The great shift : encountering God in biblical times / James L Kugel.
Material type:
TextPublisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017Description: xvi, 476 pages ; 24 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780544520554
- 0544520556
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 296.311 K95 | Available | 33111008819399 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
A world-renowned scholar brings a lifetime of study to reveal how a pivotal transformation in spiritual experience during the Biblical Era made us who we are today
Why does the Bible depict a world in which humans, with surprising regularity, encounter the divine--wrestling an angel, addressing a burning bush, issuing forth prophecy without any choice in the matter? These stories spoke very differently to their original audience than they do to us, and they reflect a radically distinct understanding of reality and the human mind. Yet over the course of the thousand-year Biblical Era, encounters with God changed dramatically. As James L. Kugel argues, this transition allows us to glimpse a massive shift in human experience--the emergence of the modern, Western sense of self.
In this landmark work, Kugel fuses revelatory close readings of ancient texts with modern scholarship from a range of fields, including neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, and archaeology, to explain the origins of belief, worship, and the sense of self, and the changing nature of God through history. In the tradition of books like The Swerve and The Better Angels of Our Nature,The Great Shift tells the story of a revolution in human consciousness and the enchantment of everyday life. This book will make believers and seekers think differently not just about the Bible, but about the entire history of the human imagination.
"A world-renowned scholar uses the Bible's own words to understand a fateful change that occurred during the biblical era, one that would ultimately determine the whole way in which Jews and Christians would encounter God ever since. A great mystery lies at the heart of the Bible. Early on, people seem to live in a world entirely foreign to our own. God appears to Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and others; He buttonholes Moses and Isaiah and Jeremiah and tells them what to say. Then comes the Great Shift, and Israelites stop seeing God or hearing His voice. Instead, later Israelites are 'in search of God,' reaching out to a distant, omniscient deity in prayers, as people have done ever since. What brought about this change? The answers come from the Bible and other ancient texts, archaeology and anthropology and recent advances in neuroscience. Ultimately, the book leads readers to the most basic matter of all, the nature of humanity's encounter with God from earliest times to our own day. The Great Shift is a landmark book, the culmination of a scholar's lifelong reckoning with the foundational text of Judaism and Christianity. James Kugel, whose religious conviction shines through his scientific exploration of the Bible and the ancient world, has written a masterwork for believers and nonbelievers alike, a profound meditation on the apprehension of God, then and now."--Jacket.
Part I: "A thousand ages in Thy sight ...". Seeing biblically ; Joseph and his brothers ; The last wills of Jacob's sons -- Part II: Divine encounters. Adam and Eve and the undifferentiated outside ; The fog of divine beings ; Eternity in ancient temples ; Imagining prophecy ; The Book of Psalms and speaking to God -- Part III. Transformation. To monotheism ... and beyond ; A sacred agreement at Sinai ; The emergence of the biblical soul ; Remembering God ; The end of prophecy? -- Part IV. In search of God. The elusive individual ; Humans in search ; Outside the Temple ; Personal religion ; Some conclusions.
Includes bibliographical references (pages [413]-441) and index.