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The Bible as it Was

by James L. Kugel

  • Hardback
  • 696 pages
  • Publisher: Harvard University Press
  • 16.3 x 25.1 x 3.7 cm

£27.37

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This is a guide to the Hebrew Bible. Leading the reader 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 detail in the Bible's stories, prophecies, and laws, they let their own theological and imaginative inclinations 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, longlost 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 the reader is shown all the major transformations of the text and the development of the Bible is recreated as it was at the start of the Common era, the Bible as we know it.
The Bible as it Was and Great Poems of the Bible
Great Poems of the BibleThe Bible as it Was

  • Author

    James L. Kugel

  • Book Format

    Hardback

  • Publisher

    Harvard University Press

  • Published

    November 1999

  • Edition

    New edition

  • Weight

    1096g

  • Page Count

    696

  • Dimensions

    16.3 x 25.1 x 3.7 cm

  • ISBN

    9780674069411

  • ISBN-10

    0674069412

  • Eden Code

    1153710

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