An extraordinary, pathbreaking scholarly achievement: an annotated
anthology of interpretations of ancient (mostly 100 B.C.-300 A.D.)
interpretations of the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew
Bible) culled from hundreds of sources. "Interpretation" here often
refers to the homiletical expansion of a biblical narrative - known
in the Jewish tradition as midrash - particularly to fill in
narrative gaps and vague allusions, or to resolve morally
problematic passages. Kugel, a professor of Hebrew literature and
the Bible at Harvard and Israel's Bar-Ilan University, notes in a
penetrating opening essay that his focus is on "exegetical motifs."
He notes basic principles that underlie ancient biblical
interpretation, including a view of the Scriptures as
"omnisignificant," that is, containing meaning in even the smallest
details. Jewish and Christian exegetes also expanded the prosaic to
lend greater resonance to seemingly minor matters. For example,
Rabbi Simeon Bar Yochai interpreted Deuteronomy 27:17, "Cursed be
he who displaces his neighbor's boundary-mark," and Proverbs 22:28,
"Do not displace that boundary mark of old set by your father," by
adding, "If you see a custom of your forefathers observed, do not
reject it." Thus, a law whose literal focus was on property was
homiletically expanded to emphasize the "boundary" of religious
tradition. Kugel's great achievement is to demonstrate again and
again, with hundreds of fascinating examples, how the integrity of
the text was both respected and reinterpreted by authors as varied
as those of the apocrypha, the earliest midrashim, and the Dead Sea
Scrolls, as well as the early Church fathers. His own interpretive
comments are consistently clear and engaging. This volume, which
will be savored by both Jewish and Christian lovers of Scripture,
richly illustrates Kugel's point that what we know as "the Bible"
is really a series of texts filtered through the imaginative
perceptions of its ancient exegetes. (Kirkus Reviews)
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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