The God of Old: Inside the Lost World of the Bible

by James L. Kugel

Our notion of God today -- all-powerful, invisible, and omnipresent -- is not the same as the God of the Hebrew Bible. So who is this "God of Old?" And what is His place in the modern spiritual world?
James Kugel is renowned for his investigations into the history of the biblical era, a time beginning more than three thousand years ago, when the Bible's earliest parts first took shape. With The God of Old, Kugel goes even deeper, attempting to enter the pages of the Old Testament and see God as the Israelites first encountered him.
The God of Old appeared to people unexpectedly; He was not sought out. Often He was not even recognized, at first mistaken for an ordinary human being. The realm of the divine was not as it is today -- a spiritual dimension set off from the material world. The spiritual and the material overlapped, and the realm of the dead was a real domain just beyond the world of the living. Ordinary reality was in constant danger of sliding into something else, something stark but oddly familiar. And God was always standing just behind the curtain of the everyday world.
In this groundbreaking study, Kugel suggests that this alternative spirituality is not simply an archaic relic, replaced by a "better" understanding. Kugel's picture of the God of Old has much to tell us about God's very nature, and about the encounter between Him and human beings in today's world.
A book to treasure side by side with the Bible, The God of Old is sure to engage scholars and spiritual seekers alike for years to come.

Genres: Religion, Judaism, Nonfiction, Spirituality, Jewish

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[John Fredrickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book assesses the different stances that the Old Testament takes with respect to how God presents himself (or not) to selected individuals.

In older segments of the bible, unsought, physical appearances of God (or one of his agents) appear to selected people; it is an intimate relationship, at least for the chosen individuals. Later segments of the bible present an increasingly more remote God who appears, if at all, only to people who have intensely sought Him out. The book also looks at other bible dynamics, such as the concept of 'graven image' prohibition, where it could have come from, and why.

The last couple of chapters were difficult to follow. Kugel goes into what he calls the 'starkness' of some of the biblical scenes in the writing. There is a discussion of the journey of the soul, but it was tough to discern exactly what he was making of this

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is full of fascinating insight about the early religious notions of Israel and other ancient neighbors of hers. He argues that the cosmic, omnipotent God we must search for is not the God of the ancient Jews. They had a much more immediate, stark, local sense of God. Kugel explores how Jewish scriptures suggest this and move on to a more cosmic notion of God. He eschews social-religious evolutionary schemas, opting instead for a description of the messiness of changing ideas.

[Lia Mordezki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some chapters were fascinating whilst others were one long ramble. Particularly in the final chapters, I found it hard to keep up with.

[Bob Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stopped by this book in the middle of one of Kugel’s others, How to Read the Bible, because the things he was talking about were fascinating though very long and complex. That book was about shifting interpretations of Biblical passages over time, and this one is about how people in the time of the Old Testament’s writing viewed spiritual matters in a fundamentally different way than people do now; certainly a different way than I was exposed to in my church growing up. One of Kugel’s premises is that instead of an omnipresent invisible deity, ancients saw God (specifically Elohim) as being able to suddenly, unexpectedly and clandestinely materialize. Instead if “is everywhere”, it’s “could be anywhere”. He argues that the lack of specific icons of Elohim (just empty spaces) was a symbol of this propensity, as are the myriad of stories in the Bible of people coming into contact with Elohim but not realizing it. Other interesting ancient mindsets he points out: God as a choosily compassionate deity who hears some cries but not others, the soul as a thing that travels to God every night, the piercing of God into the inner space of people, and a division of the world into stark opposites of righteous and wicked, day and night, good and evil, with no room in the good for those who are only partway there. This was a great read, both fast and full; recommended for anyone interested in the subject and especially for historical fiction writers.

[Katherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kugel's premise is that how people view God has changed over time, even within the timeframe of the writing of the Bible. He attempts to use various Old Testament passages to reveal how the writers of the Old Testament would have thought about and perceived God. Along the way, he challenges what he considers the modern viewpoint of a huge, all-encompassing God who is separate and distinct from this physical world.

Kugel raises some interesting points and questions in the course of the book, but his conclusions rely mostly on his own interpretation of very brief passages of text. At his best, Kugel ties in historical context to shed light on the writings in question; at his worst, Kugel extemporizes in a mystical fashion without tying his conclusions to anything.

[Rachael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kugel presents fascinating insights into how various biblical episodes illuminate God's nature- stories we've all heard before but likely missed the strangeness of them. God was not an abstraction, but a reality close at hand and liable to break through into ordinary life at any moment. Angels, manifestations of God, would appear to biblical heros looking so much like ordinary men that the men and women visited did not realize it was 'the Lord' until the end of the scene. The world is not as it seems in the Bible, the world of God is a starker one.

[Richard Hoch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished reading it. Fascinating re-encounter with G-d as described in the Hebrew Bible (and some post-Biblical sources). Worth reading -- somewhat challenging for those of us who read the Bible in light of Maimonides or Aquinas, but definitely worth it. Kugel is an expert on the Bible who also writes clearly -- even if you disagree, you will at least know where he stands and why.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short & readable book exploring what the authors of the Hebrew Bible believed about God. According to this author, they did NOT have the same ideas about God as modern Jews & Christians do. Most interesting.