[NGFP-BookClub] Questions

[James Kugel]

    Dear Mr. Greenfield:
    
    Thanks for the questions.
    
    The main "other" way of approaching these stories is the one that
I've alluded to from time to time, namely, the way of modern,
university-style biblical scholars. Their goal is to try to read these
stories in their original historical context -- to read them, in other
words, the way their original audience would have understood them. Such
a reading requires familiarity with the world in which these texts
arose, so modern biblical scholars have focused on the history and
literature of ancient Israel's neighbors, especially the writings
recovered from Mesopotamia (today's Iraq) and, to a lesser extent,
ancient Egypt and other neighboring lands. They also have to know
everything that scholars have been able to reconstruct about the Bible's
own composition -- this part was written by X, this part by Y, and so
forth -- in order to understand what might stand behind a particular
story or why it might originally have been told.
    
    You can find all these things explained in literally dozens of books
called "Introduction to the Old Testament" or the like. A very popular
recent entry into the field is Richard Freedman's "Who Wrote the Bible?"
    
    The trouble with these books is that, basically, the Bible ends up
sounding very unbiblical. It's just another ancient Near Eastern text,
parts of it copied from Mesopotamian literature, most of it more about
politics than morality or theology. Which brings me back to the ancient
interpreters and their assumptions. I'm not sure the point has had a
chance to sink in, but it's really those 4 assumptions that made the
Bible what it is, that made the Bible biblical, so to speak. For
centuries and centuries -- not only in the time of ancient interpreters,
but through the Middle Ages and almost up to the present time -- people
effortlessly adopted those 4 assumptions as their own. The problem
nowadays is that modern biblical scholarship is making it more and more
difficult to accept them. What modern scholars say about the Bible may
make us uncormfortable, but a lot of it seems to be true.
    
    2nd question is easier: Most of the books by ancient interpreters
that we've been talking about were written in Hebrew or Aramaic, though
they survive in Greek, Latin, Ethiopic, etc. translations (except for a
few books like Jubilees; parts of the Hebrew original have turned up
among the Dead Sea Scrolls). These translations have in turn been
translated into English several times over the last century. Right now,
there is an old, but still good, anthology of them by R. H. Charles, The
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. I think parts of it
are easily found on the internet. You can buy a more modern, two-volume
set of translations by James Charlesworth, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.
And I'm currently editing a new edition of most of these text with two
colleagues, Lawrence Schiffman and Louis Feldman. Due out in 2008!
    
    _____________
    James Kugel
    11 Efrayim St.
    93621 Jerusalem
    Israel
    Tel. 972 2 672-2197
    Fax. 972 2 673-3027
    
    -----Original Message-----
From: ngfp-bookclub-admin@lists.ngfp.org
[mailto:ngfp-bookclub-admin@lists.ngfp.org] On Behalf Of David Greenfeld
Sent: Sunday, May 08, 2005 6:29 AM
To: ngfp-bookclub@lists.ngfp.org
Subject: [NGFP-BookClub] Questions
    
    Dear Dr. Kugel
    
    I am enjoying reading your responses to the questions.
    I hope this one isn't too "hard."
    
    You mention in your book and in answers you have
    written here that these early interpeters made certain
    assumptions about the Bible. In the course of the
    discussion here there has been some "controversy"
    about these assumptions. For those of us who don't
    share the assumptions of these early interpreters,
    what is a good way to approach the reading of these
    Biblical stories?
    
    Hmmm. Thats a hard one I think. Here is an easier one.
    What are currently the best translations available for
    the books you mention and were any written in Hebrew
    and available in that language?
    
    Thanks.
    
    
    		
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