This is a guide to the Hebrew Bible. Leading the reader 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 radic[...]

Is there poetry in the Bible? Does it have rhyme or meter? How did ancient Hebrew writers compose their works? James Kugel's provocative study provides surprising new answers to these age-old questions. Biblical "poetry" is not a concept native to the Bible itself, he proposes, and the idea that the[...]

Ten years ago, when Harvard professor James Kugel was diagnosed with an aggressive, likely fatal, form of cancer, "I was, of course, disturbed and worried. But the main change in my state of mind was that . . . the background music had suddenly stopped. . . . the music of daily life that's constantl[...]