James L. Kugel

James Kugel was the Starr Professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard University for twenty-one years. He retired from Harvard to become Professor of Bible at Bar Ilan University in Israel, where he also served as chairman of the Department of Bible.

A specialist in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Kugel is the author of more than eighty research articles and fifteen books, including The Idea of Biblical Poetry, In Potiphar’s House, On Being a Jew, and The Bible As It Was(this last the winner of the Grawemeyer Prize in Religion in 2001). His more recent books include The God of Old, The Ladder of Jacob, How to Read the Bible, awarded the National Jewish Book Award for the best book of 2007, In the Valley of the Shadow, and A Walk Through Jubilees. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, and Editor-in-chief of Jewish Studies: an Internet Journal