The Bible As It Was

Front Cover
Harvard University Press, 1997 - Bibles - 680 pages

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.

From inside the book

Contents

The World of Ancient Biblical Interpreters
1
The Creation of the World
53
Adam and
67
Death in a Day The Punishment Was Mortality
75
Cain and Abel
85
Noah and the Flood
97
The Heavenly Scribe Enoch the Sage
107
Noah Warned of the Flood
114
Which Ten Commandments? No Talk of Weekday Matters
388
Moses Was Given More than the Torah
402
Other Nations Knew Anyway Other Nations at Fault
412
Worship in the Wilderness
439
Trouble along the
461
Moses Accused of Favoritism
471
The Bronze Serpent Balaam and Phinehas
477
The Star Will Precede the Scepter Balaam Counseled Seduction
496

The Tower of Babel
121
Abraham Journeys from Chaldea
131
Lot and Lots Wife
179
Jacob and Esau
197
Jacob and the Angel
215
Dinah
231
Josephs Ups and Downs
245
Jacobs Sons in Egypt
263
Growing Up in Pharaohs Court
285
The Exodus from Egypt
309
The Red
331
Into the Wilderness
363
At Mt Sinai
371
Necessary Paperwork No DivorceExcept for Indecency
519
Not in Heaven Anymore
525
Heaven and Earth Were Already Witnesses
535
Not Want to Die Moses Disputed with an Angel
542
Afterword
549
Abbreviations
563
309
579
Bibliography
617
51
633
439
637
Illustration Credits
647
549
654
Copyright

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About the author (1997)

James L. Kugel is a Professor at Bar-Ilan University.