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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