How to Read the Bible

Preface

Preface Several years ago, I mentioned to an acquaintance that I was writing a book called How to Read the Bible. He said: “What’s so hard about reading the Hebrew Bible? You read it top to bottom, left to right.” We had a good laugh after I pointed out that (1) Hebrew is read from right to left, and (2) my book was about reading the Bible, not reading Hebrew. As I then explained, this book is about the special “rules” for understanding texts from a different culture. Indeed, this book is the product of many years of thought and writing. It is a response to the frustration that most people experience who read the Bible. To use the words of a biblical character, Daniel, the Bible is a “sealed book”—it arose in a culture whose values and conventions were fundamentally different from ours. Thus, the Bible today is either avoided as too strange, or else misread—taken as if it had been written yesterday or today. In my two decades of teaching college students, and especially in ten years of teaching adults an introduction to the Bible through the Boston-area Me’ah Program, I have discovered that overcoming these obstacles is no easy challenge. Looking for articles to give to these intelligent adults who lack background in biblical studies, my colleagues and I have felt frustrated. Most essays on the Bible by scholars are too technical. Other books, written for the layperson, are wrong or simplistic, or they take a religious (typically Christian) perspective rather than an historical one. This book attempts to fill the gap, to offer a Jewishly sensitive introduction to how to read biblical texts in their historical context. My hope is that the Bible might again become an open book for the Jewish community and other communities. To keep this book accessible, I have added as few endnotes as possible and limited references to works found in English. (Such an arrangement unfortunately ix hides the fact that this book is based on a much wider body of knowledge, much of which is very technical.) It is my pleasure to acknowledge the many people who have helped me along the way. Dr. Ellen Frankel, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of The Jewish Publication Society, has supported the idea of this book ever since I suggested it to her more than five years ago. She has served as an excellent and patient editor. Carol Hupping, JPS Publishing Director and COO, has done what she does best: making a book’s author and all its editors look good. Janet Liss, Production Editor at the JPS, moved the book along with great care. Emily Law proofread the book meticulously and Robin Norman, production manager of the Jewish Publication Society, ensured that the typesetting, design, and cover production went smoothly. Rabbi David E. S. Stein, assisted by Rabbi David Mevorach Seidenberg, served as developmental editor and also copyedited the manuscript; together, they corrected many factual errors and helped me clarify what I was trying to say, making this book much more readable. Two undergraduate students at Brandeis University, Leora Koller-Fox and Jacob Merlin, double-checked all the biblical citations in the manuscript and offered helpful suggestions. Donald Kraus, Bible Editor of Oxford University Press, supervised the publication of two Bibles that I helped to edit, the third edition of the New Oxford Annotated Bible and The Jewish Study Bible; in the process, he taught me much about writing for an intelligent lay audience. Credit also goes to my students, especially those at Brandeis and Me’ah, who have constantly challenged me to express difficult and foreign concepts in a clear and concise fashion. They have embodied the truism that students are a professor ’s best teacher. In addition, the Theodore and Jane Norman Fund at Brandeis University has helped to defray the cost of preparing the manuscript; I am grateful for this contribution, as well as the many other ways that the University continues to support my work. Finally, I would like to thank the academic administrators of the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department at Brandeis, Anne Lawrence and Patricia Lucente, who offered help and encouragement at various stages of this project. My teacher Nahum M. Sarna, l’’z who broadened the biblical publications of The Jewish Publication Society, was not able to review a draft of this book, but the many things that he taught me are reflected on every page. He serves as...