Joseph's Bones Understanding the Struggle Between God and Mankind in the Bible

by Segal, Jerome M.

• ISBN13: 9781594482892
• ISBN10: 1594482896
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-02-26
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade

Summary

In this groundbreaking book, Jerome Segal offers a fresh and vigorous reexamination of the oldest part of the Bible. What if we knew nothing about Judaism or Christianity and one day picked up the first six books of the Bible? How could we possibly understand them? Who is God? Who are the Israelites? What is the relationship between God and humanity? Segal maintains that to approach the Bible from this perspective-one framed by the story of the Israelites' fidelity to Joseph-is to find something unexpected: an account of the human condition that reads like an existential novel about the struggle of mankind against the unpredictable and often unwarranted wrath of God. A radically new way of understanding the Bible and a brilliant exploration of it, Joseph's Bones is a rarity in Biblical interpretation: brilliant, rigorously argued, and thoroughly original. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Jerome M. Segal is a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland's Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. He is the author of Creating the Palestinian State, Negotiating Jerusalem, Agency and Alienation, and Graceful Simplicity.

Table of Contents

Preface: Reading with Fresh Eyes	p. ix
Joseph's Bones	p. 1
The Moral Order	p. 35
God's Project	p. 81
The Struggle in the Desert	p. 121
Leviticus within the Narrative	p. 167
The Life and Tragedy of Moses	p. 193
In the Promised Land	p. 245
Afterword: Implications of this Reading for the Jesus Story	p. 275
Reflections on Who Wrote the Bible	p. 293
Acknowledgments	p. 299
Index	p. 301
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.