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From Text to Interpretation:

How the Bible Came to Mean Some of the Strange Things it Means 


May 2, 2013, at 8:00 pm
York Hall 2722, Revelle College
UC San Diego campus

Watch on UCSD TV

 

 

From Text to Interpretation:
How the Bible Came to Mean Some of the Strange Things it Means"


James Kugel
Director of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible at Bar Ilan University

The Lecture:

The Hebrew Bible was, from the beginning, the Interpreted Bible. In the third and second centuries B.C.E. – well before the last books of the Bible were written – groups of interpreters were puzzling over the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Esau, and other ancient figures. Their interpretations were often fanciful, and sometimes wildly inventive, but their grasp of the very idea of the Bible is still with us and continues to influence today’s readers.

Lecture is co-sponsored by the Judaic Studies Program and the Program for the Study of Religion.

 James Kugel

The Lecturer:

James Kugel, an eminent scholar of the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, was Starr Professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard before retiring to become Director of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible at Bar Ilan University in Israel. Among his eleven books, The Bible As It Was won the Grawemeyer Prize in Religion in 2001 and How to Read the Bible was awarded the National Jewish Book Award for the best book of 2007. His most recent book, In the Valley of the Shadow, explores the foundations of religious belief.

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