Taking the Heat in Struggle Over Biblical Poetry

James Kugel writes as a historian of scholarship and as one who practices historical criticism. Robert Alter writes as a literary critic and an analyst of individual biblical poems. Kugel’s book is a trailblazer, clearing the brush of centuries of scholarship in order to move more readily into an analysis of the poetry of the Hebrew Bible. Alter’s book takes us beyond the pathways Kugel has blazed and invites us to reflect, under Alter’s skillful tutelage, on the different kinds of fauna and flora in the meadows and still waters to which Kugel’s insights have led us. The two […]