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The essays in this Festschrift honor James L. Kugel for his contribution to the field of biblical studies, in particular early biblical interpretation. The essays are organized in three roughly chronological categories. The first group treats some part of the Tanakh, ranging from the creation and Abraham stories of Genesis to the evolving conception of sacred writing in the prophetic literature. The second set of essays focuses chiefly on the literature of Second Temple Judaism, including Qumran and extra-biblical literature. The last group concerns the scriptural imagination at work in rabbinic literature, in Milton’s Paradise Lost, in the anti-semitic work of Gerhard Kittle, up to the present in a treatment of Levinas and the Talmud.

Hindy Najman, Ph.D. (Harvard University, 1998) is the Director of the Centre for Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of Ancient Judaism in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Her areas of expertise are Second Temple Judaism, Hellenistic Judaism, Hebrew Bible, early Rabbinics, and the History of Jewish Interpretation. She is the author of Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism (Brill, 2003) and Prophetic Ends: Concepts of Revelation in Ancient Judaism (forthcoming 2009).

Judith H. Newman, Ph.D. (1996) in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, is Associate Professor of Religion and Old Testament at Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto. Her interests lie in the interpretation and formation of scripture in early Judaism and she has authored Early Jewish Prayers in Greek (de Gruyter, 2008, with Pieter van der Horst) and Praying by the Book: the Scripturalizaton of Prayer in Second Temple Judaism (SBLEJL, 1999).