James L. Kugel

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. Even before the Bible had attained its final form, its stories, songs, commandments, and prophecies had begun to be interpreted. A body of traditions about what the words meant quickly developed and took its place at the center of Judaism and Christianity. Kugel explains how and why the writers of this formative age of interpretation - roughly 200 B.C.E. to 150 C.E. - assumed such a significant role. Mining their writings - including the Dead Sea Scrolls, works of Philo and Josephus and letters of the Apostle Paul, and writings of the Apostolic Fathers and the rabbinic Sages - he quotes for us the seminal passages that uncover this crucial interpretive process.

This is a companion to the Bible like no other. Leading us chapter by chapter through key biblical stories - from Creation and the Tree of Knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and 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. Here, for the first time, we can witness the development of the Bible "As It Was" at the start of the common era - the Bible as we know it.

In this illuminating study of early biblical interpretation, James Kugel examines a series of exegetical stories that elaborate on the Joseph narrative in Genesis. These stories - which appear in such diverse sources as rabbinic midrash, early Christian writings, liturgical poetry, and the Quran - often contain details or whole incidents not found in the Bible itself. In tracing the development and function of these tales, Kugel reveals a dynamic interpretive process: the living, changing significance of texts through generations of discussion, analysis, and application.

A great mystery lies at the heart of the Bible. Early on, people seem to live in a world entirely foreign to our own. God appears to Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and others; He buttonholes Moses and Isaiah and Jeremiah and tells them what to say. Then comes the Great Shift, and Israelites stop seeing God or hearing His voice. Instead, later Israelites are "in search of God," reaching out to a distant, omniscient deity in prayers, as people have done ever since. What brought about this change? The answers come from the Bible and other ancient texts, archaeology and anthropology and recent advances in neuroscience. Ultimately, the book leads readers to the most basic matter of all, the nature of humanity's encounter with God from earliest times to our own day. The Great Shift is a landmark book, the culmination of a scholar's lifelong reckoning with the foundational text of Judaism and Christianity. James Kugel, whose religious conviction shines through his scientific exploration of the Bible and the ancient world, has written a masterwork for believers and nonbelievers alike, a profound meditation on the apprehension of God, then and now.

The author invites readers to witness the exploration on religion that he undertook after being diagnosed with an aggressive, and likely fatal, form of cancer.