How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now

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Simon and Schuster, 01 մյս, 2012 թ. - 848 էջ
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.”

From inside the book

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The Creation of the Worldand of Adam and Eve
47
Cain and Abel
58
The Great Flood
69
The Tower of Babel
81
The Call of Abraham
89
Two Models of God and the God of Old
107
The Trials of Abraham
119
Jacob and Esau
133
Judges and Chiefs
386
The Other Gods of Canaan
417
Samuel and Saul
436
The Psalms of David
458
David the King
474
Solomons Wisdom
493
North and South
519
The Book of Isaiahs
538

Jacob and the Angel
152
Dinah
163
Joseph and His Brothers
176
Moses in Egypt
198
The Exodus
217
A Covenant with God
233
The Ten Commandments
250
A Religion of Laws
260
Worship on the Road
280
P and D
296
On the Way to Canaan
317
Moses Last Words
335
Joshua and the Conquest of Canaan
364
Jeremiah
569
Ezekiel
598
Twelve Minor Prophets
617
Job and Postexilic Wisdom
635
Daniel the Interpreter
644
After Such Knowledge
662
Picture Credits
691
A Note to the Reader
692
Notes
693
Subject Index
773
Verses Cited
809
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James L. Kugel served as the Starr Professor of Hebrew at Harvard from 1982 to 2003, where his course on the Bible was regularly one of the most popular on campus, enrolling more than nine hundred students. A specialist in the Hebrew Bible and its interpretation, he now lives in Jerusalem. His recent books include The God of Old, In the Valley of the Shadow and the forthcoming The Great Change.

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