Like many contemporary Bible scholars, James Kugel takes it on faith that the Bible was written by men over a long period of time and incorporates material and concepts that changed during the period. That fact notwithstanding, his book does not deal with questions of the development of the text of the Tanach, but rather the very mindset of its authors. What did people of thousands of years ago actually think about when they thought about God?
By comparing scenes of interaction with God or his messengers, Kugel tries to tease out just how ancient Israelites perceived the Holy One during the days when He more clearly interacted on earth. Clear, well-written and hard-reasoned, the book is interestingly, if scantily, referenced. In these long end-notes, Kugel succinctly reviews much of contemporary critical thought on the early religion of the Hebrews.
Kugel examines the Biblical text with a scalpel and a magnifying glass. For example, he discusses the phenomenon of the “Cry of the Victim,” the call for justice that God appears helpless to resist, as when a stranger, widow or orphan is oppressed. In Exodus, God seems to have to wait for the victim to cry out before acting; not so in Deuteronomy. Kugel builds a chapter’s worth of interpretation on this difference and uses it to buttress his book’s thesis. Strangely, he seems to be unaware of or uninterested in the same kind of close reading that has occupied rabbinical exegetes for two millennia. They, too, seek to back up their own world view. Should Kugel’s be privileged?
This leads us to the great question that needs to be asked of this author, and indeed, of many of today’s Biblical scholars. They have built mountains of interpretation upon their suppositions, sometimes with scientific support, sometimes not. Why should they be read? What value can be derived from a forensic study of the text?
Kugel struggles in one fascinating chapter with the meaning of the Tower of Babel story. He posits that the Israelites were probably early ‘back to the landers’ who escaped from wicked old Mesopotamia and its teeming cities, thus explaining the sin of Babel.
According to the received tradition, the Bible was written by God and His Prophets. The greatness of the text is to be found in the power the reader can uncover in its contemporary meaning, filled, as life is, with contradiction and lack of clarity. In this book, Kugel, with the best of intentions, seeks to level those contradictions by pointing to an earlier, less dimensional understanding of the nature of God by the early Israelites. But what value will be achieved by this flattening of the heights? Will the result be Sinai or Babel?