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The Bible As It Was
This is a guide to the Hebrew Bible unlike any other. Leading us chapter by chapter through its most important stories--from the Creation and the Tree of Knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land--James 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. Was the snake in the Garden of Eden the devil, or the Garden itself "paradise"? Did Abraham discover monotheism, and was his son Isaac a willing martyr? Not until the ancient interpreters set to work. Poring over every little detail in the Bible's stories, prophecies, and laws, they let their own theological and imaginative inclinations radically transform the Bible's very nature. Their sometimes surprising interpretations soon became the generally accepted meaning. These interpretations, and not the mere words of the text, became the Bible in the time of Jesus and Paul or the rabbis of the Talmud. Drawing on such sources as the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Jewish apocrypha, Hellenistic writings, long-lost retellings of Bible stories, and prayers and sermons of the early church and synagogue, Kugel reconstructs the theory and methods of interpretation at the time when the Bible was becoming the bedrock of Judaism and Christianity. Here, for the first time, we can witness all the major transformations of the text and recreate the development of the Bible "As It Was" at the start of the Common era--the Bible as we know it.
680 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1999
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708 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
August 11, 2022
This book is a fantastic piece of scholarly work. In it, Kugel shows that the Bible has always been interpreted. Many of us, due to the way modern biblical scholarship has gone since about the Reformation, tend to think there is some real core Bible out there that if we dig deep enough into culture and history we can find. We separate, in our understanding, this real Bible from the work of interpretation done by Jews and Christians.
To put it another way, we think of the Bible as being written and generally finished by the first century. Then Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity came along and began interpreting it.
Kugel’s argument is that any such division is a myth. The Bible was already and always being interpreted as it was being written.
In this book he takes us through the first five books, the Torah, and shows the ways it was interpreted in both in later scripture and up through the early centuries of the common era. Each chapter begins with a brief summary of what the passage he is discussing says on the surface. The meat of each chapter is showing different ways this was interpreted. In this he cites everything from the prophets Isaiah and Hosea, apocryphal books such as Maccabees and Sirach, Jubilees and 1 Enoch, the rabbis and writers of the New Testament. He ends each chapter with a summary of how this passage was understood through these interpreters in the ancient world.
And again, the point is, it was this interpretation that was seen as the Bible. If we want some original pure scripture, we’re searching in vain. It was always interpreted.
This is basically a reference book. I did not read every line of every work he cited, but I will return to this book frequently. Kugel says he could have added many more citations. He also could have done the same things for the rest of the Jewish scripture. Overall, this is a fascinating work and essential for any student of scripture.
To put it another way, we think of the Bible as being written and generally finished by the first century. Then Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity came along and began interpreting it.
Kugel’s argument is that any such division is a myth. The Bible was already and always being interpreted as it was being written.
In this book he takes us through the first five books, the Torah, and shows the ways it was interpreted in both in later scripture and up through the early centuries of the common era. Each chapter begins with a brief summary of what the passage he is discussing says on the surface. The meat of each chapter is showing different ways this was interpreted. In this he cites everything from the prophets Isaiah and Hosea, apocryphal books such as Maccabees and Sirach, Jubilees and 1 Enoch, the rabbis and writers of the New Testament. He ends each chapter with a summary of how this passage was understood through these interpreters in the ancient world.
And again, the point is, it was this interpretation that was seen as the Bible. If we want some original pure scripture, we’re searching in vain. It was always interpreted.
This is basically a reference book. I did not read every line of every work he cited, but I will return to this book frequently. Kugel says he could have added many more citations. He also could have done the same things for the rest of the Jewish scripture. Overall, this is a fascinating work and essential for any student of scripture.
April 25, 2013
Now this is an impressive piece of scholarly work.
Kugel takes it upon himself to give — in one volume — an overview of the interpretive Judaic discussion surrounding the Pentateuch. More than once he reminds the reader that this work does not represent the comprehensive discussion of the stories of Torah, but it does give one a basic and introductory understanding of the trajectory of those conversations.
What is impressive is how Kugel is able to design each chapter. Taking each foundational story of Torah, Kugel summarizes the story and then leads you through the questions that were asked, drawing upon an unbelievable number of midrashic sources and other Jewish commentary through the Biblical age. In his afterword, he brilliantly describes how biblical interpretation changed throughout the ages and where he feels the conversation is today. I thought his insight into the Middle Ages and Renaissance period was fantastic and the afterword alone would be a priceless read for my own students and their understanding of the monstrous conversation of ancient interpretation.
This book is a great source simply because of Kugel's compilation of topical midrashic conversation. As a student of those teachings, I find it hard to access them efficiently. This book makes the beginning of that journey so much easier.
Kugel takes it upon himself to give — in one volume — an overview of the interpretive Judaic discussion surrounding the Pentateuch. More than once he reminds the reader that this work does not represent the comprehensive discussion of the stories of Torah, but it does give one a basic and introductory understanding of the trajectory of those conversations.
What is impressive is how Kugel is able to design each chapter. Taking each foundational story of Torah, Kugel summarizes the story and then leads you through the questions that were asked, drawing upon an unbelievable number of midrashic sources and other Jewish commentary through the Biblical age. In his afterword, he brilliantly describes how biblical interpretation changed throughout the ages and where he feels the conversation is today. I thought his insight into the Middle Ages and Renaissance period was fantastic and the afterword alone would be a priceless read for my own students and their understanding of the monstrous conversation of ancient interpretation.
This book is a great source simply because of Kugel's compilation of topical midrashic conversation. As a student of those teachings, I find it hard to access them efficiently. This book makes the beginning of that journey so much easier.
March 20, 2021
The focus of this book is how the Pentateuch was understood when these sacred writings were beginning to be canonized as “the Bible” (roughly 200 BC - 100 AD). The stories in the first 5 books of the Bible were probably 1000 years old or more at that point and regarded as Holy Scripture. But there is more to the Bible than just what the texts actually said. There were also traditional interpretations of these texts that were understood as the meaning behind these texts. And it was this “interpreted Bible” (the texts plus the traditional interpretations) that became canonized as sacred Scripture for both Judaism and Christianity.
The story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3) serves as a good example of how we read our own traditional interpretations back into the Scripture when we read it. We tend to understand the story of Adam and Eve as the story of the Fall of Mankind based on the traditional interpretation that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was the devil. However, the serpent is not identified with the devil in Genesis or really any other Biblical book until Revelation! This is an example of a traditional interpretation that existed at the beginning of the common era that was (and is today) understood as the key meaning behind the story of Adam and Eve.
This is not to say that the traditional interpretation of Genesis 3 is incorrect. Rather it is meant to highlight that we are strongly influenced by traditional interpretations and our own beliefs when we read any text. In fact, interpretation is required whenever we read anything, because “almost any written text contains potential ambiguities.” For the Hebrew Scriptures, the need for interpretation is accentuated by the antiquity of the Hebrew it was written in (e.g. there are uncertainties about what some ancient Hebrew words actually mean) and how it was written down (e.g. using only consonants with no punctuation).
According to the author, “there are essentially four fundamental assumptions about Scripture that characterize all ancient biblical interpretations.”
1. The Bible is “a fundamentally cryptic document.” For ancient interpreters, the meaning of a biblical text was often “some hidden esoteric message”. We even see this in the Bible itself when a later prophet will interpret a prophecy from an earlier prophet in an esoteric way (e.g. Daniel interprets Jeremiah’s prophecy of 70 years of Babylonian exile to really mean 490 years of exile in Daniel 9:2, 24).
2. The Bible is “a fundamentally relevant text.” For ancient interpreters, Scripture is a book of instruction and wisdom that we need to guide us in our lives.
3. The Bible is “perfect and perfectly harmonious.” For ancient interpreters, anything that appeared to be a mistake in the the texts must be “an illusion to be clarified by proper interpretation.“ This often led to interpreters coming to the defense of the heroes of the Bible when the text appeared to show them in a negative light. “Taken to its extreme, this same view of Scripture’s perfection ultimately led to the doctrine of ‘omnisignificance’, whereby nothing in Scripture is said in vain or for rhetorical flourish: every detail is important, everything is intended to impart some teaching.”
4. “All of Scripture is somehow divinely sanctioned, of divine provenance, or divinely inspired.” According to the author, we shouldn’t assume that this last assumption led to other three assumptions above. This assumption showed up rather late in the history of ancient interpretation compared to the first three assumptions.
After the first chapter which talks about the ancient interpreters and their assumptions, the bulk of this book walks through the Pentateuch from Genesis through Deuteronomy and highlights the traditional interpretations associated with the different stories. This part of the book takes up about 500 pages, so this is certainly a “tome”. When reading this, I took it as an opportunity to read through the Pentateuch again myself. For a given chapter in this book, I would first read the biblical text it covered to get a sense for what I thought it said and meant. Then I would read the chapter describing the ancient interpretations of that text. I found this to be a helpful way to read this, even though it took a long time.
All in all, I learned a lot from this book and enjoyed it. I found it interesting to see how many of these ancient interpretations show up in the New Testament writings. And that makes sense. Both Jesus and the New Testament writers grew up in an environment where these interpretations were taught. These ancient interpretations were in essence “The Bible As It Was” for them.
This book challenged some of my thinking with regard to the process of canonization. For me, the formation of the Bible is a bit murky, especially with the Hebrew Scriptures. But I had never really thought about the notion that what was canonized in the Bible was both the texts and the interpretations of that text around the time of canonization. That is really the main idea behind this book.
I also found that I didn’t really agree with some of the ancient interpreters’ “four assumptions” about Scripture. While I believe that there is often deeper meaning in the Bible than appears on the surface, I don’t think it is a fundamentally cryptic text (assumption #1). My approach is to first “take it at its word”, even if it make me uncomfortable. Then and only then, with the help of the Holy Spirit and with prayer, dive deeper and see if there is something more there. I also find the Bible to be a brutally honest text with a lot of diverse points of view and even contradictions. And it is brutally honest about the faults and failings of its heroes. So this is at odds with the notion that the Bible is “perfectly harmonious” (assumption #3).
Ultimately, this is a book written by a Bible nerd for Bible nerds. As such, this was right up my alley. But I have a feeling that most people might find this book to be boring. So I don’t think I can recommend it unless you are a Bible nerd like me. If you do read it, I highly recommend taking your time with it and re-reading the Pentateuch as you read this book.
This book is essentially an attempt to reconstruct this traditional Bible, the Bible as it was understood in the closing centuries B.C.E. and at the very start of the common era.
The story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3) serves as a good example of how we read our own traditional interpretations back into the Scripture when we read it. We tend to understand the story of Adam and Eve as the story of the Fall of Mankind based on the traditional interpretation that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was the devil. However, the serpent is not identified with the devil in Genesis or really any other Biblical book until Revelation! This is an example of a traditional interpretation that existed at the beginning of the common era that was (and is today) understood as the key meaning behind the story of Adam and Eve.
This is not to say that the traditional interpretation of Genesis 3 is incorrect. Rather it is meant to highlight that we are strongly influenced by traditional interpretations and our own beliefs when we read any text. In fact, interpretation is required whenever we read anything, because “almost any written text contains potential ambiguities.” For the Hebrew Scriptures, the need for interpretation is accentuated by the antiquity of the Hebrew it was written in (e.g. there are uncertainties about what some ancient Hebrew words actually mean) and how it was written down (e.g. using only consonants with no punctuation).
According to the author, “there are essentially four fundamental assumptions about Scripture that characterize all ancient biblical interpretations.”
1. The Bible is “a fundamentally cryptic document.” For ancient interpreters, the meaning of a biblical text was often “some hidden esoteric message”. We even see this in the Bible itself when a later prophet will interpret a prophecy from an earlier prophet in an esoteric way (e.g. Daniel interprets Jeremiah’s prophecy of 70 years of Babylonian exile to really mean 490 years of exile in Daniel 9:2, 24).
2. The Bible is “a fundamentally relevant text.” For ancient interpreters, Scripture is a book of instruction and wisdom that we need to guide us in our lives.
3. The Bible is “perfect and perfectly harmonious.” For ancient interpreters, anything that appeared to be a mistake in the the texts must be “an illusion to be clarified by proper interpretation.“ This often led to interpreters coming to the defense of the heroes of the Bible when the text appeared to show them in a negative light. “Taken to its extreme, this same view of Scripture’s perfection ultimately led to the doctrine of ‘omnisignificance’, whereby nothing in Scripture is said in vain or for rhetorical flourish: every detail is important, everything is intended to impart some teaching.”
4. “All of Scripture is somehow divinely sanctioned, of divine provenance, or divinely inspired.” According to the author, we shouldn’t assume that this last assumption led to other three assumptions above. This assumption showed up rather late in the history of ancient interpretation compared to the first three assumptions.
After the first chapter which talks about the ancient interpreters and their assumptions, the bulk of this book walks through the Pentateuch from Genesis through Deuteronomy and highlights the traditional interpretations associated with the different stories. This part of the book takes up about 500 pages, so this is certainly a “tome”. When reading this, I took it as an opportunity to read through the Pentateuch again myself. For a given chapter in this book, I would first read the biblical text it covered to get a sense for what I thought it said and meant. Then I would read the chapter describing the ancient interpretations of that text. I found this to be a helpful way to read this, even though it took a long time.
All in all, I learned a lot from this book and enjoyed it. I found it interesting to see how many of these ancient interpretations show up in the New Testament writings. And that makes sense. Both Jesus and the New Testament writers grew up in an environment where these interpretations were taught. These ancient interpretations were in essence “The Bible As It Was” for them.
This book challenged some of my thinking with regard to the process of canonization. For me, the formation of the Bible is a bit murky, especially with the Hebrew Scriptures. But I had never really thought about the notion that what was canonized in the Bible was both the texts and the interpretations of that text around the time of canonization. That is really the main idea behind this book.
I also found that I didn’t really agree with some of the ancient interpreters’ “four assumptions” about Scripture. While I believe that there is often deeper meaning in the Bible than appears on the surface, I don’t think it is a fundamentally cryptic text (assumption #1). My approach is to first “take it at its word”, even if it make me uncomfortable. Then and only then, with the help of the Holy Spirit and with prayer, dive deeper and see if there is something more there. I also find the Bible to be a brutally honest text with a lot of diverse points of view and even contradictions. And it is brutally honest about the faults and failings of its heroes. So this is at odds with the notion that the Bible is “perfectly harmonious” (assumption #3).
Ultimately, this is a book written by a Bible nerd for Bible nerds. As such, this was right up my alley. But I have a feeling that most people might find this book to be boring. So I don’t think I can recommend it unless you are a Bible nerd like me. If you do read it, I highly recommend taking your time with it and re-reading the Pentateuch as you read this book.
December 1, 2019
I found this in the library (an actual physical book!) and it was written in a such a way as to be very useful as a resource as I write a Biblical Fiction novel. I had a lot of the background about the four different groups authoring books in the old testament from the History in the Bible Podcast, but this had quotes from the various viewpoints and was well organized to make it accessible. IT's brief, compared to the material it summarizes, and I found surprises on most pages. Great well of material for writers.
May 1, 2015
How do you like your Kugel? I like a good sweet lokshen or yerushalmi, but can't say no to potato.
James Kugel does not disappoint. This book tells you how the people alive when the Bible was compiled interpreted it. Using a plethora of first-hand sources, this book will change forever how you look at the Bible.
James Kugel does not disappoint. This book tells you how the people alive when the Bible was compiled interpreted it. Using a plethora of first-hand sources, this book will change forever how you look at the Bible.
October 5, 2016
This was interesting but I think missed the mark. Basically what he wrote about was what early interpreters thought different passages of scripture meant. Not what they really meant. And mostly it seemed the early interpreters were trying to have things make sense to themselves not what the prophet or writer actually meant.
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September 14, 2009The Bible As It Was (Belknap) by James L. Kugel (1999)
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September 23, 2010The Bible As It Was (Belknap) by James L. Kugel (1999)
December 8, 2024
This nonfiction book deals with the way that the Five Books of Moses in the Bible were interpreted, which sometimes have reverberated down to our own time. And this was a fascinating book to read.
After a rather dense Introduction, the book moves through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Among other thoughts the ancient interpretors had were that Eve may have taken the Fruit because Adam not only told her what God had commanded (before her creation) but added words of his own; that Noah was relatively righteous, but that Abraham was absolutely righteous; that Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, later became the wife of Job; that the Latin Vulgate translated that the face of Moses "had horns" instead that his face "shone; that Phineas, the grandson of Aaron, lived to become the Prophet Elijah; and that the pronouncement of Balaam,"a star shall arise from Jacob, and a scepter shall arise from Israel" referred to the Christmas Star.
This was a fascinating book, and I hope that the author will continue to write books about Biblical motifs.
After a rather dense Introduction, the book moves through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Among other thoughts the ancient interpretors had were that Eve may have taken the Fruit because Adam not only told her what God had commanded (before her creation) but added words of his own; that Noah was relatively righteous, but that Abraham was absolutely righteous; that Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, later became the wife of Job; that the Latin Vulgate translated that the face of Moses "had horns" instead that his face "shone; that Phineas, the grandson of Aaron, lived to become the Prophet Elijah; and that the pronouncement of Balaam,"a star shall arise from Jacob, and a scepter shall arise from Israel" referred to the Christmas Star.
This was a fascinating book, and I hope that the author will continue to write books about Biblical motifs.
May 2, 2020
This is a great book that presents many different interpretations people would have in the first century regarding biblical texts.
This is not meant to be read as a book (except the intro about interpretation work) but rather as a reference book about different texts and how people are reading them.
They are some fun parts but overall it was tedious (more like reading a dictionary or reference book).
This is not meant to be read as a book (except the intro about interpretation work) but rather as a reference book about different texts and how people are reading them.
They are some fun parts but overall it was tedious (more like reading a dictionary or reference book).
September 2, 2022
An excellent book if you want to study the Pentateuch written by Moses. The Bible emerged because interpreting the Bible has been continuous since the beginning and many scholars whether Jewish, Christian and others throughout the ages have written their arguments ie: many fathers of the church, Josephus, Philo, Jubilees, Sanhedrin as well as other notables throughout this book. Every teacher of the Bible or would be scholar needs this 📖.🤓
October 13, 2022
Very interesting. Traces the origins of many ideas that influenced church thinking and even made their way to Islamic tradition.
Got a bit tired towards the end. The format is more academic than fir general reading
Got a bit tired towards the end. The format is more academic than fir general reading
August 22, 2020
Interesting book. Never realized there were so many contradictory passages in the bible that needed interpretation.
May 23, 2021
A must-read to understand exegetical motifs of the Bible.
January 9, 2026
Enjoyed this one greatly. Not too detailed when it came to the legal interpretations at the end given that he was much more detailed in his other work but it did its job.
September 13, 2015
A longer, more reference oriented version of Kugel's other texts. The introduction is a solid introduction to his general reception-oriented perspective on biblical interpretation and a good summary of his views of the ancient Judeo-Christian method(s) of interpretation. The rest is a survey of the Pentateuch describing various motifs that occur frequently in ancient (e.g. 2nd Temple and early Christian) interpreters when addressing specific texts.
August 21, 2015
This is my 2nd read through of this book. Reading it with a group study. I find it insightful for how to read the Old Testament.
August 3, 2016
I really enjoyed the way Kugel presents this book comparing interpretations of the Hebrew bible and Christian bible. This is a great book for someone looking for more.
May 10, 2025
It's tough sledding but in many chapters, worth the effort. For me, it shed new meaning on many passages found in the Pentatuch.
October 8, 2021
This book is meant for someone who has already read the bible and wants a more in-depth analysis of the meaning of various important chapters.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews