God’s Word in Many Other Words

Maer — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:40:12 +0000

In my last post we saw a few things James Kugel had to say about the importance of the Sefarim Chitzonim (The Outside Books) for how later rabbis came to interpret the Bible. I have become more and more interested in the Apocrypha and Pseudopigrapha, and the little I have read has been incredibly helpful. A friend of mine who recently took a course at Gordon-Conwell in early Judaism had to read quite a bit of Second Temple writings, specially the ones from Qumran. He seems to be a bit disappointed because of the lack of coherence that he found in them. One of my projects for this year is to start reading more of these books and draw my own conclusions. I might even blog some thoughts about them.

Interesting Nonsense

Maer — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:07:49 +0000

Someone from the audience asked James Kugel after his lecture entitled Midrash Before Hazal: Why It’s Important For Orthodox Jews what Julius Wellhausen would have thought about it. Kugel’s answer was “I’m sure he would say ‘This is interesting
nonsense.’” I thought that was a clever answer not only because Wellhausen would have probably agreed with him, but also because sometimes this is exactly what I am thinking when I read what the early interpreters had to say about some biblical passages. While I want show respect and humility towards the deposit of wisdom given to us by our early (some would say pre-critical) interpreters, every once in a while I want to shout out “this is brilliant nonsense!”

However Jame Kugel thinks that listening to these interpreters shouldn’t be divorced from current biblical scholarship. He says,

Ancient Wisdom Today » Sefarim Chitzonim

God’s Word in Many Other Words

Interesting Nonsense