Books by James L. Kugel

Why does the Bible depict a world in which, surprisingly often, humans encounter the divine - wrestling an angel, addressing a burning bush, issuing a prophecy without any choice in the matter?

This highly accessible book discusses how the early Jewish and Christian communities went about interpreting Scripture.The Library of Early Christianity is a series of eight outstanding books exploring the Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts in which the New Testament...

Kugel's The Bible As It Was has been universally praised. Here is the full scholarly edition, expanding the author's findings into an incomparable reference. Focusing on 24 core stories in the Pentateuch, Kugel shows us how the earliest interpreters of the scriptures radically transformed the Bible and made it into the book we know today.

Leading us chapter by chapter through the Hebrew Bible's most important stories-from the Creation and the Tree of Knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land-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.