James L. Kugel

A renowned scholar retraces the steps of ancient biblical interpreters as they struggled to understand the complex and troubling story of Jacob.

Rife with incest, adultery, rape, and murder, the biblical story of Jacob and his children must have troubled ancient readers. They were the founders of the nation of Israel. Yet, by any standard, this was a family with problems.

Jacob’s oldest son Reuben is said to have slept with his father’s concubine Bilhah. The next two sons, Simeon and Levi, murdered all the men of a nearby city as revenge for the rape of their sister. Judah, the fourth son, had sexual relations with his own daughter-in-law. Meanwhile, jealous of their younger sibling Joseph, the brothers conspired to kill him; they later relented and merely sold him into slavery.

In The Ladder of Jacob, renowned biblical scholar James Kugel reveals how ancient biblical interpreters often fixed on a little detail in the Bible’s wording to “deduce” something not openly stated in the narrative. They concluded that Simeon and Levi were justified in their mass slaughter, and that Judah was the unfortunate victim of alcoholism.

These are among the earliest examples of ancient biblical interpretation (midrash). They are found in the Book of Jubilees, the Aramaic Levi Document, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and other noncanonical works. Through careful analysis of these retellings, Kugel reconstructs how ancient interpreters worked.

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