Problematizing the Bible . . . Then and Now

Abstract

Problematizing . . . Then and Now James L. Kugel. How to Read BihL·: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now. New York: Free Press, 2007. Pp. xiv + 819.I must confess that any publication featuring phrase like the Bible on its title page attracts my attention, and this notice is not due solely to my having significant professional interest in literature usually signaled by that label. Over past decade or so I have made practice of surprising students with terse pronouncement that is no such thing as 'the Bible.' I have never meant anything flippant, perverse, or profound by this remark: it is simply succinct iteration of an easily observable fact. We spend some time in my Jewish literature courses comparing editorial structure and contents of such widely used English versions as NJPS Tanakh, 1611 Authorized Version, Jerusalem Bible, and New Revised Standard Version. I show them images of Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Syriac biblical manuscript leaves or fragments extracted from Dead Sea Scrolls, Cairo Geniza, Codex Sinaiticus, and Codex Ambrosianus, and we peruse lists of writings found in manuscripts transmitting Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Ethiopie canons. I also insist (more on this anon) that they carefully study certain passages found in Our'an. By time we finish this taxonomic exercise, students are largely receptive to idea that seemingly solid category of the Bible is actually an extremely fluid one which exhibits multitude of shapes and contents over time, across locales, and along margins of or even within boundaries of supposedly rigid ethnic or doctrinal affiliations.This lesson in conceptual demolition receives further reinforcement when we begin to examine language of passages found in many versions of this popularly reified work. There was time (long ago now) when I required students to purchase same so that we might utilize common text for our classroom assignments and discussions. Instead, I now prefer to display parallel English renditions, and I encourage students to bring to class as many different translations as they can comfortably carry. We focus on an individual text - for example, one that has been coded in many Bibles as Genesis 1.1 - and we read each version's of that passage, eschewing for moment any critical exposition of Hebrew (or Greek, Aramaic, etc.) text(s) involving special philological or exegetical expertise. The point of this exercise is not to endorse or to disparage any one particular rendering in comparison with another but instead to instill in my overwhelmingly monolingual students underappreciated notion that activity of translation from one language to another is an inherently subjective operation that necessarily distances one from and complicates base text. Paraphrasing what some Muslim interpreters have traditionally affirmed of nonArabic Qur'ans, a translated is not 'the Bible.' The students soon learn that there are (seemingly) innumerable English Bibles, each of which intends to provide us with vernacular reading of source manuscripts, but all of which fall short at various points of imparting that ephemeral true or real meaning which majority of them are convinced must be present in allegedly divine writ.But even at this stage of our joint inquiry supposedly fixed texts (or so-called final forms) of our variegated biblical canons fail us. The students now learn that there are different textual forms and families whose relative ages are not necessarily secure indicators of their actual value for dating history of particular composition or work. Christian biblical manuscripts, for example, are rife with verbal variants and larger so-called omissions, additions, and expansions, and biblical scholars learned long ago from Harry M. Orlinsky (among others) that appeals to entities like the Masoretic Text may be disingenuous and invoke scholarly chimera,1 since no such thing has ever been extant in any period of Jewish literary history, including our own. …