think he would. I thought he’d say, whoa, hold on, wait a minute. We made a deal, remember, the land, the blessing, the nation, the descendants as numerous as the sands on the shore and the stars in the sky.” So begins James Goodman’s original and urgent encounter with one of the most compelling and resonant stories ever told—God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. A mere nineteen lines in the book of Genesis, it rests at the heart of the history, literature, theology, and sacred rituals of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For more than two millennia, people throughout the world have grappled with the troubling questions about sacrifice, authority, obedience, and faith to which the story gives rise. Writing from the vantage of “a reader, a son, a Jew, a father, a skeptic, a historian, a lover of stories, and a writer,” Goodman gives us an enthralling narrative history that moves from its biblical origins to its place in the cultures and faiths of our time. He introduces us to the commentary of Second Temple sages, rabbis and priests of the late antiquity, and early Islamic exegetes (some of whom imagined that Ishmael was the nearly sacrificed son). He examines Syriac hymns (in which Sarah stars), Hebrew chronicles of the First Crusade (in which Isaac often dies), and medieval English mystery plays. He looks at the art of Europe’s golden age, the philosophy of Kant and Kierkegaard, and the panoply of twentieth-century interpretation, sacred and profane, including the work of Bob Dylan, Elie Wiesel, and A. B. Yehoshua. In illuminating how so many others have understood this story, Goodman tells a gripping and provocative story of his own.

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321

Publisher

Schocken

Published Date

ISBN 10

0805242538

ISBN 13

9780805242539

A Walk Through Jubilees

Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation

By: James L. Kugel

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A Walk Through Jubilees

Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation

By: James L. Kugel

An extensive commentary on the Book of Jubilees, followed by a series of chapters exploring the possibility that the book had more than one author, as well as its relationship to the Genesis Apocryphon, the Aramaic Levi Document, 4Q225 Pseudo-Jubilees, and the writings of Philo of Alexandria.

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449

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BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004217681

ISBN 13

9789004217683

The Great Shift

Encountering God in Biblical Times

By: James L. Kugel

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The Great Shift

Encountering God in Biblical Times

By: James L. Kugel

The renowned author of How to Read the Biblereveals how a pivotal transformation in spiritual experience during the biblical era made us who we are today. A great mystery lies at the heart of the Bible. Early on, people seem to live in a world entirely foreign to our own. God appears to Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and others; God buttonholes Moses and Isaiah and Jeremiah and tells them what to say. Then comes the Great Shift, and Israelites stop seeing God or hearing the divine voice. Instead, later Israelites are “in search of God,” reaching out to a distant, omniscient deity in prayers, as people have done ever since. What brought about this change? The answers come from ancient texts, archaeology and anthropology, and even modern neuroscience. They concern the origins of the modern sense of self and the birth of a worldview that has been ours ever since. James Kugel, whose strong religious faith shines through his scientific reckoning with the Bible and the ancient world, has written a masterwork that will be of interest to believers and nonbelievers alike, a profound meditation on encountering God, then and now. “Fascinating.”—The New York Times Book Review “Biblical exegesis at its best: a brilliant and sensitive reading of ancient texts, all with an eye to making them meaningful to our time by making sense of what they meant in their own.”—Kirkus Reviews(starred review) “A magnificent job of bringing important ideas from the academy to a broad readership . . . Kugel gives readers a sense of history’s convoluted texture, its ironies, and thus its beauty.”—The Jewish Review of Books

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774

Publisher

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published Date

ISBN 10

0544520572

ISBN 13

9780544520578

Traditions of the Bible

A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era

By: James L. KUGEL,James L Kugel

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Traditions of the Bible

A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era

By: James L. KUGEL,James L Kugel

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1078

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674039769

ISBN 13

9780674039766

The God of Old

Inside the Lost World of the Bible

By: James L. Kugel

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The God of Old

Inside the Lost World of the Bible

By: James L. Kugel

One of the country's greatest Bible scholars reveals the very different God envisioned by early Israelites.

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291

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

0743235851

ISBN 13

9780743235853

The Great Shift

Encountering God in Biblical Times

By: James L. Kugel

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The Great Shift

Encountering God in Biblical Times

By: James L. Kugel

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774

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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ISBN 10

0544520572

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9780544520578

The Bible As It Was

By: James L. Kugel

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The Bible As It Was

By: James L. Kugel

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700

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Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674265238

ISBN 13

9780674265233

The Ladder of Jacob

Ancient Interpretations of the Biblical Story of Jacob and His Children

By: James L. Kugel

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The Ladder of Jacob

Ancient Interpretations of the Biblical Story of Jacob and His Children

By: James L. Kugel

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302

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Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691121222

ISBN 13

9780691121222

The Great Poems of the Bible

A Reader's Companion with New Translations

By: James L. Kugel

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The Great Poems of the Bible

A Reader's Companion with New Translations

By: James L. Kugel

From the Psalms to the Prophets, from job to Ecclesiastes, much of the Bible is written in poetry. The poems of the Bible include some of its best known and most beloved passages: "The Lord is my shepherd," "Let justice roll down like waters," "By the rivers of Babylon," "Remember your Creator," "Arise, shine, for thy light is come!" These poems live in the hearts of those who are familiar with the Bible and offer rich rewards to anyone who is approaching the world's greatest book for the first time. In The Great Poems of the Bible, Harvard scholar James Kugel presents original translations of the most beautiful and important poems of the Scripture. Taken together, these poems represent the very essence of the Hebrew Bible. Reading them one after another is like taking a guided tour through Scripture, meeting firsthand some of its most important teachings and opening the way to an understanding of the Bible as a whole. Each poem is accompanied by an eloquent and accessible explanation of the poem's language, and a reflection on its meaning. These learned, compact essays introduce readers to the broader spiritual world of ancient Israel. What did people in biblical times believe about God? Where is a person's soul located and what does it do? Is there an afterlife? How does one come to "know" God? Why wasn't Eve meant to be Adam's "helpmate" (Kugel shows how this was just a translator's slip-up), and what does the Bible have to say about the role of women? Kugel's sparkling translations of the poems, together with the fascinating insights that accompany them, distill the very best that the Bible and modern scholarship have to offer. Kugel brings new life to some of history's greatest poems, and offers a new look at a Bible we thought we already knew. Here, in one volume, is a "Bible's bible" that belongs in every home.

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354

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Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

145168908X

ISBN 13

9781451689082

In the Valley of the Shadow

On the Foundations of Religious Belief

By: James L. Kugel

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In the Valley of the Shadow

On the Foundations of Religious Belief

By: James L. Kugel

TEN YEARS AGO, Harvard professor James Kugel was diagnosed with an aggressive, likely fatal, form of cancer. “I was, of course, disturbed and worried. But the main change in my state of mind was that the background music had suddenly stopped—the music of daily life that’s constantly going, the music of infinite time and possibilities. Now suddenly it was gone, replaced by nothing, just silence. There you are, one little person, sitting in the late summer sun, with only a few things left to do.” Despite his illness, Kugel was intrigued by this new state of mind and especially the uncanny feeling of human smallness that came with it. There seemed to be something overwhelmingly true about it—and its starkness reminded him of certain themes and motifs he had encountered in his years of studying ancient religions. “This, I remember thinking, was something I should really look into further—if ever I got the chance.” In the Valley of the Shadow is the result of that search. In this wide-ranging exploration of different aspects of religion—interspersed with his personal reflections on the course of his own illness—Kugel seeks to uncover what he calls “the starting point of religious consciousness,” an ancient “sense of self” and a way of fitting into the world that is quite at odds with the usual one. He tracks these down in accounts written long ago of human meetings with gods and angels, anthropologists’ descriptions of the lives of hunter-gatherers, the role of witchcraft in African societies, first-person narratives of religious conversions, as well as the experimental data assembled by contemporary neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists. Though this different sense of how we fit into the world has largely disappeared from our own societies, it can still come back to us as a fleeting state of mind, “when you are just sitting on some park bench somewhere; or at a wedding, while everyone else is dancing and jumping around; or else one day standing in your backyard, as the sun streams down through the trees . . . ” Experienced in its fullness, this different way of seeing opens onto a stark, new landscape ordinarily hidden from human eyes. Kugel’s look at the whole phenomenon of religious beliefs is a rigorously honest, sometimes skeptical, but ultimately deeply moving affirmation of faith in God. One of our generation’s leading biblical scholars has created a powerful meditation on humanity’s place in the world and all that matters most in our lives. Believers and doubters alike will be struck by its combination of objective scholarship and poetic insight, which makes for a single, beautifully crafted consideration of life’s greatest mystery.

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258

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1439150559

ISBN 13

9781439150559

Biblical Theology

Issues, Methods, and Themes

By: James K. Mead

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Biblical Theology

Issues, Methods, and Themes

By: James K. Mead

In this, the first overview of biblical theology in nearly thirty years, James K. Mead addresses the core issues of biblical theology essential to both Old Testament and New Testament study. Can we draw theological principles from Scripture? What methods will give useful results for theological exploration of biblical texts? Aptly synthesizing classic and recent scholarship while asserting his own theological findings, Mead provides an excellent overview of the history of biblical theology and a thorough examination of its basic issues, methods, and themes.

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338

Publisher

Presbyterian Publishing Corp

Published Date

ISBN 10

0664229727

ISBN 13

9780664229726

The Great Poems of the Bible

A Reader's Companion with New Translations

By: James L. Kugel

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The Great Poems of the Bible

A Reader's Companion with New Translations

By: James L. Kugel

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354

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Simon and Schuster

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ISBN 10

145168908X

ISBN 13

9781451689082

A Teacher for All Generations

Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam

By: Eric Farrel Mason,James C. VanderKam

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A Teacher for All Generations

Essays in Honor of James C. VanderKam

By: Eric Farrel Mason,James C. VanderKam

This collection of essays honors James C. VanderKam on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday and twentieth year on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame"--

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Page Count

1004

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004215352

ISBN 13

9789004215351

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