The Words Behind the Word

James Kugel interprets ancient Biblical interpreters

By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

In Genesis we are told that "Cain rose up and slew Abel." This tale of sibling rivalry echoes through the imagination of the West, the classic paradigm of the struggle between good and evil.

But as an examination of the original text reveals, the Bible gives us little more than a bare bones summary of the action. Cain is not described as evil or Abel as good. The only motivation for Cain's action is the fact that God rejects his vegetable sacrifice and accepts the firstborn of Abel's flocks.

Why does Cain behave the way he does? The Bible's laconic "show, don't tell" style may win the approval of proponents of modern fiction, but early biblical interpreters saw these stories very differently.

The Bible As It Was (the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997), a new book by biblical scholar James Kugel, examines the works of biblical interpretation that have helped shape our attitudes and assumptions about the Bible's inner meanings.

To ancient interpreters, the Scriptures were full of hints and clues, placed there by God, upon which elaborate theological arguments could be constructed.

Regarding the Cain and Abel story, for example, early biblical interpreters seized on minor ambiguities in the text to prove that Cain was actually the offspring of the devil. In the work of another interpreter, Cain slays Abel after the two debate the nature of divine justice.

From a modern point of view, these explications may have more in common with speculative fiction, but ancient writers felt fully justified not only reading the lines God had dictated, but reading between them as well.

"They would object, and I think rightly, to having their work characterized as fiction," said Kugel, the Harry Starr Professor of Classical, Modern Jewish, and Hebrew Literature and professor of comparative literature.

"One of their operating assumptions is that the Bible is a fundamentally cryptic text that says a lot in very few words and sometimes just hints at things in order to get you, the reader, to figure out the hidden message."

These biblical interpreters were scribes, translators, and sages who lived from roughly the third century B.C.E. to the first century C.E. and who created a rich literature that helped to form both Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity.

Their works were many and varied, including such texts as Jubilees (a retelling of Genesis), The Wisdom of Ben Sira, The Book of Enoch, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, and many others. In many cases, their efforts to interpret ancient biblical texts created meanings that still have a crucial significance for present-day religious thought.

"Modern biblical scholarship tends to focus on the earliest form of the text," Kugel said. "But my point is that the moment a particular text was first written down was not the moment that was privileged by early Jews and Christians. As these texts were passed down from generation to generation, they acquired new meanings, and it's really that new meaning that Jews and Christians both used as the centerpiece of their religions."

In his book, Kugel shows how ancient interpreters worked out new meanings for stories such as the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, Noah and the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the lives of the patriarchs, and Moses and the exodus from Egypt.

The interpreters based their work on a series of assumptions that are very different from those of present-day scholars.

These interpreters believed that the biblical texts were perfect, that the Bible itself contained a unitary message without contradictions, and that every detail of the Bible contained a meaning that was relevant to people of their own day. In order to resolve what appeared to be discrepancies, they treated the text as essentially cryptic, concealing hidden meanings.

Kugel said that his book evolved over the past 15 years from a source book he uses in his Core course, The Bible and its Interpreters.

"As the years went by the source book got bigger and bigger as I added more and more snippets of ancient biblical interpreters, and finally I decided about seven or eight years ago that it might be good to put it into a form that ordinary readers could follow."

At nearly 700 pages, The Bible As It Was is quite a hefty volume, but in fact it is a trimmed down and simplified version of the manuscript Kugel originally submitted. The longer, more scholarly version is due to appear this fall under the title Traditions of the Bible. Kugel said he wanted to call it The Bible As It Was, As it Was.

The book has sold nearly 20,000 copies, and has been offered as a selection by the History Book Club. It was nominated for a National Book Award and was named one of the exceptional books of 1997 by the Bookman Book Review Syndicate. Kugel believes the book's popularity may stem from a desire on the part of both Jews and Christians to understand the origins of their beliefs and traditions.

"The importance of the sacred text is something Judaism passed on to Christianity, but it wasn't just the written text of scripture. It was scripture as it had by then been interpreted for centuries and centuries. So I think it's fair to say that in a religious context, in a context of reading and using scripture as a Jew or as a Christian, these interpretations are really crucial."