There is, however, a larger thread, and Kugel takes us into the forest with a larger goal in mind, namely to ask fundamental questions about the meaning and purpose of the forest itself. Modern biblical scholarship has radically transformed our understanding of the Hebrew Bible, which raises painfully complex questions for those who read it as people of faith. To be sure, Kugel raises these questions only in fits and starts and often enough raises them and then blithely takes up again with the tour of the forest only many chapters later to suddenly return to those questions. But he does return to them. The questions themselves are important ones for Kugel. He asks them as a practicing Jew for whom the Bible has become problematic. Where is God, most importantly, in the scriptures if they are "merely" the product of an elaborate, centuries-long, and very human process of editing?
Kugel begins with the observation that over the centuries there have been three layers of interpretation of the Bible (by "Bible," he always means the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament). They are: (1) the original intent of the stories and other contents of the Bible; (2) later centuries of interpretation that arose partly because original intent was eventually forgotten; and (3) modern scholarly reconstructions of original intent. Well into his journey through the Bible, it turns out that level one is considerably more complex than we were led to believe at the beginning. The Hebrew Bible is a patchwork of pieces of text assembled over many centuries by generations of editors who mixed, matched, added to, remixed, rematched, and added still more. As we go through the book, moreover, we are aware of the fact that in ancient times there were variant readings, which also changed over time. Kuegel places, for example, all Christian readings of the Old Testament into level two and, at times, shows how they were similar to and differed from Jewish readings. In modern times, he points out we inherited level two readings as being the right way to read the Bible.
With this framework, Kugel walks us through the Hebrew Bible beginning at one end and going to the other. Frequently, he introduces the reader to level two (traditional) readings of the text and then goes on to describe level three excavations (scholarly) of the same text. Sometimes he doesn't. The fact is that Kugel has assembled a book that displays some of the characteristics of the Bible itself. He frequently introduces a portion of the Bible, talks about it a bit, and then blithely walks on without a conclusion or any clue as to the importance of that particular portion. He simply sees a pretty little leaf, stops to admire it, and then off he goes again. The book is also filled with lengthy quotations from the Bible put there evidently on the assumption that readers are too lazy to go and read the Bible for themselves (he is probably right). These frequent and lengthy quotations only serve to add to the sense that the book is disjointed and itself "compiled" from many fragments. Often enough, furthermore, Kugel ignores the title of the book and fails to tell us how to read the individual texts he is talking about. At other points, however, he illuminates the Bible and provides helpful commentary on both the traditional and scholarly readings of key biblical texts. He helps Christian readers to understand where their inherited interpretations of the Old Testament stand in relationship to the text and to later Jewish interpretations.
The central thesis of the book is that the traditional assumptions we have inherited concerning the meaning of the Hebrew Bible and the assumptions that scholars bring to that reading are in conflict. He states, "These assumptions have essentially created two different Bibles, the ancients' and the moderns'." (p. 134) The "central question of this book" is, "Which way of reading is the right one?" (p. 161) Thus, the original "etiological narratives" of the Pentateuch, for example, were radically transformed by later generations of interpreters in ancient times. Those narratives became "moral exampla" and "up-to-date guide[s] for daily life." (p. 362) Kugel observes that, "the anonymous interpreters of the third and second and first centuries BCE changed utterly the whole character of the Pentateuch...No less formidable however, has been the activity of modern biblical scholars over the last two centuries." (p. 363) The scholars have undone the work of the ancient interpreters and once again made the Pentateuch into a collection of fragments.
In the course of his walk through the Hebrew Bible, Kugel pays particular attention to clues as to how the generations of editors assembled and reassembled the text until it reached its final form. He also points to insights on various related matters, such as how the ancient Hebrews' understanding of God changed over time, the relationship of the Hebrew text to other ancient texts, the Christian understanding of the Old Testament, and even why Christians retained the Old Testament as a part of their scriptures.
Kugel, in a sense, saves the best to last. His final chapter, "After Such Knowledge..." (pp. 662-689) brings together his questions and concerns about the impact of modern biblical scholarship on our understanding of the Bible—on his understanding of the Bible. Modern scholarship has shown that the Bible is fragmented, self-contradictory, and a thoroughly human enterprise. Modern scholars have "stripped the Bible of much of its special status." (p. 667) He then comes to a crucial insight, namely that "what makes the Bible biblical is not inherent in its texts, but emerges only when one reads them in a certain way, a way that came into full flower in the closing centuries BCE." (p. 668, italics in the original) At that time, the Bible began to be treated as wisdom literature, a compendium of divine truths, which in fact is the "real" Bible. The real Bible, that is, is not found in the original fragments and snippets of which it has been woven. The real Bible, the canon, is the body of interpretations with which it was read in ancient times long after it had been assembled. The canon is text and interpretation, not just text. Kugel closes with observations on what all of this means for Christian fundamentalists, Christian liberals, and Judaism, and at the very end of his reflections he concludes, apparently, that in spite of the impact of modern scholarship on our understanding of the Bible, he must continue in faith to serve and have faith in the One served. Those are my words, not his, but they capture I trust the sense he intended. He admits that he brings us to the end of the tour with more of a whimper than a bang, but there it is, a Jewish biblical scholar's attempt to make the best of the realities of scripture as exposed by modern biblical scholarship.
For those who want to understand the Bible today and/or the challenges the world of science poses for people of faith, this is an excellent book. Be patient with it. Enjoy the way it wanders around. Wait for the important insights. Your time and patience will be rewarded.
