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....
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 T...
James Kugel's The Bible As It Was (1997) has been welcomed with universal praise. Here now is the full scholarly edition of this wonderfully rich and illuminating work, expanding the author's findings into an incomparable reference work.
Focusing on two dozen core stories in the Pentateuch--from the Creation and Tree of Knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and journey to the Promised Land--James Kugel shows us how the earliest interpreters of the scriptures radically transformed the Bible and made it into the book that has come down to us today. Kugel explains how and why...
James Kugel's The Bible As It Was (1997) has been welcomed with universal praise. Here now is the full scholarly edition of this wonderfully...
What should a Jew consider before marrying a non-Jew? What should a Jew know about Hebrew? What does it mean to keep the Sabbath? In the Medieval period, young Jews found answers to their most pressing questions about Judaism in The Book of the Kuzari. That book, written in the form of a dialogue, addressed an array of questions that led from explanations of everyday practices to the depth and grandeur of the Torah.
On Being a Jew brings The Book of the Kuzari up to date. In a conversational format, it answers basic questions about the purposes of ritual, the duties of study, work, and home...
What should a Jew consider before marrying a non-Jew? What should a Jew know about Hebrew? What does it mean to keep the Sabbath? In the Medieval peri...
Is there poetry in the Bible? Does it have rhyme or meter? How did ancient Hebrew writers compose their works? James Kugel's provocative study provides surprising new answers to these age-old questions. Biblical -poetry- is not a concept native to the Bible itself, he proposes, and the idea that the Bible is divided into prose and verse is merely an approximation of the reality of biblical style. Arguing that the Bible presents a continuum of speech heightened in varying degrees by different means, Kugel sets out to describe Hebrew's high style on its own terms. He also offers a thorough...
Is there poetry in the Bible? Does it have rhyme or meter? How did ancient Hebrew writers compose their works? James Kugel's provocative study prov...
These essays, by some of today's greatest scholars of Judaism and Hellenism in antiquity, explore a variety of ways in which these two great civilizations interacted. The common focus of these studies is the transition from one culture to the next - how words or concepts or conventions from the one came to be transplanted, and often modified in the process, in the other. Taken together, however, they provide something broader: a large, variegated picture of the cultural interaction that was to prove so crucial for the later history of Judaism and Christianity.
These essays, by some of today's greatest scholars of Judaism and Hellenism in antiquity, explore a variety of ways in which these two great civilizat...
The essays in this Festschrift honor James L. Kugel for his contribution to the field of biblical studies, in particular early biblical interpretation.The essays are organized in three roughly chronological categories.The first group treats some part of the Tanakh, ranging from the creation and Abraham stories of Genesis to the evolving conception of sacred writing in the prophetic literature.The second set of essays focuses chiefly on the literature of Second Temple Judaism, including Qumran and extra-biblical literature.The last group concerns the scriptural imagination at work in rabbinic...
The essays in this Festschrift honor James L. Kugel for his contribution to the field of biblical studies, in particular early biblical interpretation...
The first part of this book is an extensive verse-by-verse commentary on the Book of Jubilees. Kugel's stated aim is "to understand what the text is saying and why it is saying it," and in particular to explore the numerous bits of biblical interpretation found in Jubilees and their connection to other exegetical writings of the Second Temple period. Subsequent chapters focus on the possibility that Jubilees had more than one author, as well as on the book's specific relationship to four other Second Temple texts: the Genesis Apocryphon, the Aramaic Levi Document, 4Q225 Pseudo-Jubilees, and...
The first part of this book is an extensive verse-by-verse commentary on the Book of Jubilees. Kugel's stated aim is "to understand what the text is s...
Louis H. Feldman James L. Kugel Lawrence H. Schiffman
Customers in Europe should contact Combined Academic Publishers to order a copy of this book.
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The Hebrew Bible is only part of ancient Israel s writings. Another collection of Jewish works has survived from late- and post-biblical times, a great library that bears witness to the rich spiritual life of Jews in that period. This library consists of the most varied sorts of texts: apocalyptic visions and prophecies, folktales and legends, collections of wise sayings, laws and rules of conduct, commentaries on Scripture, ancient prayers, and much, much...
Customers in Europe should contact Combined Academic Publishers to order a copy of this book.
