How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now Paperback – October 21, 2008

A fascinating look at ancient and modern biblical scholarship. It leads us through the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament and reports on interpretations as well as results of historical, archaeological, and linguistic research into its stories. This is given by a man who categorizes himself as an Orthodox Jew. I could imagine he is not entirely popular in that camp. He will certainly not have friends in literalist Christian circles.The book explores origin, historicity, and interpretations of the familiar stories and words. Linguistics and archaeology have made significant contributions, but many important questions seem not to have been answered once and for all. Maybe they never will. Questions like 'who wrote these texts?' have been answered in too many different ways to leave us with a clear conclusion. We don't know for sure, if key persons like Abraham, Moses, Joshua, or even David really existed, or if they are mere giants of mythology. Or if anything like the exodus happened. Or the conquering of Canaan by an invading Israel. Or if the alleged wisdom of King Solomon has a base in truth. (Mustn't he rather have been quite a loser, in view of the breaking up of his kingdom as soon as he was gone?)What about the beginnings of monolatry and monotheism? No definite answers.Which child did Isaiah's prophecy, about the child that will be born, that Christmas lore likes to emphasize, refer to, actually? And more of the kind.I recommend this book if you want to update yourself on the various disputes about biblical interpretation.How does the author reconcile the findings, that he reports here, with his personal religious attitude? He doesn't. '...modern biblical scholarship and traditional Judaism are and must always remain completely irreconcilable.'In the last chapter, the author admits to his personal contradiction: his religious self considers modern Bible research irrelevant. A split mind.My headline is a quote from page 411. The chapter deals with the kingless period of Israel. Whether the author meant to comment on modern politics in Israel or the US is not clear to me.

This book is written in order to explore two broad themes: how did faithful Jews and Christians read the Bible in the centuries leading up to the beginnings of modern archaeology and textual criticism; and how has the work of these technical experts put a new spin on the texts and challenged what we believed? Kugel does not try to reconcile the two. But if you would like a clearly written, concise explanation of the differences between those two camps, this book does a bang-up job.

A better title for the book would be "How to Read the Old Testament." The book only covers the Old Testament and is very informative. A fascinating study of the Old Testament of the Bible, which is considered the books for the Jewish religion, and a preface for the Christian religion. This is a great book and I am glad that I took the opportunity to buy and read this book. The author writes in a very understandable book about a difficult subject. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to know and understand the Jewish religion and what influenced the Christian religion. One of the very few books that I consider worth rereading over and over again.

What a refreshing and invaluable book! Kugel is a magnificent explicator who succeeds in making the historical and religious stew of the "Old Testament" come alive in all its complexity. Only quibble is with the publisher (Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster): my edition of the book (2007 paperback) is lacking a whole "signature" of pages, from pp. 263 through 294. Be sure to check that your copy includes those pages.

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.