East of Eden

East of Eden
© 1952 John Steinbeck
580 pages

Why did Cain kill Abel?  East of Eden explores that question via a family saga, one that stretches across North America, spanning the continent as well as the generations;  a story that begins at the end of the Civil War ends only at the end of the Great War.  It's the story of two families and one individual, a woman who bares more resemblance to the apocryphal Lilith than to Eve. When I approached East of Eden, I did so only as a story about brothers; I had no idea that Steinbeck mixed in his own family history, let alone that he regarded the book as his magnum opus. Only time can tell if I will remember this story as vividly as I do that of the Joads ,in The Grapes of Wrath...but I wouldn't bet against it.

Readers who retain a familiarity with the Hebrew bible will remember that Genesis is essentially a family epic, particularly following the line of Abraham: he has a son, Isaac, who has two boys, who fight, and the victor thereof (Jacob) creates an entire litter of boys with more fighting ensuing, taking the family story to Egypt and back, until the family has become a nation.  East of Eden begins with a man and his two sons, who fight, and their story will take one brother not to Egypt but to the Salinas valley of California.  That brother, Adam Trask, wants to build a life and farm for himself in the west, but his ideals and dreams are shot when he himself is shot by a woman he shrouded with lies and hope: his wife.  Adam's sons grow up, bearing the names Aaron and Caleb,  and their own dram

East of Eden leaves a great deal to mull over.  There is a very obvious aspect of siblings vying for their father's affection;   Adam and Charles do this with their father, Cyrus, and  Adam's sons Aaron and Caleb echo it with him.  The homage to Genesis is deliberate, as several characters frequently ruminate over the meaning of the story in Genesis in which Cain grows distressed after his sacrifice to God is snubbed in favor of his brother's; that distress takes the form of murderous jealousy sentences later when Cain kills his brother and becomes an outcast, sojourning east of Eden.   Of particular interest is the fact that God "marked" Cain so that others would see him and not slay him-- saving judgment for God's own hand.  Several characters in East of Eden are 'marked', not through liver spots or birthmarks, but scarred through their own actions. These characters struggle with darkness; one is saturated by it, possessed by it -- and others  live in fear of themselves, wondering if they are doomed to persist in their vices. That question is the great theme of the book, the question of destiny: is our fate in our hands?  For the characters it all comes down to a single word, a word that fixates rabbis and Chinese wisemen and frustrated farmers alike.

What I appreciated most about East of Eden,  is that every character save the sociopath was conflicted. The "good", doted-on brothers frequently made mistakes, and their failures provoke the plot as much as the failures of the ''Cains'. Of course, this is a character-driven drama;  relationships here are all-important.  This was definitely a novel to savor..

Related:
Big Rock Candy Mountain, Wallace Stegner. Another family epic set in the West..

The Way

The Way: What Every Protestant Needs to Know About Orthodoxy
© 2007 Clark Carlton
222 pages

  If Protestantism is a willful child of the Catholic church, what is it to the Orthodox?  What is the Orthodox faith for that matter, Catholicism with more beards and fewer popes?  The Way  begins with the  unexpected conversion story of its author from a Southern Baptist seminary to a faith thought to be the sole province of Greek and Russian immigrants  before articulating the core aspects of the ancient faith – the Trinity, the Church, and the Eucharist which brings them together – as they stand in relation to the doctrines of most American Christians. Although Protestants defined themselves against the authority of Rome, their doctrinal stands nonetheless render them separate from Orthodoxy – so separate, in fact, that Clarkson believes Protestantism constitutes a separate religion.  In The Way,  readers of all stripes will find an introduction the Orthodox  theology, and Protestants will find a particular challenge to their views on sola scripture and the role of tradition.

After easing readers into the book with his conversion story, which unfolded amid a fundamentalist takeover of a southern baptist college in the 1980s, Carlson shifts to theology.  The Trinity is a crucial concept to Orthodox theology, as it establishes God's nature as rooted in relationship.  "God is love" does not  simply mean that person called God happens to be loving; His very nature is bound up in the act of the Incarnation, just as the Church's nature is contained within the Eucharist. The Church, Clarkton writes, is not a body of people who believe the same thing, but a community which shares in the living body of Christ.   In less heady chapters, Carlton argues against sola scripture from various grounds, namely that no one interprets scripture without a tradition; Calvinists read the bible through Calvinism, Lutherans through Lutheranism, Arians Arianism, etc. The Catholic-Orthodox tradition at least has the merit of being the source of the scriptural compilation, as it took several hundred years for a definitive collection to be established by the Church.   The Eastern Orthodox church has no qualms regarding protestant rebellion of papal authority, for they too reject it;  but in Carlton's view the protestants have erred seriously in rejecting all authority. Scripture alone is insufficient; every heresy has come armed with its chosen scriptural arguments, and the massive variety of commentaries on the scriptures demonstrate how subjective readings can be.  The leadership of the Church resolves heresies not simply by finding scripture, but interpreting them in the light of the Church's nature. Arianism was a heresy not because it chose the "wrong verses", but because it effectively denies the Incarnation,  and with it the church's very life.  If the Bible were so important to Protestantism, why then did they modify it -- dropping books as desired?  Christ left a Church, not a book, writes Carlton, and  sola scriptura reduces the Bible to a rule book and Christianity an ideology, while the  Orthodox faith is a life lived in Jesus, through the Eucharist.

Carlton has a talent for making theology comprehensible, though he is an author who frequently bares his teeth, with a contempt borne of familiarity for aspects of modern Protestantism.  Sola scriptura no doubt dies hard, just as strict Constitutionalism dies hard: how easy it is to endue an object with objectivity, in the hopes of satisfying our need for something that is wholly True. But the Bible is not God; it is merely inspired by him, writes Carlton, and to worship it is to commit idolatry. In a finishing touch, Carlton scrutinizes the creeds of Protestant sects to point out what they truly worship, comparing the opening lines of the Nicene Creed ("I believe in One God") with articles of faith like the Westminister Confession, which open placing scripture at the forefront and then address God.  If nothing else, The Way does much to  demonstrate that the Eucharist was far more important to the early church than a once-a-year knocking back of grape juice does credit.

Misquoting Jesus

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
© 2005 Bart Ehrman
256 pages

Contrary to popular belief, the King James Bible did not fall out of the sky, a gift from a loving deity to his people below. In Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman delves into the human side of the Christian New Testament, introducing lay readers to textual analysis and demonstrating how scribes and theologians in the early centuries of the church tweaked verses while copying them, either to correct mistakes as they saw them or to stress a theological point.  Ehrman writes not to attack the New Testament’s credibility, but rather to make readers aware that the text they cherish has a life and history of its own.  Understanding that history means gleaning new insight into early Christianities as well, for even after one theological view won out over another, the evidence of battle lays in subtle alterations. Some are subtle indeed: changing a single brushstroke in one word (changing an O into a Φ ) could assert Jesus as God made manifest. Others are more obvious, like Jesus’ “anger” at a leper being converted into ‘compassion’ for him, even though later in the same story he harshly rebukes said leper and his inserted  compassion seems out of place.  Ehrman almost avoids arguing for any sweeping changes; the broadest alteration of text he observes is that Paul seems to contract himself about the role of women in the church within the same book (1st Corinthians), indicating that a later follower might have put words into his patron’s mouth.   Only the strictest literalist would be made uneasy by  Ehrman’s revelations.  For the rest of us,  Misquoting Jesus is a fascinating work that makes one appreciate how much passion has been poured even into making copies of texts,

The Rapture Exposed

The Rapture Exposed: the Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation
© 2004 Barbara R. Rossing
224 pages

"When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love."

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I am amazed that so much of the horror of my youth was built on so pathetic a foundation.  As a child growing up in a fundamentalist Christian sect,  I was promised a future filled with horror and dread if I was not a perfect child. Any day now, any moment,  all the "real" Christians would float into the sky and the rest of us would be abandoned to seven years of war, chaos, pestilence,  and an evil totalitarian state that encompassed the entire earth. During my adolescence, I frequently panicked and grew fearful if I lost communication with my parents, and often had nightmares about the world to come. Not until I left religion in 2006 did this fear subside, but now that I find that not only is this interpretation of Revalation badly assembled, but that an alternative interpretation carres at its heart what attracts people to Jesus and Christianity: the message that love and peaceful action can overcome evil. In The Rapture Exposed, Barbara Rossing tears apart the Left Behind story, urges readers to combat its political influence in the middle east, and explains her own view.


Around fifteen years ago, the Left Behind series became enormously popular in the United States. The series began with the Rapture spiriting away all the real, true Christians in addition to every child on earth, and then followed a collection of fairly cretinous heroes as they dedicated themselves to God in the aftermath and sought to effect his will throughout the Great Tribulation. The books were fairly terrible (and I say that speaking as someone who read all sixteen), but benefited from the kind of dread and expectation that the coming of a new Millenium brought with it. The series offered Christians horror and drama withotu sex and 'bad words', and is dominated throughout by a self-congratulatory spirit. Despite this, the worldview is distressingly influential.   Rossi opens by first pointing out that this great horrible story of the Rapture has no genuine biblical basis. While its proponents use a collection of Biblical verses from Revelations, Thessalonians, and Daniel to tell their story, that collection is a patchwork fraud -- like a randsom note  written by cutting out letters from magazine articles and gluing them together to turn cheerful advertisments into death threats.  That is essentially what Rossing believes Rapturists have done with Revelation, a book written in her view to offer encouragment to Christians under persecution. She delves into the history of Rapture belief, as well as the history of the early church, pointing out that Revelation belongs to a genre of literature known as Apocalypses, and she uses an excellent metaphor (Scrooge's vision in A Christmas Carol) to  point out that its story need not actually happen for its meaning to be significant.

That meaning, for Rossi, is not one of dread and horror, but of the victory of love. As she guides readers through the book of Revelation, we see that the predominant portrayal of Jesus is one of a slain lamb. She urges readers to  use Revelation's story to help them see the here and now as the Kingdom of God, and their Christian duty in fully realizing it by fighting injustice, serving others, and making this world as best as it can be. In Rossi's view, debunking Rapture mythology is essential not only in fighting escapism or perverting a message of hope into one of horror, but in ending its current political influence as politicians like George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and other members of the self-proclaimed moral majority allow Left Behind mythology to influence their potential policy decisions in the middle east.  She ends by offering a selection of verses which Rapture-believers bank on, and then commenting on their meanings within their actual literary or historical context.  The book isn't as thorough a resource as someone struggling with the rapture might like -- there's no mention of how Christians have historically viewed Revelation outside of the brief 200 years the Rapture has been around -- but it should suffice as a wake-up call, or at the very least allow readers to appreciate Revelation for the first time as something other than the work of a madman on a "bad trip".

Ecclesiasticus

Ecclesiasticus or The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach
From The New English Bible, pp. 158 -251
© Oxford and Cambridge Universities 1970

Last week I read the Book of Wisdom, a title within the original Jewish and Christian bibles, but one discarded by Protestants. In an effort to learn more about the evolution of Judaism and Christianity, and out of my own interest in wisdom literature, I'm continuing to read from the more complete Catholic canon. Ecclesiasticus is also placed firmly within the genre of wisdom literature and is largely similar to Proverbs in being an extended collection of observations, maxims, and advice. The author also tacked on Book of Wisdom-like devotions to wisdom, poetic history, and two sections of praise worthy of the Psalms.

Unjust rage can never be excused; when anger tips the scale it is man's downfall. (1:22)

Ecclesiastisicus is definitely an interesting little book. I forgave its frequent praise of submission and obedience (to kings, priests, etc) as being a fault of the times which produced it,  and delighted in its frequent references to emotional self-control, especially given that the author seems to have been influenced by Stoic cosmology, using 'wisdom' in the opening section in the same way that a Stoic might refer to the divine fire: it is rational, fused into the universe, and given to mankind so that we might draw closer to God.  While a fair bit of the advice consists of objections worth reflecting on ("Do not overrate one man for his good lucks or be repelled by another man's appearance"), other advice stands out. I would have never expected to read admonishments to examine evidence and engage in reflection before making a judgment, and to put conscience before deferment to authority in a religious text that places so much emphasis on faith and obedience to authority.

I have still more in my mind to express;
I am full like the moon at mid-month.
Listen to me, my devout sons, and blossom like a rose planted by a stream.
Spread your fragrance like incense; and bloom like a lily.  (39: 12 - 14)

It's hard to get a handle on the author of Ecclesiasticus. He seems pious and introspective, yet at the same time encourages readers to make hay while the sun shines -- 'you will enjoy no luxuries in the grave'.  Like Epicures and the author of Ecclesiastes, he obviously doesn't consider pleasure a mortal failing: he only warns against excesses. Speaking of excesses, he unfortunately his own -- especially in the hate department. I am surprised that "Jesus, Son of Sirach" doesn't enjoy more name recognition in the United States: publishers have obviously missed two huge markets to sell his thoughts to: those who subscribe to the American Family Radio school of parenting would adore his brutal approach, which consists of breaking the will of sons and bemoaning virginal daughters as liabilities who are remarkable only for their potential bringing shame to the family; and gangsta rappers would delight in his fantastic misogyny, which crippled the closing two fifths of the book for me..  As I read line after demonizing line, culminating in the classic "Better a man's wickedness than a womans goodness; it is woman who brings shame and disgrace (42: 14)", I thought to myself that this guy had some serious frustration issues to work out. Obviously, he didn't have a happy love life.  His attitude toward slaves borders on schizophrenic: he warns readers to keep their slaves constantly working, or on the rack being tortured, lest they run away -- and then on the very next page, scarcely twenty lines later, suggests treating them like family. Considering this fellow's attitude toward wives, sons, and daughters, however, I would not be surprised if he recommended the rack for them. I'm still reeling from the moral whiplash: the lack of consistency is problematic, and why I would recommend Marcus Aurelius or a similar philosopher over this faithful, but unpredictable, wisdom-seeker.

All in all, an interesting book. It's not as revealing of the Jewish  and early Christian mind as the Book of Wisdom,   but if you excised a few choice sections there's a fair bit of value here. Just er, don't give it as a Mother's Day present.

The Book of Wisdom

The Book of Wisdom, or The Wisdom of Solomon
from the New English Bible, © 1970 Cambridge and Oxford University Press

Christian personification of Wisdom

My favorite book in the Judeo-Christian bible is that of Ecclesiastes,  in which a man known as 'the preacher' or 'the teacher'  engages in a search for the meaning of life, exploring both the 'low road' of exulting in pleasure and the 'higher' road of seeking wisdom and religious discipline. He finds that the best approach may be one of moderation, as neither hedonism nor obsessive scrupulosity create happiness over the long run. I think Ecclesiastes a humble and pragmatic book, and so when Isaac Asimov mentioned that a book of the original Jewish and Catholic bibles called The Book of Wisdom was similar to Ecclesiastes in genre, I determined that I had to read it.

Wisdom shines bright and never fades; she is easily discerned by those who love her, and by those who seek her she is found. She is quick to make herself known to those who desire knowledge of her; the man who rises early in search of her will not grow weary in the quest, for he will find her seated at his door. To set all one's thoughts on her is prudence in its perfect shape, and to lie wakeful in her cause is the short way to peace of mind. For she herself ranges in search of those who are worthy of her; on their daily path she appears with kindly intent, and in all their purposes meets them half-way. (6: 12-17)

The Book of Wisdom is not really a book of wisdom  in the same sense that Ecclesiastes and Proverbs are, though it does praise wisdom lavishly.  Proverbs refers to wisdom as a woman at least once, and the Book of Wisdom takes that personification and runs with it for page after page. I took perverse pleasure in reading these sections of the text as though they were a poem in praise of Athena, although the Christian personification of wisdom is referred to as Sophia. The prose or this translation thereof is beautiful and stylish. I relished reading the text aloud, although the viciousness of some of it amused me.  While the author doesn't tell you what qualifies as wisdom, he is quick to tell you it is the path to God, the path to both peace on earth and immortality. The godless who reject it are treated with as much hate as the author can muster, which I thought somewhat comical. The lack of wisdom is its own punishment, just as virtue is its own reward.

Protestants may not have heard of the Book of Wisdom because it -- along with books like Tobit, Judas, the Maccabees, and additions to Daniel and Easter -- were dropped by various Protestant denominations preparing their own bibles. These books were included in the original Jewish canon, the Septuagint, and would have been read by Paul, Jesus, and the other apostles. A later Jewish canon, compiled  around the turning of the second century, threw out those books which were written in Greek*. The Christian church didn't, though. The devotional poetry to wisdom aside, this book makes for interesting reading. It's not a very Jewish book, at least not by the standards of modern Jewish orthodoxy. Christianity and Islam have a completely different notion of Satan than Judaism does: the Christians turn a loyal servant of God who tests people and gives them opportunities to strengthen themselves by triumphing over temptation into a pathetic rebel who attacks people just to be a dick, but whose attacks are co-opted by God into use as trials.  In the Book of Wisdom, though, he is mentioned as spiteful, which seems a hint to me that the author shared the same villainous perception of Satan that some Jews around the turn of the century did -- Jesus refers to him as a roaring lion trying to eat people, and (I think) as a foul Dragon.  I don't know what happened to that train of thought within Judaism, but I think they're better for having lost it.

"But the souls of the just are in God's hand and torment shall not touch them. In the eyes of foolish men they seemed to be dead; their departure was reckoned as defeat, and their going from us as disaster. But they are at peace, for though in the sight of men they may be punished, they have a sure hope of immortality; and after a little chastisement they will receive great blessings, because God has tested them and found them worthy to be his."  (3: 1-9)

Protestants often attack the Catholic idea of Purgatory as unbiblical, and they're sort of right -- because they removed the parts of the Bible which refer to Purgatory from their own canon. It would be as if I held up the Jefferson Bible and said, "The idea that Jesus worked miracles is unbiblical!", or tore out Genesis from the Torah and said "The idea of a Great Flood is unbiblical!".   The Book of Wisdom specifically mentions that even the good who die must endure 'some chastisement', which sounds like the Catholic idea of purgatory as it has been explained to me by three sources -- two books and a deacon.  I'd be very much interested in finding out when this book was written, and in what part of the world, because the author is obsessed with bastards. He devotes several 'paragraphs'  to attacking people born out of wedlock, leading me to believe that there's some 'illegitimately-born' monarch or warlord somewhere that he's taking aim at. There's also a section that celebrates a martyr for wisdom, which probably also has a real-world inspiration.

If you're looking for wisdom literature, this isn't it -- but if you want to find a lovely poem about wisdom, or gain some insights into the evolution of Jewish and Christian thinking, I would suggest tracking this down.  The Oxford/Cambridge translation is very readable

* I think this may have had something to do with the fact that the Temple had just been destroyed by Rome (Year 70)  in retaliation for the Jewish revolt, which was prompted by the attempted installment of a statue inside the Temple to honor the emperor as god. Hatred of all things Greco-Roman may have prompted the dumping of these Jewish texts written in Greek.

The Rise and Fall of the Bible

The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book
© 2011 Timothy Beal
225 pages, not including index.

Disclaimer: I read from an advanced review copy of the book, available through NetGalleys. No compensation for a review, good or negative, was offered or requested, aside from my own potential enjoyment of the book.

For better or worse, the Bible holds a singular place in western history. Within its thousands of pages are history,  poetry, proverbs, legends, and more laws than anyone knows what to do with. For fifteen hundred years, people have looked at it for justification and inspiration --  saints and scoundrels alike.  Timothy Beal writes The Rise and Fall of the Bible in part to address how it arrived at this status. His work is not a comprehensive history of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, but focuses on their collection, promotion, and role in western society.  Essentially, it's a history of the Bible as a cultural icon -- as The Bible, the ultimate and authoritative voice that offers simple, direct, and instant answers to any who seek its counsel -- and a critical appraisal of the same.

Beal grew up seeing the Bible in this way, but while he still holds to the Christian faith, he now sees a gulf between this iconic status and the Bible in its most potent context. Rather than seeing it as a "magic eight ball" that delivers answers at convenience, Beal has grown to view the Bible as a work of work which forces individuals to engage with it, to grapple with its diverse meanings.  He believes that the ruthless conversion of the Bible from sacred literature into consumer product is fast eroding its status as an icon, and that the rise of digital literature will encourage individuals to work with the bible for themselves.

Beal's opening chapters comment on the current status of the Bible (emphasizing its constant repackaging into forms like 'biblezines 'and manga stories), after which point he gives a brief history of the Christian canon. I'd expected this section to be the meat of the book, but Beal uses the history to illustrate his point that the relationship between people and the Bible has changed throughout history. In early Christian history, no Authority handed down approved texts to individuals and communities. Instead ,they collected -- and created -- such texts themselves.  According to Beal, both Jewish and Christian scriptures existed in an infinite variety, as collections and translations were assembled for a given community's desires, purposes, and preferences. They lifted quotes out of context to apply to their own needs, freely -- and this is true not only of the rank-and-file believer, but of church fathers like Paul.* Copyists and translators played fast-and-loose with their work, and the organization of the Christian canon in the early medieval  period seems like a desperate struggle to impose order on chaos. It's no accident that the canon only came to be once the resources of the state were at would-be censors' disposal. It's also rather obvious that the censors' opinions are arbitrary: from the early church through the Renaissance and Reformation, theologians bickered on what was Authoritative and which was not.

This history of the Christian bible, while not as thorough as I'd expected, was thoroughly fascinating all the same. Such diversity explains all the little inconsistencies, and makes defending claims to the Bible speaking in only one voice impossible to defend. Beal devotes a chapter following his history discuss his problems with seeing the Bible as a one-voice monograph. It is, he says, a library of books that is "constantly interpreting, interrogating, and disagreeing with itself."  Beal adds to his discussion of the Bible's role by commenting on how the physical expression of scriptures -- in scrolls, codices, books, and now digital texts -- changes the way people view it.  The unwieldiness and expense of the scroll promoted oral traditions and short anthologies, while the Bound Book conveys to the reader a sense of finality:  a text that is bound is finished and cannot be altered. Its sheer physicality is an imposition, and the relative openness of digital literature is one reason why Beal is optimistic about the future role of the bible. As it becomes more personal affair, the lessons gleaned from it will have real value: rather than meekly accepting The Final Word, individuals will earn truth and meaning by working for it.

I'm glad I read The Rise and Fall of the Bible, though it's not the book I thought I would be reading. Its history added to my appreciation of early Christian history, and its theme -- the Bible's changing relationship with the people who read it -- has given me food for thought.  I never realized how 'loose' the Christian canon truly is.

The Rise and Fall of the Bible will be available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on February 16, 2011.

Related:

• God's Problem, Bart Ehrman, which expounds on the lack of a ultimate answer to the question of evil --  something Beal cited as evidence of the Bible's  multivoiced nature. 
• Asimov's Guide to the Bible, Isaac Asimov-- a treatment of the Bible as human literature. 

*In studying the creation of Christianity from Judaism back in late '06 and 2007, I realized that the Gospel authors were rather enthusiastic in repurposing  Jewish scriptures for their own use. One rabbi referred to this as "painting Christianity into the [Torah]".

Reading Judas

Reading Judas: the Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of  Christianity
© 2007 Elaine Pagels and Karen King
198 pages, including the author's own work, the text itself, and commentary on the translation.

Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land

A hard-working man and brave --

He said to the rich, "Give your money to the poor,"

But they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand

His followers true and brave.

One dirty coward called Judas Iscariot

Has laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

(Woody Guthrie, "Jesus Christ".)

Mostly on a whim, I picked up Reading Judas on my way out of the library last week. I heard of the book as being Judas' account of Jesus' last days, in which Judas is hand-picked by Jesus to 'betray' his master, and thus serve him in the greatest way possible by allowing Jesus to fulfill his mission. This is controversial, since the canonical treatment of Judas is as a 'dirty coward' who betrayed Jesus for spite or money.

According to Pagels and King, though, and judging from the text of Judas -- included in this volume -- Judas wasn't written primarily to redeem or even defend Judas. The authors see it as another voice in the pre-Nicaean debate on who Jesus was, why he died, why he rose again, and what his followers should do in light of his example. A new cosmology dominates the text, and Judas takes central place for he is the only one of Jesus' disciples willing enough to depart from the old ways and learn it. Jesus sees his potential and takes him aside, teaching him in private while they ruefully shake their heads at the hidebound ignorance of the others. The author of the Judas text uses it to promote a world-view in which material matters are wholly irrelevant, where reality lies in the world of the spirits. That's where Judas realizes Jesus is from: the world of the spirit, and his death is a clarion call to followers that death is nothing: all that matters is spirit.

In the first century of Christian history -- or histories, as the authors see this time as an era of bitter rivalry between schools of thought, all of whom fixate on a particular teacher (Peter, Paul, James, and in this case Judas) as their banner -- many Christians were still waiting the return of Jesus to establish an actual kingdom on Earth. As time passes and Jesus is a no-show, Christianity moves more toward seeing that kingdom as spiritual, and becomes more concerned with spiritual matters. I suppose the watershed event is Augustine's City of God.  What Judas' author proposes is not all that controversial in reality, since Christians are oh-so-eager to defame the world and put their hopes in metaphysics. I'd wager Christians reading Judas would not be shocked by a preconceived idea that it defends Judas, but by the new cosmology, which refers to the god of sacrifice, violence, and blood that the disciples worshiped as  a "lower angel". The "true God" is better than that, and in Judas' eyes, that's what Jesus was sent to say.

Christian theology isn't one of my subjects of interest (theology in general, for that matter), but Reading Judas   added to my understanding of that early period. The authors of this book helped immensely, of course, introducing the book by examining the text in context before producing it. The four opening chapters examine Judas' perception as a traitor, the roles he plays in other texts, the book's cosmology, and its theology. This gospel is unlike the canonical books, which exist mostly as collection of stories throughout his life: it seems to be set in the week before Jesus' passover death. The text is also incomplete:  while the "holy" gospels were protected, Judas was left on its own and became holey in another way.* There are long portions of undisturbed text, but they may be followed by passages that have been nearly obliterated. An patchwork example follows.

"Jesus said [to them], "Cease sac[rificing........]. "It is upon the alt[a]r that yo[u........] [for they are] over your stars and angels, having already been completed there. Let them become [...] again right in front of you, and let them.... [about fifteen and a half lines are missing from the manuscript] to the races [...]. It is not possible for a bak[er] to feed the whole creation under [heaven]." (113-114) 

Passages like these are near-unintelligible, but the text is lucid for the most part. I can recommend this book to Christians, who won't find it as shocking as the "controversy" leads them to expect, or to anyone interested in early Christianity.

*Bless me father, for I have sinned.

The Year of Living Biblically

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible As Literally As Possible
© 2007 A.J. Jacobs
388 pages



Day 111. When I'm jotting down tips on how to land a second wife, it's clear that the pendulum has swung too far into the Bible's crazy territory.  (p. 138)


I began this blog in May 2007 with A.J. Jacob’s Know-It-All, in which he records his experience reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. I enjoyed the book immensely, and so jumped at the chance to read another work of Jacobs’. In A Year of Living Biblically,  he tasks himself with following every rule and suggestion in the Judeo-Christian bible as literally as possible in an effort to understand what religious beliefs and practices do for people. He intends to honor the various commandments’ literal meaning, rather than their specific expression*, and establishes references to help him along the way. Not only does he convene a panel of religious leaders to help him navigate the maze of translations and cross-interpretations, but he begins to build a library of biblically-focused works for his own research. He also commits to spending time with other biblical literalists (the Amish,  Mormons, and Young-Earthers) and making “pilgrimages” to Jerusalem and the Creationist site in Kentucky.

Jacobs’ initial steps onto this new religious path are bumpy indeed, as he attempts to adjust to a confusing new regimen. Jacobs isn’t content to take the bible’s ethical mandates seriously: not only does he begin living the Golden Rule, but he lets his beard grow out, attaches tassels to his clothing, avoids his wife during her period, and begins each month by blowing a shofar. He thus strives to fulfill its ritualistic laws as well. He also attempts to follow the Bible’s advice for punishing others for their sins, but breaks no laws in the process: he does stone adulterers, but does so with pebbles. As the months pass, Jacobs immerses himself in the life, becoming the sort of person others cross the street to avoid coming near. So intrusive are the biblical laws that Jacobs fears he is being absorbed by a newborn alter-ego -- the long-bearded, staff-toting, moralistic “Jacob”.  Jacobs fights to maintain his sanity, even though he obviously enjoys the journey in part. When the time comes for him to leave the Hebrew scriptures for the Christian, he is reluctant to abandon his beard and horn-blowing.

Although Jacobs intended to follow both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, his attempts to live a Christian life are stymied by the fact that he can’t accept Jesus as the Messiah: beyond that, all the New Testament contains are a few ethical rules already covered by the Hebrews. Thus, he spends his three Christian months visiting Christian churches. This causes a bit of a stir given his beard and fondness for robes. Humorously, Jacob’s year-long research into the Bible causes him to take issue with the way Christians like Jerry Falwell misuse the Hebrew scriptures, robbing them of their context.  Speaking of Falwell, Jacobs finds out that despite the man’s ability to vomit sound bytes, his actual sermons are dull.

When the year-long journey ends, Jacobs seems conflicted. Although he’s relieved of the burden of following so many rules, he enjoyed the structure they gave his life.  He especially enjoyed the group activities, like dancing with drunken Hasidic Jews on a night designated for revelry. He feels as though he has benefited from the experience overall, having gained a reverence for life while remaining agnostic. I enjoyed watching him grapple with the life, and I recommend the book to both religious and nonreligious audiences. It will allow us -- particularly the nonreligious -- to understand our fellows better. Religious audiences may glean the same, but not so much if Jacobs happened to subscribe to his own life stance. In any case, both audiences are sure to be amused by Jacobs’ constant reacting to what is expected of him. This was an exceptional read, one I'm sure to remember with fondness.

The inside cover includes pictures that track the growth of Jacobs' beard and hair over the course of a year. You may view it here.


*“Those who piss against the wall” could be taken literally to mean hobos and drunken college students, for instance, but its literal meaning would be males. Females would be hard-pressed to pee against a wall.

God's Problem

God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question -- Why We Suffer

© 2008 Bart Ehrman

294 pages

While gazing at the library shelves in the "Religion" section attempting to find a book by Marcus Borg, I saw the title of this book and was immediately intrigued. The book description only confirmed my interest and I was soon reading it. Bart Ehrman is a New Testament scholar and former minister, his faith having been broken by the classical problem of religions with "good" deities at their center: if those gods exist, why is there suffering? How can evil flourish so well in a world supposedly built by good and powerful entities? This question has personal relevance to me, as I was never able to really trust God after reading Anne Frank's diary and realizing how the Holocaust destroyed real people. Ehrman actually uses the Holocaust as an extended example.

This book grew out of a class he once taught about Biblical attitudes toward suffering, and the approach he takes is to identify three general explanations for evil, explain their origin and influence, and then to evaluate them from the perspective of someone who wants to believe but can't. I say "three general explanations", but this is my organization -- not his. The first two explanations -- suffering as a consequence of sin and suffering as being part of God's Mysterious Plan ™ -- need no explanation, either of what they are or of what's wrong with them. It is the third general explanation -- apocalyptic thinking* -- that I found most intriguing. Here Ehrman not only explains what that thinking is and how it applies to the suffering question, but in so doing makes the whole of the New Testament make sense. Being familiar with history and with Judaism-- having studied it in 2006 and 2007 -- much of the New Testament has confused me. If it arose from Jewish/Hellenic culture, where did the New Testament characters get some of their ideas? Why were Pharisees suddenly talking about a Resurrection when OT Hebrews had never heard of such a thing? Why did people make such a big deal of Jesus' ability to raise the dead? Fitting the New Testament into an apocalyptic context makes it make much more sense.

In addition to these three general explanations, Ehrman also points out that some of the Biblical authors felt that suffering just couldn't be explained, and he uses Ecclesiastes and Job as its source. (Ehrman believes that Job contains two conflicting explanations for evil: the first is suffering-as-penalty and the second is the inexplicable.)

Given that I am not a religious believer struggling with the problem of suffering, I cannot comment on Ehrman's ability to convince the audience. He writes well, uses familiar examples, and appears to be quite thorough: for instance, when writing on the explanation of "suffering as a penalty for sin", he shows that this view influenced the entire historical narrative in the Hebrew scriptures. I think the book bears reading for those interested in what religious people coming from a Judeo-Christian background might say in defense of their God when asked to account for suffering.

He ends the book with an elegant defense of life in the face of continuing suffering, beginning with this: "I have to admit that at the end of the day, I do have a biblical view of suffering. As it turns out, it is the view put forth in the book of Ecclesiastes. There is a lot that we can't know about this world. A lot of this world doesn't make sense. Sometimes there is no justice. Things don't go as planned or as they should. A lot of bad things happen. But life also brings good things. The solution to life is to enjoy it while we can, because it is fleeting. This world, and everything in it, is temporary, transient, and soon to be over. We won't live forever -- in fact, we won't live long. And so we should enjoy life to the fullest, as much as we can, as long as we can. That's what the author of Ecclesiastes says, and I agree. "

* In my response on my philosophy/humanities blog, I include Ehrman's explanation of apocalyptic thinking.

In the Beginning

In the Beginning
© 1981 Isaac Asimov
496 pages

Please note that my copy of In the Beginning was in large print, so the page count is very much inflated. Adjusted for fontsize, the actual size of the book should be about 240 pages. (Courtesy of Amazon.)

I'm growing perilously close to exhausting my local library's Isaac Asimov holdings, but I shall keep the flame aglow for as long as I can. Asimov wrote in his Asimov's Guide to the Bible that he had enjoyed writing in-depth commentaries on the first books of the Bible and would have gleefully continued to do so had he the time and his publisher the faith that there were enough people willing to buy them -- but the two had neither, and so Asimov settled for writing his bigger guide and leaving only a few books of the Judeo-Christian bible with extended commentary. In the Beginning is one such book, and it concerns (as you may guess) the book of Genesis. More specifically, it concerns the first eleven chapters of Genesis -- from "In the beginning" to Yahweh telling Abraham, "Hey, go over there."

The book offers verse-by-verse commentary, although Asimov will often group verses together for the sake of readability. It was slow reading at first, as he slowly dissected every word of the first verse, examining the scientific account of the beginnings of the universe and comparing it to the words of Genesis. The first parts of the book offer a lot of comparison between the opening verses of Genesis and the scientific account of cosmological development and biological development. Asimov's information is a little dated twenty or so years in the future, but perfectly up to date for his time -- or so I would imagine.

Once Earth is created, the book got a lot more interesting for me, as Asimov spends more time writing on comparative myth, legends, primitive histories, language, comparative symbolism, and all sorts of things of interest to a student of the social sciences like myself.The flood prompts more scientific comparison, but not as much as I'd expected. Although I've read Asimov's Guide to the Bible, there was much more detail here and I did learn quite a bit. (Asimov's explanation for why Creation took six days was particularly helpful: he delves into the history of the standard "week" and its introduction into Hebrew culture.) I don't know that the writing style itself is worth commenting on: it's Asimov -- of course it was enjoyable. Even so, I will say on or two things. I found Asimov's approach to be fairly professional: he writes well, and he keeps judgments to a minimum -- enough to make an orthodox student think, perhaps, but not enough to offend him or her to the point of closing their mind further. Here is an example of some commentary (with intersource comparison).

9. These are the generations of Noah: (200) Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. [...].

200. Here we have a new introduction, which might better be translated, "Following is the story of Noah." The reason for the introduction is that we now switch to the P-document which carries on the tale from the end of Chapter 5. In fact, the story of the Flood, which follows, is to be found in both the P-document and the J-document, each telling it characteristically. The P-document is full of numbers and details, while the J-document concentrates on drama. The Biblical editors, finding the tale in both documents, included both, interweaving the P-document and the J-document in an attempt to tell a single story. Actually, they managed to introduce repetitions and self-contradictions.*

This is worth the read if you can find it.

* page 326, large-print edition

Desire of the Everlasting Hills

Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus
© 1999 Thomas Cahill

I've never expected to read the words "his silly circumcised penis swelling for all to see" in connected with Jesus Christ, but I have now, after reading Desire of the Everlasting Hills: the World Before and After Jesus. Cahill is one of those authors who can manage to intrigue me, somewhat annoy me, and leave me thinking -- did he really just say that? I had to read about Jesus' silly circumcised penis swelling a few times before accepting that yes, Cahill was pondering and writing on the penis of his god -- and calling it silly, yet.

Cahill begins his conversation with the reader at the twilight of the "Axiol Age", his term for that period that witnessed the flowering of philosophical, intellectual, and religious thought that gave us Buddha, Confucius, Plato, and their kin. Our story is set a Judea that has become partially Hellenized by Alexander the Great -- who Cahill spends time on -- and which is now a Roman province. He tells us of the rise of the Maccabees, who I had heard of but knew nothing about. According to Cahill, a man named Judeas Maccabee organized an insurrection against their Selucid rulers when said rulers attempted to refile the temple in Jerusalem. Judeas triumphed and his family became the rulers of the area, albeit ruling under the Roman thumb. Herod, Cahill tells us, is the last of that line -- meaning Herod is actually Jewish.

Since Christianity began as a Jewish sect, Cahill explores the various branches of Judaism that are flowering now that there are no Orthodox priests to keep people in. The two I remember most are the Essenes and the Pharisees. The Essenes resemble monks in that they retire in the wilderness to contemplate YHWH and so forth, while the Pharisees are alarmed at the growing lack of respect for the law and attempt to restore the old practices. The Pharisees will be the main villains in the New Testament, for those unfamiliar with it. He then explores the changing perception of Jesus and Christianity among the disciples and the Early church. I realized as the book wound to an end that the reason I don't know much about the early church is not that I haven't really looked before, but because there's not much information to draw on. The evidence is scant, and Cahill seems to restrict himself to it. There's no real wild speculation here -- no stories of Mary Magdalene leading the church and being ousted and driven into exile by Peter. Cahill's Catholicism does intrude at a couple of points, most notable when he addresses Martin Luther and ritual in the Catholic church.

I enjoyed the book quite well until the last chapter, when he attempts to attribute to Jesus and his followers (like Paul) everything from universal suffrage to tolerance. Looks to me to be an example of selective reading. The case of Paul is especially interesting, given that he writes to the members of one church and advises them that women shouldn't speak in church. That letter is written off by Cahill as being attributed to Paul but not really being his. Regardless of who wrote it, its precense in the Christian canon is fairly damning to Cahill's idea. An idea that occured me while reading was that I can understand why religions like Christianity were able to catch on. Following explict rules set forth in sermons is easier than contemplating Buddhist or other philosophical principles and then behaving in accordance with them.

Although the last chapter is forced and Cahill needlessly insults humanist ethics*, the book on the whole was fairly interesting.



* He recounts somene named Malcolm Muggeridge who visited a leper colony being run by Christians. Muggeridge apparantly stated that no humanist could do this. According to Wikipedia, he converted to Christianity. According again to Wikipedia this meant he could not enjoy Life of Brian, so it is entirely his loss. The International Humanist and Ethical Union's work in southeast Asia and Africa leaves me with no doubt that empathy is just as powerful as perceived divine command at inspiring people work for one another, and my personal conceit is that empathy is natural and thus more sustainable. The book is described as being a work of "reconciliation" between believers and nonbelievers, so Cahill's attitude there is questionable.

Ten Things

Ten Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can't Because He Needs the Job!)
© Rev. Oliver "Buzz" Thomas, 2007
108 pages.

I do not subscribe to the Christian faith, but I've heard of this book through one podcast or another and decided to read it out of curiosity. The book is written by a Baptist minister and concerns ten controversial issues in the Christianity -- issues that most Christian ministers would rather not visit too much. The ten issues are:

• How it all began
• Why we're here
• The Bible: what is it?
• Miracles
• How To Please God
• Women
• Homosexuality
• Other Religions
• Death and Beyond
• How it all Ends

Despite his Baptistisity, "Buzz" Thomas is quite open to interpretating the Bible. He begins with a fairly standard "Science and religion aren't in conflict" argument, which on some levels works and which fails on others. As I understand the conservative Christian take on sin and redemption, there were once two real people named Adam and Eve who were corrupted by the spirit-thing of Sin, and that the Rules of the Game dictated that their Sin would be passed on to their ancestors, leading to all sorts of unpleasantness. Then, several thousand years later, YHWH decided to help we poor mortal schmucks out by sending us Jesus, his son/personal avatar, depending on your personal interpretation of the scriptures. The Rules of the Game dictate that sacrifices help out with the Sin thing, so YHWH allowed himself/his son-self to be killed, thus making various things possible -- again, depending on your interpretation. The possibility the conservative tradition embraces is that the spirit of YHWH can enter you and you can overcome temptation. Note you "can", because most people would rather do what they like and chant "Not Perfect, Just Forgiving"

The point of this is that if human knowledge tells you a literalist interpretation of Genesis is flawed, and the basic premise of most Christianity is built on that original sin idea, then the entire system is going to collapse unless the believer is sporting an impression ability to ignore the obvious or compartmentalize things. Without that magic "Sin", the entire religion erodes away to Bible-Jesus being a moral teacher on the level of Buddha -- and at that level, dogma is going to keep evaporating away until religion has just become religious philosophy. I am perfectly okay with that, but most people aren't. They want their religion to be a Religion, something that gives them magic things like eternal life. Moral teachers can't give you heaven -- but God-magic can.

If you take away biblical literalism, you can how the book develops. The Bible is no longer the Word of God: it's a book written by men with agendas and translated by men with agendas. It portrays a primitive society that is still developing civilization, not one that is perfect so long as it is obeying the Word of God. "The Bible" becomes a collection of history, myth, poetry, and laws. Pleasing God becomes not obeying rules, but being nice to people. Women are no longer seen as through Paul's eyes (as subservient to males as males are to YHWH), but through the eyes of the 21st century. Hell? Just a myth,"designed to scare and control primitive people"*. He doesn't really comment on destinies: he just dismisses the idea of a torturous hell.

This book is a work of liberal Christianity, and the liberal Christians adore it. In a way, Thomas shows how progressive and ennobling religion can be if freed from dogma and superstition-- but progressive and ennobling religion is not what humanity wants. If that's what we wanted, the Unitarian Universalist church would be one of the largest. People want strength and security, and the easiest way to attempt to get it is to console oneself with uncompromising dogma. The inner strength of idealism, while serving philosophers like myself and liberal Christians like Thomas well, is not realized by most people in my experience. I wish more Christians thought as Thomas did: the United States would be so much more pleasant. Sadly, though, I think Thomas is quite literally preaching to the choir.

* A phrase not from Thomas, but from George Carlin's "Ten Commandments" sketch.

The Book of Ecclesiastes

The Book of Ecclesiastes.
© 1998 Tremper Longman III
284 pages, plus indices

Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?" So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?

A few years ago, I read a quotation that astonished me. My astonishment rose not from the quotation itself, but from its source. The above is from the Judeo-Christian bible, believe it or not. Intrigued, I picked up my old Bible and turned to the Hebrew scriptures and read the the entire book. It was only twelve chapters or so, but my mind was boggled by the fact that such a book was in the Bible. The author purports to be Solomon and claims that he wants to share his wisdom: life is pretty meaningless. He describes his efforts to find meaning in life: he accrues wisdom, chases skirts (well, robes), builds lavish palaces, collects gold, pursues fame in war -- but everything seems to be fairly pointless. The author of Ecclesiastes -- let's call him the Teacher for the sake of convenience -- notes that regardless of what you do, you're still going to die. He notes that evil is visited upon the good and good is visited upon the evil, apparently without any purpose whatsoever. What came up in my reading was that although everything was ultimately meaningless, small pleasures could be achieved on Earth. What I disliked about the book was the Teacher's admonition that people should just obey God and the king, because there's no point in resisting them.

Despite that, the rest of the book strikes me as interesting. As someone with a disregard for money, fame, fortune, chasing skirts, and pedantry, I find much to be sympathetic with here. When I read the first volume of Asimov's Guide to the Bible, I wondered if there were books written on Ecclesiastes that were similar in tone. The closest I found was this book by Temper Longman III. I requested the book online through my library's network website, and so I missed the distasteful intention of the author to reconcile the book with Christian theology. Fortunately, however, this intention is not really made manifest until the last paragraph of the book.

The commentary is fairly straightforward. Longman devotes the introductory chapters to examining the book's author, background, style, genre, and canonicity. The author's view is that the book should be not be considered canon, but should instead be viewed as the collection of proverbs. In taking this approach, the author avoids having to address some of the book's internal inconsistencies. It also saves those of us who do not subscribe to Christian theology the potential annoyance of the author attempting to cram Jesus into every crack in the book. After the introductory chapters, the author moves verse by verse through the book. Longman always precedes each chapter with an introduction, then inserts the verses to be commented on, and then comments on each one individually. He then ends each chapter with a summary. To my surprise and delight, the author doesn't seem to impose outside meaning on anything: he explains what various Hebrew words might mean, shows the different interpretations by different commentators, and introduces his own. Generally there's not a lot of disagreement. When Longman does speculate, he makes it public, which I find admirable. In the last paragraph of the book, though, he posits that Jesus is the answer to the meaningless of life that the Teacher observed. He says that the book in final analysis "must be understood in the light of the canon".

In general, I found the book agreeable. I don't agree with his final assertion, but it's really a moot point. If he feels the need to ret-con his philosophy, that's his business. The appeal of the book is limited to those who are interested in Ecclesiastes, though.

Asimov's Guide to the Bible

Asimov's Guide to the Bible - Volume I
© Isaac Asimov 1968
677 pages plus indices


This week I read volume one of Isaac Asimov's two-volume guide to the bible. The first volume is on what Christians call the "Old Testament". The books Asimov uses come directly from the Protestant tradition: there are no books of the Maccabees here. Given the religious importance of the Hebrew scriptures in various religions, an introduction to the author and his religious views is in order. Although Asimov is technically Jewish, his parents were completely secular. According to Asimov, his only exposure to Judaism came through interaction with other Jews and in learning Hebrew, which he did when his father took up a position in a Hebrew school. Because he was not really segregated from the rest of American society (as he would have been had he been raised as Orthodox), he was shaped by the Christian-influenced culture of the early-mid-20th century. He acknowledges that some Christian mythology worked its way into his Foundation series when he created a religion there. In his biography, Asimov commented that his two-volume set on the Bible was written with the perspective of a "secular humanist". In the introduction of the volume I read this week, he describes the series as 'a consideration of the secular aspects of the Bible.' He maintains that the Hebrew and Christian scriptures have secular worth in that they contain history, literature, and so on.

This is a view I agree with, although until this week I have never regarded the Hebrew writings as reliable history -- wholly because I had never read an account like this, where the history as recorded in the Hebrew (I use that term in lieu of Jewish: our ideas of what Jewishness is are western, and the people of the "Old Testament" are not western.) scriptures was compared to other historical accounts. I was raised in a strict Christian tradition wherein the Bible was taken as literal fact, but even as a believing child I always found myself surprised when I spotted shreds of "real" history in the Bible history -- and felt vindicated when history books referenced the Bible. The first time this happened was in sixth grade, when Moses appeared in my world history book.

Asimov works his way through the "Old Testament" (a term I don't like using, but one which is more convenient than "the Hebrew scriptures", and is more easily understood by the reader), beginning with Genesis and ending with the last so-called prophet, Malachi. Because Biblical Hebrew serves as the international language of Jews, Asimov -- thanks to being forced to learn Hebrew as an older child -- can convey the meanings of the actual Hebrew words instead of relying on their significantly biased English translations. Asimov is not exempt from allowing his biases to impact his interpretation of what a word might mean, but unlike King James, he is not creating a Bible that will justify a particular religious domination's dogmas. I am acutely aware of humanistic viewpoints when I spot them, and this book -- while focusing on the secular aspects of the Old Testament -- doesn't scream "humanist bias" to me. It did probably infuriate Bible literalists, but then again those who chuckle at the idea of a talking snake infuriate the literalists.

Asimov relies on his knowledge of Hebrew, his knowledge of world history, and the work of others gone before him (those who have located and translated Assyrian and Egyptian documents, for instance). He uses that knowledge and the records of the empires surrounding Palestine to fit the historical happenings of the Bible into the historical events recorded in other accounts. Generally, the amount he writes is proportional to the length of the book. Genesis and Isaiah are long "books", and the time he spends on them is appropriatly long. Some books are quite short (like Habbukkuk) and only merit a page or two. Habbukkuk got a paragraph. Some books are lengthy but deal with the same material over and over. Levitucis, for instance, is a book of rituals and describes in great detail the minituia of Hebrew law, most of which is incomprehensible to the modern mind. The Hebrews were like the people surrounding them fairly primitive by our standards, and their laws are bizaare. Other books, while lengthy, don't get a lot of commentary: Psalms and Proverbs are examples. The Book of Proverbs is compared to other "Wisdom Books" of the Hebrews and other cultures.

Each book of the Old Testament merits a chapter, and in each Asimov sums up the time period the book concerns, when it was probably written, when it worked its way into the canon, and what the book concerns. He spends a lot of time investigating what particular words mean. One book might contain a name-reference that is not mentioned in another book, but Asimov will glean the meaning of it by looking at the original Hebrew word and commenting on the way it might have been a mistranslated form of another word that makes sense. There are no great leaps of faith here -- the overwhelming majority of these place-names do look like common mistake in the original writing or in the translating process: compare Nebuchadnezzer to Nebuchadrezzer, for instance.

One technique of Asimov is to date books by the references within them, and this sometimes brings him to the conclusion that the date given by the author is misleading. For instance, in the book of Jonah, the author describes the stoy as being set during the reign of Jeroboam II, but at the same time references that Nineveh was the great city of the mighty Assyrian empire. The problem is that during the reign of Jeroboam, the Assyrian empire was nonexistant, and Nineveh was a podunk town of no significance. He often looks for anachronisms.

To read this book is to become versed in the etymology of various words, to read about the history of the ancient and early classical world, to learn about the history of the early Jewish faith (which Asimov terms "Yahvism", after Yahveh), and to learn about Jewish mythology. Bible literalists would object to that description, but the Bible has giants, "unicorns", angels, and takes seriously astrological tales. I see no problem in dealing with Jewish religious instruction and Jewish mythology as two seperate elements of the same culture that subsequently influence one another someway.

My lone complaint about the book is that Asimov tends to romanticize particular elements. I am thinking of his treatment of the prophets in particular, who he persisently describes as religious personalities outside the priesthood who railed against the excesses of the priesthood and who stood up for the poor and oppressed. He compares them to the uncaring priests who are obsessed with ritual. Perhaps prophets like Elisha did stand up the poor, but I am not so much of a romantic that I think that was their only concern. They had their dogmas they wanted to be uniform: these were men who advocated the murder (or killing-of, if you resent that connotation) of people of differening religious faiths. I liken them to people like Lenin: idealists in their speech, but dogmatic and ambitious for power in reality.

All in all, quite an interesting read. The book has limited appeal, of course. Only those interested in the Bible will be interested. I was raised with a strict literalist perspective and had "Sunday school teachers" who taught me the stories -- brutal as they were -- of the Old Testament, so this book was a bit like returning to the days of my childhood, albiet with a much different perspective. Whereas once I read the stories and feared a god, I now read the stories and marvel at the combined beauty and brutality that humanity is capable of.