Courses by instructor: James Kugel

James Kugel – Professor James Kugel was born in New York and educated at Yale University, Harvard, and City University of New York. From 1982-2003 he was Starr Professor of Hebrew Literature at Harvard University. He retired from Harvard to become Director of the Institute for the History of the Jewish Bible at Bar Ilan University in Israel, where he also serves as chairman of the Department of Bible. A specialist in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Kugel is the author of some sixty research articles and eleven books, including The Idea of Biblical Poetry, In Potiphar’s House, On Being a Jew, and The Bible As It Was (winner of the Grawemeyer Prize in Religion in 2001). His latest books are The God of Old (Free Press, 2003), The Ladder of Jacob (Princeton, 2006), and How to Read the Bible (Free Press, 2007), which was awarded the National Jewish Book Award for the best book of 2007. He is a member of the American Academy for Jewish Research, the Association for Jewish Studies, and Editor in Chief of Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal.