Life giving resources. Faithfully delivered.
FREE delivery on orders over £10
Serving over 2 million Christians in the UK
with Bibles, Books and Church Supplies
Our Buy-Now-Pay-Later accounts used
by over 4,000 UK Churches & Schools
Excellent 4.8 out of 5

Trustpilot

You now have 0 of this item in your basket

The Ladder of Jacob

Ancient Interpretations of the Biblical Story of Jacob and His Children [Paperback]

by James L. Kugel

Author
James L. Kugel
Book Format
Paperback
Publisher
University Presses of California, Columbia and Princeton
Published
March 2009

Bible Studies and Commentaries

Read full description

Click to expand

Today's Price

£14.72

Save 33%

Free UK Delivery

Available - Usually dispatched within 4 days

Buying for a school or church? Upgrade to a FREE Eden Advance Account

Enter the product quantity

The Ladder of Jacob

Today's Price £14.72

Frequently Bought Together

The Ladder of Jacob

by James L. Kugel

Paperback

The Unseen Realm

by Michael S. Heiser

Paperback

Add both to basket for £33.79 and save £8.20

Product Description

Rife with incest, adultery, rape, and murder, the biblical story of Jacob and his children must have troubled ancient readers. 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, tricked the men of a nearby city into undergoing circumcision, and then murdered all of them 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. These stories presented a particular challenge for ancient biblical interpreters. After all, Jacob's sons were the founders of the nation of Israel and ought to have been models of virtue. In "The Ladder of Jacob", renowned biblical scholar James Kugel retraces the steps of ancient biblical interpreters as they struggled with such problems. Kugel reveals how they 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 killing all the men in a town to avenge the rape of their sister, and that Judah, who slept with his daughter-in-law, was the unfortunate victim of alcoholism. These are among the earliest examples of ancient biblical interpretation (midrash). They are found in retellings of biblical stories that appeared in the closing centuries BCE - 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 is able to reconstruct how ancient interpreters worked. "The Ladder of Jacob" is an artful, compelling account of the very beginnings of biblical interpretation.