The Idea of Biblical Interpretation

The essays in this Festschrift honor James L. Kugel for his contribution to the field of biblical studies, in particular early biblical interpretation. The essays are organized in three roughly chronological categories. The first group treats some part of the Tanakh, ranging from the creation and Abraham stories of Genesis to the evolving conception of sacred writing in the prophetic literature. The second set of essays focuses chiefly on the literature of Second Temple Judaism, including Qumran and extra-biblical literature. The last group concerns the scriptural imagination at work in rabbinic literature, in Milton's Paradise Lost, in the anti-semitic work of Gerhard Kittel, up to the present in a treatment of Levinas and the Talmud.