Jan 03, 2005 05:36 PM
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(Updated Jan 03, 2005 05:36 PM)
When I first heard about God: A Biography, I was put off by what I considered a ''cutesy''title. Mentally, I catalogued the book with efforts along the lines of ''Conversations with God'' or even ''The Celestine Prophecy,'' pop-theology that sought to gain a mass readership through some kind of clever gimmick.
Several weeks ago, though, I took a closer look and was intrigued by Miles' premise. He calls this book a biography because he's focusing on the ''person'' of God as described throughout the Hebrew scriptures, or Tanakh. Miles puts a lot of emphasis on the sequence of books found in the Tanakh as contrasted with the Old Testament. To him, the order in which scriptures are read makes a lot of difference to how the reader comes to learn about and understand God.
Miles sees not just evidence of the period in which these works were composed (earlier to later) but also deliberate artfulness in their arrangement, so that we observe a gradual waning of God's direct involvement in the world. From the early accounts of God walking through the garden in the cool of the evening, we read story after story of God having intimate, personal dialogue with the great figures of Israelite history, only to see such reports diminish over the course of the centuries, until the final vision of a high, distant and receding figure called the Ancient of Days at the end of Daniel. By the time we get to the Chronicles-Nehemiah cycle, God is more an object of reference, the one being talked about, rather than a direct participant in the story. Or so goes the basic argument of Miles, anyway.
Though Miles cannot be relied upon to support any specific denominational or doctrinal claims that might come from a reading of scripture, I don't see him as having an agenda of undermining religious authority or personal beliefs. In his discussion of Job, toward the end of the book, he gives a helpful description of his own objectives in writing the book:
''The reading offered here attempts a consciously postcritical or postmodern reintegration of mythic, fictional and historical elements in the Bible so as to allow the character of God to stand forth more clearly from the work of which he is the protagonist.''
I appreciate his clarity and honesty in making that statement. He recognizes that the Bible functions differently for many of its readers, across the span of religious traditions that trace their roots to these scriptures. He's not trying to supplant those readings, but is instead offering a supplemental perspective, which I believe is useful and relevant for our times.
The early books of the Bible get the most in-depth treatment, because they are the basis from which the rest of Tanakh develops. Genesis portrays God in his most basic roles: Creator, Destroyer (via the Flood,) and ''Friend of the Family'' (the personal god of Abraham and his biological descendents.) An interesting chapter titled ''Creator/Destroyer'' reflects on how those conflicting tendencies play themselves out in the story of Abraham, integrating into one personality aspects of deity that other societies ascribed to different gods (e.g. El, Yah, Rahab, Tiamat, etc.) This is an important point that Miles builds on throughout the book. Israel's commitment to monotheism, established early on in the development of its religious history, necessitated all the divine prerogatives to be ascribed to one and only one Supreme Being.
Miles goes on to explore God's role as Liberator, Lawgiver and Liege as told in the remainder of the Torah. Then it's on to the story of the conquest and settlement of Canaan, and God's personae of Conqueror, Father (to David and his line) and Arbiter, where Israel's lapse into idolatry mandates God's judgment for failing to fulfill their covenant obligations.
Then we see in Isaiah God's roles as Executioner and forgiving, restoring Holy One. From there Miles does a ''surface scan'' of the rest of the Bible, with the exception of Job, which he regards as the climactic book of the Tanakh. After Job, God becomes less imposing, more familiar, even to the point of seeming ''absent'' as we see in the sequence of Song, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and most notoriously, Esther, where the name of God is never mentioned.
By the end, we see post-exilic Israel, partially regathered in their homeland, with an inferior reconstruction of the Temple, led by those who hearken back to a more glorious past that can never be recaptured but still provides an ideal of how things ought to be. Miles portrays a people older and wiser, more than a bit worn down and disillusioned by the ordeal that they have been through.
The final section is titled ''Does God Lose Interest?'' In it, Miles ponders the similarities between the Tanakh and two famous tragedies, Oedipus Rex and Hamlet. He finds Tanakh to be more akin to Shakespeare than Sophocles. Whereas Oedipus was driven to his fate by inexorable, unalterable processes, Hamlet's outcome was an outgrowth of his character.
Miles sees similarities in the unfolding narrative of the Tanakh. As God acts, he seems to learn new things about himself and his creation, and this new knowledge in turn alters his future actions and affects the other participants in the story. Here Miles offers something I found quite unique, a polytheistic retelling of the story of the Tanakh. It helps to clarify the distinctions between the familiar Israelite version of creation and history and how it might be otherwise told from a different religious point of view.
All in all, this book has had quite an effect in increasing my curiosity about the Bible and the history of its interpretation across the wider span of western cultures. I recommend it highly.
