In recent years literary studies of the Bible have explored all kinds of topics -- save God, the chief protagonist of the narrative. That not insignificant subject has now received its due, a tour de force called "God: A Biography," by Jack Miles.
If some people may find a biography of God an irreverent enterprise, Mr. Miles is not one of them. He says that over centuries the Bible has been the fundamental document for both Jews and Christians. Its stories and characters have permeated the whole of Western culture. To track, then, the stories to their central character is in no way disrespectful. But Mr. Miles does engage in occasional provocation. At the outset he remarks that "God is no saint, strange to say." As the reader will find out, that is true enough, and the fact is not so strange.
Mr. Miles treats the Bible as a literary work. To produce a biography of a literary character is a complicated undertaking, and so in a sometimes amusing introductory chapter he guides the reader through the contrast in approaches taken by scholars and critics. With a light touch he describes his own approach as naive, seeing God as a real person, much the way a theatergoer thinks of Hamlet or a reader perceives Don Quixote. But he also knows there is a difference. "No character . . . on stage, page or screen," he says, "has ever had the reception that God has had." (...)
Who is the literary character called God? Simply put, a male with multiple personalities, which emerge gradually. At the beginning God creates the world in order to make a self-image, an indication that He does not fully understand who He is but discovers Himself through interaction with humanity. Immediately the focus narrows to the man and the woman in the garden. When they disobey their creator, He responds vindictively and so reveals His own inner conflict. Called God in Genesis 1, he is lofty, powerful and bountiful; called Lord God in Genesis 2 and 3, he is intimate and volatile. Ambivalent about His image, the creator becomes the destroyer: the flood descends. A radical fault runs through the character of God.
Still other personalities surface as the cosmic God becomes the personal deity of Abraham and the friend of the family for Jacob and Joseph. In the Exodus story he shows himself to be a warrior and soon thereafter a lawgiver and liege. This mixture of identities represents a fusion of selected traits gathered from other deities in the ancient world (and teased out of the biblical texts by a generation of historical scholars). A grand speech by Moses in Deuteronomy synthesizes these conflicting personalities to produce a relatively stable identity for God by the conclusion of the Torah.
Within this identity elements of divine self-discovery continue to develop. The first section of the Nebi'im, from Joshua through Kings, turns the liberator of Exodus into the conqueror of Canaan, the friend of the family into the "father" of Solomon, and the lawgiver of Israel into the arbiter of international relations.
But the ending of Kings threatens to terminate God's life. It reports the destruction of the people with whom He has been working out the divine image. If His biography is to continue beyond their demise, God must change, and the prophetic books following Kings record the transformation. In them the conflicted character God carries on a life-or-death struggle to reassemble the unstable elements of His personality. In the first 39 chapters of Isaiah He tries the role of executioner, but He also holds up a vision of a peaceable kingdom. Then, in the next 27 chapters of Isaiah, He forgoes destruction and insists that mystery, not power, is the source of his holiness. (...)
God begins to withdraw in the last division of the Tanakh, Mr. Miles says. For the most part, testimony about Him replaces speech by Him. Psalms perceives Him primarily as counselor. Proverbs treats Him like a picture frame; He is marginal to the content of the book. But in Job His destructive impulse comes fully into consciousness. The climax happens through the man Job, who, as the perfect image of the Creator, exposes the conflicted character of God. The outcome brings about repentance -- not of Job, for he has done no wrong, but of God, who restores good fortune to Job.
After the Book of Job, God never speaks again, though others repeat His speeches and report His miraculous deeds. Two sets of four books each shape these parts of the biography. In the Song of Solomon, God does not appear in the garden of Love. Ruth treats Him as a bystander who does not interact with the human characters. Lamentations waits sadly for this recluse who never comes. And Ecclesiastes declares Him a puzzle of no compelling importance. In literary terms Mr. Miles sees these books, taken together, as a denouement: they let time pass. (...)
At the end, Mr. Miles ponders why the life of the Lord God begins in activity and speech only to close in passivity and silence. Does God's desire for self-knowledge, shown in the creation of humanity in his image, carry the potential for tragedy? Surely the confrontation staged in Job brings God near that reality. But God is rescued. The Song of Solomon changes the subject, thereby sparing the life of God, and subsequent books give Him a different life.
by Phyllis Trible, NY Times | Read more:
Image: God, A Biography/Amazon
If some people may find a biography of God an irreverent enterprise, Mr. Miles is not one of them. He says that over centuries the Bible has been the fundamental document for both Jews and Christians. Its stories and characters have permeated the whole of Western culture. To track, then, the stories to their central character is in no way disrespectful. But Mr. Miles does engage in occasional provocation. At the outset he remarks that "God is no saint, strange to say." As the reader will find out, that is true enough, and the fact is not so strange.
Mr. Miles treats the Bible as a literary work. To produce a biography of a literary character is a complicated undertaking, and so in a sometimes amusing introductory chapter he guides the reader through the contrast in approaches taken by scholars and critics. With a light touch he describes his own approach as naive, seeing God as a real person, much the way a theatergoer thinks of Hamlet or a reader perceives Don Quixote. But he also knows there is a difference. "No character . . . on stage, page or screen," he says, "has ever had the reception that God has had." (...)Who is the literary character called God? Simply put, a male with multiple personalities, which emerge gradually. At the beginning God creates the world in order to make a self-image, an indication that He does not fully understand who He is but discovers Himself through interaction with humanity. Immediately the focus narrows to the man and the woman in the garden. When they disobey their creator, He responds vindictively and so reveals His own inner conflict. Called God in Genesis 1, he is lofty, powerful and bountiful; called Lord God in Genesis 2 and 3, he is intimate and volatile. Ambivalent about His image, the creator becomes the destroyer: the flood descends. A radical fault runs through the character of God.
Still other personalities surface as the cosmic God becomes the personal deity of Abraham and the friend of the family for Jacob and Joseph. In the Exodus story he shows himself to be a warrior and soon thereafter a lawgiver and liege. This mixture of identities represents a fusion of selected traits gathered from other deities in the ancient world (and teased out of the biblical texts by a generation of historical scholars). A grand speech by Moses in Deuteronomy synthesizes these conflicting personalities to produce a relatively stable identity for God by the conclusion of the Torah.
Within this identity elements of divine self-discovery continue to develop. The first section of the Nebi'im, from Joshua through Kings, turns the liberator of Exodus into the conqueror of Canaan, the friend of the family into the "father" of Solomon, and the lawgiver of Israel into the arbiter of international relations.
But the ending of Kings threatens to terminate God's life. It reports the destruction of the people with whom He has been working out the divine image. If His biography is to continue beyond their demise, God must change, and the prophetic books following Kings record the transformation. In them the conflicted character God carries on a life-or-death struggle to reassemble the unstable elements of His personality. In the first 39 chapters of Isaiah He tries the role of executioner, but He also holds up a vision of a peaceable kingdom. Then, in the next 27 chapters of Isaiah, He forgoes destruction and insists that mystery, not power, is the source of his holiness. (...)
God begins to withdraw in the last division of the Tanakh, Mr. Miles says. For the most part, testimony about Him replaces speech by Him. Psalms perceives Him primarily as counselor. Proverbs treats Him like a picture frame; He is marginal to the content of the book. But in Job His destructive impulse comes fully into consciousness. The climax happens through the man Job, who, as the perfect image of the Creator, exposes the conflicted character of God. The outcome brings about repentance -- not of Job, for he has done no wrong, but of God, who restores good fortune to Job.
After the Book of Job, God never speaks again, though others repeat His speeches and report His miraculous deeds. Two sets of four books each shape these parts of the biography. In the Song of Solomon, God does not appear in the garden of Love. Ruth treats Him as a bystander who does not interact with the human characters. Lamentations waits sadly for this recluse who never comes. And Ecclesiastes declares Him a puzzle of no compelling importance. In literary terms Mr. Miles sees these books, taken together, as a denouement: they let time pass. (...)
At the end, Mr. Miles ponders why the life of the Lord God begins in activity and speech only to close in passivity and silence. Does God's desire for self-knowledge, shown in the creation of humanity in his image, carry the potential for tragedy? Surely the confrontation staged in Job brings God near that reality. But God is rescued. The Song of Solomon changes the subject, thereby sparing the life of God, and subsequent books give Him a different life.
by Phyllis Trible, NY Times | Read more:
Image: God, A Biography/Amazon
