How to Read the Bible

Do you have some doubts about the content of the Bible? How should we interpret the many stories that this fascinating book tells, how much is reality and how much is invented, or interpreted into these stories, that have been retold many times and finally were written down, translated and changed over the decades?

If this is something you would like to learn more about, then the audiobook by James L. Kugel might be a good starting point. Kugel is a controversial person and with his book “How to Read the Bible” he stirred up quite storm.

His credentials are excellent, he is chair of the Institute for the History of the
Jewish Bible at Bar Ilan University in Israel and the Harry M. Starr Professor
Emeritus of Classical and Modern Hebrew Literature at Harvard University. He analyzes the contents of the Bible and has developed a few thesis that not everybody likes:

In How to Read the Bible, Harvard professor James Kugel leads the listener through the “quiet revolution” of recent biblical scholarship, showing how radically the interpretations of today’s researchers differ from what people have always thought.

The story of Adam and Eve, it turns out, was not originally about the “Fall of Man,” but about the move from a primitive, hunter-gatherer society to a settled, agricultural one. As for the stories of Cain and Abel, Abraham and Sarah, and Jacob and Esau, they were not about individual people at all but, rather, explanations of Israelite society as it existed centuries after these figures were said to have lived.

In the earliest version of the Exodus story, Moses probably did not divide the Red Sea in half; instead, the Egyptians perished in a storm at sea.

Whatever the original Ten Commandments might have been, scholars are quite sure they were different from the ones we have today.

What’s more, the people long supposed to have written various books of the Bible were not their real authors: David did not write the Psalms, Solomon did not write Proverbs.

Such findings pose a problem for adherents of traditional, Bible-based faiths. Hiding from the discoveries of modern scholars seems dishonest, but accepting them means undermining much of the Bible’s reliability and authority as the word of God. What to do?

In his search for a solution, Kugel leads the listener back to ancient biblical interpreters who flourished at the end of the biblical period. Far from naive, these interpreters consciously set out to depart from the original meaning of the Bible’s various stories and prophecies – and they, Kugel argues, hold the key to solving the dilemma of reading the Bible today.

How to Read the Bible is, quite simply, the best, most original audiobook about the Bible in decades. Clear, often funny, but deeply serious in its purpose, this is a book for Christians and Jews, believers and secularists alike.

If you keep an open mind and listen to what James Kugel says, then you may find that reading the Bible has just become that much more interesting and captivating.

His interpretations do not take away from the religious foundation there is in the Bible, but he sheds light on some of the free interpretations and additions or possible omissions that might have taken place over time, every time the Bible was edited.

Tags: adam and eve, bible, bible reading, bible study, cain and abel, christianity, james kugel, judaism, psalms, ten commandments