What do Jews think scripture is? How do the People of the Book conceive of the Book of Books? In what ways is it authoritative? Who has the right to interpret it? Is it divinely or humanly written? And have Jews always thought about the Bible in the same way?


In seventeen cohesive and rigorously researched essays, this volume traces the way some of the most important Jewish thinkers throughout history have addressed these questions from the rabbinic era through the medieval Islamic world to modern Jewish scholarship. They address why different Jewish thinkers, writers, and communities have turned to the Bible?and what they expect to get from it. Ultimately, argues editor Benjamin D. Sommer, in understanding the ways Jews construct scripture, we begin to understand the ways Jews construct themselves.

Benjamin D. Sommer is Professor of Bible at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Previously, he was the Director of the Crown Family Center for Jewish Studies at Northwestern University. He has served as a visiting faculty member at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and the Brite Divinity School of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, and as a Fellow at the Tikvah Center for Law and Jewish Civilization at the New York University Law School.