The publisher's description on the back of this book says that James Kugel's Old Testament was one of the two most popular at Harvard. If he lectures as well as he writes, I can see why. It's not the translations that are the heart of this book. Rather, it's the way Kugel uses the selected pieces to give us insights into the Hebrew Bible, the people of the Old Testament, and the thousand year culture of a people who lived in a tiny land in the Middle East. You don't have to be a scholar to enjoy this book. It's about the best one I've seen that really helps us understand concepts that we weren't even aware we didn't "get".

Incidentally, I found his discussion in the introduction about the process of translation especially useful as we in the Catholic Church prepare for our new translation of the Roman Missal. I wish our translators had read Kugel's reflections on why you don't translate word-for-word: "The translation sounds stilted and arcane, whereas the original sounds natural."

The introduction also includes a very good discussion of Hebrew poetry - its structure and its internal relationships. I found it both interesting and helpful.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in reading the Old Testament with an eye to catching the meanings that the original Hebrew writers and readers did. ( )