This is A 186 page hardback with dust jacket authored by James L. Kugel and published by Harper Collins.

In Potiphar's House: The Interpretive Life of a Biblical Text

Kugel, James L.

Religion & Spirituality

Harpercollins

Answers a wide range of questions on the ways of traditional Judaism, and reflects on some of the deepest themes in Jewish practice and belief

On Being a Jew: A Brief Presentation of Jewish Practices and Belief Which, Being Written As a Dialogue in Defense of Tradition, Might Otherwise Be C

Judaism

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 Bible is divided into prose and verse is merely an approximation of the reality of biblical style. Arguing that the Bible presents a continuum of speech heightened in varying degrees by different means, Kugel sets out to describe Hebrew's high style on its own terms. He also offers a thorough history of the idea of biblical poetry, starting with Philo of Alexandria and Josephus in the first century C.E. and charting its development through the Church Fathers, medieval Jewish writers, the Christian Hebraists of the Renaissance, and on into modern times. The story of how each age understood the nature biblical poetry, Kugel concludes, is a key to understanding the Bible's place in the history of Western thought.

The idea of biblical poetry: Parallelism and its history

Christian Books & Bibles

Yale University Press

Examines the use of structural parallelism in Old Testament poetry and discusses Hebrew poetry, prose and the meter of biblical songs

The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History

Yale Univ Pr

The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times

A world-renowned scholar brings a lifetime of study to reveal how a pivotal transformation in spiritual experience during the Biblical Era made us who we are today Why does the Bible depict a world in which humans, with surprising regularity, encounter the divine—wrestling an angel, addressing a burning bush, issuing forth prophecy without any choice in the matter? These stories spoke very differently to their original audience than they do to us, and they reflect a radically distinct understanding of reality and the human mind. Yet over the course of the thousand-year Biblical Era, encounters with God changed dramatically. As James L. Kugel argues, this transition allows us to glimpse a massive shift in human experience—the emergence of the modern, Western sense of self. In this landmark work, Kugel fuses revelatory close readings of ancient texts with modern scholarship from a range of fields, including neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, and archaeology, to explain the origins of belief, worship, and the sense of self, and the changing nature of God through history. In the tradition of books like The Swerve and The Better Angels of Our Nature,The Great Shift tells the story of a revolution in human consciousness and the enchantment of everyday life. This book will make believers and seekers think differently not just about the Bible, but about the entire history of the human imagination.

History

World

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

Discusses the history and diversity of early interpretation and the influence of Jewish traditions

Early Biblical Interpretation (Library of Early Christianity)

Greer, Rowan A.

Westminster John Knox Pr

This highly accessible book discusses how the early Jewish and Christian communities went about interpreting Scripture.
The Library of Early Christianity is a series of eight outstanding books exploring the Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts in which the New Testament developed.

Reference

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

Westminster/John Knox Press

Studies in Ancient Midrash is the proceedings of a conference, held at Harvard University, surveying the beginnings of ancient biblical interpretation. 
 Essays include "Ancient Biblical Interpretation and the Biblical Sage," by James Kugel; "Literacy and the Polemics Surrounding Biblical Interpretation," by A. I. Baumgarten; "Garments of Skin, Garments of Glory," by Gary Anderson; "Leave the Dead to Bury Their Own Dead," by Menahem Kister; "Contours of Genesis Interpretation at Qumran," by Moshe Bernstein; "Qohelet's Reception and Interpretation," by Marc Hirshman; "Law, Morality and Rhetoric in Some Sayings of Jesus," by Menahem Kister; and "Biblical Interpretation in Some Qumran Prayers and Hymns," by James Kugel.

Studies in Ancient Midrash

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies

This is a guide to the Hebrew Bible unlike any other. Leading us 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 radically transformed the Bible and made it into the book that has come down to us today. 
 Was the snake in the Garden of Eden the devil, or the Garden itself "paradise"? Did Abraham discover monotheism, and was his son Isaac a willing martyr? Not until the ancient interpreters set to work. Poring over every little detail in the Bible's stories, prophecies, and laws, they let their own theological and imaginative inclinations radically transform the Bible's very nature. Their sometimes surprising interpretations soon became the generally accepted meaning. These interpretations, and not the mere words of the text, became the Bible in the time of Jesus and Paul or the rabbis of the Talmud. 
 Drawing on such sources as the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Jewish apocrypha, Hellenistic writings, long-lost retellings of Bible stories, and prayers and sermons of the early church and synagogue, Kugel reconstructs the theory and methods of interpretation at the time when the Bible was becoming the bedrock of Judaism and Christianity. Here, for the first time, we can witness all the major transformations of the text and recreate the development of the Bible "As It Was" at the start of the Common era--the Bible as we know it.

The Bible As It Was

Belknap Press

This is a guide to the Hebrew Bible unlike any other. Leading us 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 radically transformed the Bible and made it into the book that has come down to us today. 
Was the snake in the Garden of Eden the devil, or the Garden itself "paradise"? Did Abraham discover monotheism, and was his son Isaac a willing martyr? Not until the ancient interpreters set to work. Poring over every little detail in the Bible's stories, prophecies, and laws, they let their own theological and imaginative inclinations radically transform the Bible's very nature. Their sometimes surprising interpretations soon became the generally accepted meaning. These interpretations, and not the mere words of the text, became the Bible in the time of Jesus and Paul or the rabbis of the Talmud. 
Drawing on such sources as the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Jewish apocrypha, Hellenistic writings, long-lost retellings of Bible stories, and prayers and sermons of the early church and synagogue, Kugel reconstructs the theory and methods of interpretation at the time when the Bible was becoming the bedrock of Judaism and Christianity. Here, for the first time, we can witness all the major transformations of the text and recreate the development of the Bible "As It Was" at the start of the Common era--the Bible as we know it.

Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kugel, James L.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kugel, James L.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kugel, James L.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

In Potiphar's House: The Interpretive Life of a Biblical Text

On Being a Jew: A Brief Presentation of Jewish Practices and Belief Which, Being Written As a Dialogue in Defense of Tradition, Might Otherwise Be C

The idea of biblical poetry: Parallelism and its history

The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History

The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times

Early Biblical Interpretation (Library of Early Christianity)

Early Biblical Interpretation (Library of Early Christianity)

Studies in Ancient Midrash

The Bible As It Was

The Bible As It Was