How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now (review)

At times it seems as if James L. Kugel wishes that scholars and interpreters would simply leave the Bible alone, and yet he also wants the reader to be aware of their contributions. In fact, he provides a cogent and often exhausting explanation of how critical scholarship has tried to map out the torturous editing process that produced the received text in this volume of over 800 pages, but he also seems to be signaling that much of this is not as important as the question of whether the Bible is still relevant to the modern faith communities of Judaism and Christianity. His frustration does surface when he talks about the Bible’s being “put under the microscope” and when he points to the “dazzling” analytical skills of modern scholars (p. 663), who have in only a century of work determined that not a “sentence of the Hebrew Bible continues to mean what it meant before.” But, of course, he also notes that ancient interpreters who emerged near the end of the biblical period had actually started this process of reading the text in the light of a set of four basic assumptions about what it actually “meant” to say. Thus instead of rewriting the text, they simply read as if it was an entirely different set of books based on their theological and social agenda.

To demonstrate his point that ancient interpreters ultimately came to the conclusion that “there was something considered even more important, more powerful, than the words of the text . . . the supreme mission of serving God” (p. 685), Kugel provides a wonderful intermingling of ancient and modern interpreters in his chronicle of the biblical story. That may in fact be his most important contribution to a marketplace filled with introductions to the Bible. His very transparent and entertaining style draws the reader through each story segment, detailing its various historical and/or literary features. Then he supplies the many times “more sublime” traditional interpretations or methods of reading the text (including those from rabbinic as well as early Christian sources) followed by a recital of more modern views, which in most cases are more mundane, if practical, evaluations of the events described in the story.

One example will suffice to demonstrate this method. In Chapter 22, on the book of Joshua, Kugel briefly outlines the story and then points out that early Christians thought of Joshua as the link to Jesus and the “new covenant.” He traces this interpretation further in the unusual episode dealing with Rahab the Harlot and her statement of faith to the spies. He cites Origen, Clement, Matt 1:5–6, and rabbinic sources (Mekhilta deR. Ishmael, Yitro 1), all of which add to the account in Joshua 2 and provide a theological underpinning to Rahab’s actual purpose in the story as a “foreshadowing” of the redemption to come through the “Lord’s blood” or as an integral link in the genealogy of David, several prophets, and Jesus (pp. 366–68). Such attention to the history of tradition is seldom included in standard introductions since most scholars are more interested in what the text says rather than what has been said about it. In this case, however, Kugel points up the desire of the interpreters to go beyond the text’s implicit storyline and to tie it to their assumptions about its actual meaning. Thus Rahab escapes the social label of prostitute and becomes a “mother” of two religious traditions.

In his attempt to take the Bible seriously and to explore the manner in which its texts “became the Bible,” Kugel ultimately returns to the four assumptions of the ancient interpreters. He sees this as the way in which Oral Torah was developed in Judaism. This body of traditions, which consisted of biblical interpretation plus the rules governing matters not in the Pentateuch (prayers, blessings, torts, purity statutes, marriage issues) eventually was written down in the...