Is there poetry in the Bible? Does it have rhyme or meter? How did ancient Hebrew writers compose their works? James L. Kugel's provocative study provides surprising new answers to these age-old quest
Composed as a meandering dialogue between a wily Syrian-Jewish banker and an American graduate student of literature, this engaging book explains all the basic beliefs and practices of Judaism—Jewish
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 th
Rife with incest, adultery, rape, and murder, the biblical story of Jacob and his children must have troubled ancient readers. By any standard, this was a family with problems. Jacob's oldest son Reub
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. Taken together, a large, variegat
Kugel (emeritus, Hebrew literature, Harvard U.) begins with a verse-by-verse commentary on the Book of Jubilees, which in his opinion is the "...most interesting and important composition of late Seco
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
Scholars from different fields have joined forces to reexamine every aspect of the Hebrew Bible. Their research, carried out in universities and seminaries in Europe and America, has revolutionized o
In The Great Poems of the Bible, James Kugel, acclaimed Harvard scholar and former poetry editor of Harpers Magazine, selects eighteen essential poems from the Hebrew Bible and offers his own origina
Ten years ago, when Harvard professor James Kugel was diagnosed with an aggressive, likely fatal, form of cancer, “I was, of course, disturbed and worried. But the main change in my state of mind was
A world-renowned scholar reveals how a pivotal transformation in spiritual experience during the biblical era made us who we are today A great mystery lies at the heart of the Bible. Early on, people
Rife with incest, adultery, rape, and murder, the biblical story of Jacob and his children must have troubled ancient readers. By any standard, this was a family with problems. Jacob's oldest son Reub
Our notion of God today -- all-powerful, invisible, and omnipresent -- is not the same as the God of the Hebrew Bible. So who is this "God of Old?" And what is His place in the modern spiritual world?
A world-renowned scholar brings a lifetime of study to reveal how a pivotal transformation in spiritual experience during the Biblical Era made us who we are today Why does the Bible depict a world in
"An anthology of key texts of ancient Jewish literature from the Second Temple period, including commentary that links to the development of both Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity"--