Description: Kugel's The Bible As It Was has been universally praised. Here is the full scholarly edition, expanding the author's findings into an incomparable reference. Focusing on 24 core stories in the Pentateuch, Kugel shows us how the earliest interpreters of the scriptures radically transformed the Bible and made it into the book we know today.
Brief description: James L. Kugel is a Professor at Bar-Ilan University.
Review Quotes: Traditions of the Bible is a literary masterpiece. Nuanced presentations of multiple versions allow the reader to enter into the eddying flow of interpretation that, between the third century BC and the first century AD, eventually produced the Jewish Bible. We are there, in the Temple, in heightened conversation. Kugel is there to remind us of particular reasons, often fascinating in themselves (for example, the ambiguities of the Hebrew language) why a given story--say the story of Jacob and Esau--can have so many interpretations. Kugel suggests that the Bible, in all its echoing complexity, is the final result of a great effort of remembrance: a millennial attempt to remember what happened, and why, and what it was like, before IT happened, before that time. Could the Bible be a response to a devastating loss of cultural identity and memory as embodied in the Temple? Is that why this great book overflows with conflicting points of view?--Tom D'Evelyn "Providence Sunday Journal"