The Great Shift

Encountering God in Biblical Times

James L. Kugel

The renowned author of How to Read the Bible reveals how a pivotal transformation in spiritual experience during the biblical era made us who we are today.

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; God buttonholes Moses and Isaiah and Jeremiah and tells them what to say. Then comes the Great Shift, and Israelites stop seeing God or hearing the divine 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 ancient texts, archaeology and anthropology, and even modern neuroscience. They concern the origins of the modern sense of self and the birth of a worldview that has been ours ever since. James Kugel, whose strong religious faith shines through his scientific reckoning with the Bible and the ancient world, has written a masterwork that will be of interest to believers and nonbelievers alike, a profound meditation on encountering God, then and now.

"Fascinating."— The New York Times Book Review

"Biblical exegesis at its best: a brilliant and sensitive reading of ancient texts, all with an eye to making them meaningful to our time by making sense of what they meant in their own."— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A magnificent job of bringing important ideas from the academy to a broad readership . . . Kugel gives readers a sense of history's convoluted texture, its ironies, and thus its beauty."— The Jewish Review of Books

Subject Index

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

Aaron

instructed to strike rock, 211–13

saw God, 12, 164

sons died in tabernacle, 96–97, 100

Aaronid priests, 366n12

Abel, 25, 95, 173–75, 174 n, 206. See also Cain

Abigail (Nabal’s wife), 202–3

Abihu (Aaron’s son), 12, 95–97, 100

Abraham, xv, 4, 5, 6, 40, 126, 320

ascended to heaven, 293–94

in comparison to Joseph, 33–36

conversation with Death, 206, 239–40

departed from homeland, 54, 55–56, 356n48

did not offer thanks, 228, 229

first monotheist, 55, 155, 356n48

and Homer, 52–56

near-sacrifice of Isaac, 35, 279–81, 320

no mere automaton, 54, 55–56

saw three men, xv, 5, 338

sense of self, 56

sometimes an automaton, 35

surprised but not flabbergasted, 107

told to leave home, 34–35, 55–56

was in a fog, 6, 338

Accra, Ghana, 117–18

Achan, 259–64, 397nn4–5

Achilles, 107, 350n20

Achor. See Achan

Adad (god), 85, 86

Adam

creation of, 63, 189, 244, 296, 350n3

discovery of agriculture, 59–60, 64–66, 357n15

life in the Garden, 60, 61, 63–64

nakedness, 61, 356n4

Scripture interpretations concerning, 320

thanksgiving, 228

undifferentiated Outside, 63–64

ADD (agency detection device), 359n31. See also hyperactive agent detection device

Aeneid (Virgil), 17, 107, 391n14

afterlife. See life after death

Agabus (prophet), 393n13

agriculture

discovery of 59–60, 64–66, 357n15

and the gods, 73–74, 83–84

Aḥa, Rabbi, 188

Ahab, King, 193, 217, 380n8

Elijah’s reproval of, 84, 155–57, 221, 261, 318

and Naboth, 261–62

Ahaz, King, 318

‘Ain Dara (sit...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Timeline of Major Figures and Events
• Maps
• Foreword
• “A Thousand Ages in Thy Sight . . .”
• Seeing Biblically
• Joseph and His Brothers
• The Last Wills of Jacob’s Sons
• 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
• Transformations
• To Monotheism . . . and Beyond
• A Sacred Agreement at Sinai
• The Emergence of the Biblical Soul
• Remembering God
• The End of Prophecy?
• In Search of God
• The Elusive Individual
• Humans in Search
• Outside the Temple
• Personal Religion
• Some Conclusions
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Subject Index
• Verses Cited
• About the Author
• Connect with HMH
• Footnotes