Category Archives: Reviews & Notices

Kugel on Jacob

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kugel_ladder.gifJames Kugel’s new book, The Ladder of Jacob: Ancient Interpretations of the Biblical Story of Jacob and His Children (Princeton University Press, 2006; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com) is reviewed in today’s New York Sun.

Here is an excerpt of the review:

This is Mr. Kugel’s 10th book on scriptural hermeneutics and perhaps his most fascinating; for here he takes on the appalling family of Jacob in all its mingled squalor and grandeur. As he puts it, “‘Dysfunctional’ is probably the first word an observer would use to describe such a family in modern times.” That seems an understatement. And yet, the five episodes he considers touch on virtually every aspect of the human predicament.

One interesting result of his approach is that we steadily see how differently earlier readers interpreted a text. Genesis 28 contains the famous dream-vision that Jacob had on the way to Haran: “He had a dream; a ladder was stuck into the ground and its top reached up to heaven, and the angels of God were going up and down on it. And the Lord was standing over him and He said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land upon which you are lying I am giving to you and your descendants.” This passage had never struck me as problematic. But it bothered ancient readers. What was the point of the ladder? Couldn’t God have spoken directly to Jacob? And why, after he heard the voice of the Lord, did Jacob grow frightened and say, “How fearsome is this place!” Wasn’t God’s message with its promise of covenant reassuring?

The ladder itself called forth highly creative speculation. For Philo it represented the “ups and downs” of human experience. Others were intrigued by the statement that the angels were “going up and down” on it. If they were going up, they must have begun from the ground. What were the angels doing on the ground in the first place? Some suggested that they had been on a previous mission; but if so, why had they stayed so long before ascending again? One puzzle bred others. The text was a mere seed, the commentaries that sprouted from it a vast bramble that somehow, over centuries, came to cohere.

….

Whether discussing Reuben’s sin with Bilhah or the priesthood of Levi or Judah and Tamar, Mr. Kugel moves easily from moral dilemmas to textual enigmas; his book thus serves as a guide to interpretation as well. He analyzes motifs and explains such hermeneutic devices as “notariqon,” a method for explaining ambiguous words by breaking them down into their hidden components (as if we would gloss the word “hearth” by saying that it was composed of “heart” and “earth”). As he notes, exegesis itself became a kind of Jacob’s ladder over the centuries, with rungs capable of spanning the lowest and the highest in one swoop. His own book has that laddered quality. Maybe the point isn’t to reach the top of the ladder but to keep that angelic procession going up and going down to the end of time.

Here is an outline of the chapters from the publisher’s website:

  • Chapter One: Jacob and the Bible’s Ancient Interpreters
  • Chapter Two: The Ladder of Jacob
  • Chapter Three: The Rape of Dinah, and Simeon and Levi’s Revenge
  • Chapter Four: Reuben’s Sin with Bilhah
  • Chapter Five: How Levi Came to Be a Priest
  • Chapter Six: Judah and the Trial of Tamar
  • Chapter Seven: A Prayer about Jacob and Israel from the Dead Sea Scrolls

The book looks quite facinating — so much so I may adopt it for my Genesis course next semester (any other suggestions are welcome!).

Interestingly, the front cover is almost identical to another great book on the Jacob narrative: Frederick Beuchner’s The Son of Laughter: A Novel (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com).

(HT PaleoJudaica)


The Latest in Vetus Testamentum

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Volume 56 of Vetus Testamentum — one of the major academic journals on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible — has hit the shelves, and it contains a number of interesting articles, including one on the first chapter of Chronicles as well as a brief one on abecedaries.

Here is the table of contents:

  • Assis, Elie. “From Adam to Esau and Israel: an anti-edomite ideology in 1Chronicles 1,” Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006), 287-302.
  • Auffret, Pierre. “Dans les assemblées je bénirai YHWH: nouvelle étude structurelle du Psaume xxvi,” Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006), 303-12.
  • Berman, Joshua. “The narratorial voice of the scribes of samaria: Ezra iv 8-vi 18 Reconsidered,” Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006), 313-26.
  • Forti, Tova. “Bee’s honey-from realia to metaphor in biblical wisdom literature,” Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006), 327-41.
  • Hess, Richard S. “Writing about writing: abecedaries and evidence for literacy in Ancient Israel,” Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006), 342-46.
  • Kreuzer, Siegfried. “Zebaoth – der Thronende,” Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006), 347-62.
  • Norin, Stig. “Was ist ein gillajon?,” Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006), 363-69.
  • Seebass, Horst. “Versuch zu Josua xviii 1-10,” Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006), 370-85.
  • Shnider, Steven. “Psalm xviii: theophany, epiphany empowerment,” Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006), 386-98.
  • Wong, Gregory T.K. “Ehud and Joab: separated at birth?,” Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006), 399-412.
  • DiTommaso, Lorenzo. “History and apocalyptic eschatology: a reply to J.Y. Jindo,” Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006), 413-18.

Latest in the Dead Sea Discoveries

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I just had a chance to see the July 2006 volume of Dead Sea Discoveries (Volume 13, Issue 2). There are a number of interesting articles in it, especially the ones on “David’s Compositions” and the Qumran cemetery. The contents are as follows:

  • Halpern-Amaru, Betsy. “A Note on Isaac as First-born in Jubilees and Only Son in 4Q225” (pp. 127-133).
  • Noam, Vered. “The Origin of the List of David’s Songs in ‘David’s Compositions'” (pp. 134-149).
  • Popovic, Mladen. “Physiognomic Knowledge in Qumran and Babylonia: Form, Interdisciplinarity, and Secrecy” (pp. 150-176).
  • Reymond, Eric D. “The Poetry of 4Q416 2 III 15-19” (pp. 177-193).
  • Schultz, Brian. “The Qumran Cemetery: 150 Years of Research” (pp. 194-228).
  • Werman, Cana. “Epochs and End-Time: The 490-Year Scheme In Second Temple Literature” (pp. 229-56).

Blog Cited in RBL Review

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Bob Buller, the Editorial director for the Society of Biblical Literature, emailed me Sunday to let me know that one of my blog posts was cited in a book review for the Review of Biblical Literature. This is what Bob wrote:

While preparing the next batch of RBL reviews for publication this morning, I encountered what I believe is a first: a reviewer cited for further reading a blog entry from a biblical studies blog. It was your part 3 of the discussion of the LXX psalm superscriptions. I hope that this will become more common, since a number of the blogs offer excellent discussions, but you are the first (to my knowledge).

This is kind of neat, IMHO.

The citation is to my post “The LXX Psalm Superscriptions (Part 3) – Liturgical Notices and the Psalms for the Days of the Week” and may be found in Eileen Schuller‘s review of Peter L. Trudinger, The Psalms of the Tamid Service: A Liturgical Text from the Second Temple (Leiden: Brill, 2004; Buy from Amazon.ca | Buy from Amazon.com). The review — which is very good –  may be found here.


Latest in the Dead Sea Discoveries

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Jim Davila over at PaleoJudaica has the table of contents from the latest Dead Sea Discoveries. Among other things, there is an article on the Qumran Psalms Scroll that looks interesting:

  • Vered Noam, “The Origin of the List of David’s Songs in “David’s Compositions” (pp. 134-149)