Synopses & Reviews
What sort of "person" is God? Is it possible to approach him not as an object of religious reverence, but as the protagonist of the world's greatest book--as a character who possesses all the depths, contradictions, and abiguities of a Hamlet? In this "brilliant, audacious book" (Chicago Tribune), a former Jesuit marshalls a vast array of learning and knowledge of the Hebrew Bible to illuminate God--and man--with a sense of discovery and wonder.
Synopsis
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
What sort of "person" is God? What is his "life story"? Is it possible to approach him not as an object of religious reverence, but as the protagonist of the world's greatest book as a character who possesses all the depths, contradictions, and abiguities of a Hamlet? This is the task that Jack Miles a former Jesuit trained in religious studies and Near Eastern languages accomplishes with such brilliance and originality in God: A Biography.
Using the Hebrew Bible as his text, Miles shows us a God who evolves through his relationship with man, the image who in time becomes his rival. Here is the Creator who nearly destroys his chief creation; the bloodthirsty warrior and the protector of the downtrodden; the lawless law-giver; the scourge and the penitent. Profoundly learned, stylishly written, the resulting work illuminates God and man alike and returns us to the Bible with a sense of discovery and wonder."
Synopsis
What words come to mind when we think of God? Merciful? Just? Compassionate? A former evangelical priest says the opposite is true. Delving deep into the Bible, Dan Barker uncovers the negative qualities we can ascribe to God: jealous, petty, unforgiving, bloodthirsty, vindictive—and worse! Witty and well researched, this unique atheist book explains exactly why the Scripture shouldn’t govern our everyday lives. Thought provoking and compelling, it makes a powerful argument for the separation of Church and State.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 413-431) and index.
About the Author
Dan Barker, a former evangelical minister, is co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, cohost of Freethought Radio, and cofounder and board member of the Clergy Project. A widely sought-after lecturer, debater, and performer, he regularly discusses atheism and life's meaning and purpose in the national media, with appearances on
Oprah Winfrey,
The Daily Show,
The O'Reilly Factor,
Good Morning America, and many others.
Richard Dawkins was the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society, and the Royal Society of Literature, and has Honorary Doctorates in both science and literature. His many bestselling books include The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press), The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design (W.W. Norton & Co.), and The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
Reading Group Guide
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The discussion topics and author biography that follow are meant to enhance your
group's reading of Jack Miles's God: A Biography. We hope that they will provide
you with new ways of looking at--and talking about--a work that has been praised
for its audacious and erudite approach to a question that has preoccupied Jews
and Christians, believers and unbelievers, for close to six millennia: Who is
God? Or, rather, what sort of character is God?
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Although Miles is a former Jesuit and has a formidable background
in philosophy, archaeology, and Near Eastern languages, the purpose of his inquiry
is not theological but literary. Using the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, as his text,
Miles sets out to portray the unimaginably powerful and disturbingly contradictory
figure who is its protagonist. And what emerges is a character who possesses
all the depths and ambiguities of Shakespeare's Hamlet. To the devout, God is
immutable, changeless throughout eternity. But a sequential reading of the Tanakh
reveals a God who changes from book to book--and sometimes within the same book.
In Genesis alone, he is by turns a creator and a destroyer; magnanimous and
vengeful; a detached being who stands outside of history and a divine matchmaker
who helps find a suitable bride for Isaac. In his analysis of subsequent books,
Miles depicts God's transformation from the liberator of Exodus to the demanding
liege of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; from the conqueror of Joshua to
the diplomat of Kings; from the father of Samuel to the reproachful wife of
Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi; from the implacable executioner of Isaiah to
the consoling counselor of Psalms.
In most literature, characters are revealed through their interactions with
other characters. So, too, God's character unfolds through his relationships
with human beings, the only creation he has made in his own image. In the beginning,
he seems to expect nothing from these images. Yet Adam's disobedience moves
him to fury, and the apostasy of the wandering Israelites drives him to slaughter
thousands. He is all-powerful, yet he submits to the covenants he makes with
his chosen people. He permits the blameless Job to be stripped of all he has
and rebukes him when he cries out for an explanation. Yet these words are the
last God utters in the Tanakh, and Miles interprets his subsequent silence as
evidence that he can be shamed.
God: A Biography may be read as literary criticism of the highest order, a
work that explicates the central character of the central text of the Western
canon. Yet this fascinating, stylishly written book also holds up a mirror to
us, and to our abiding notions of character. "We are all, in a way, immigrants
from the past," Miles observes. "And just as an immigrant returning
after many years to the land of his birth may see his own face in the faces
of strangers, so the modern, Western, secular reader may feel a tremor of self-recognition
in the presence of the ancient protagonist of the Bible." [p. 4]
FOR DISCUSSION
1. NOTE: Though God: A Biography quotes virtually all the biblical
verses it comments on, a reading of it will be greatly enhanced if the reader
can have a copy of the Bible at hand. The text from which Miles quotes is The
Jewish Publication Society TANAKH, but any complete (that is, uncondensed) translation
in which the verses follow the traditional numbering may be used.
KEYNOTE. Why might someone who does not believe in God nonetheless want to
know something about God?
PRELUDE. Does God's life have a beginning and an end in the Bible? Does the
Bible tell us that God cannot change and does not grow, or is this an idea we
have from elsewhere? Does the Bible tell us we cannot understand God? How is
the order of God's life different in the Christian Old Testament and the Jewish
Tanakh? How does the way that historians confront conflict in God's character
differ from the way that literary critics confront it? [The discussion in this
chapter is rather theoretical, and some groups may find the reading more enjoyable
if they jump ahead to Chapter 3 and only refer back to Chapter 2 as objections
arise that may be answered there.]
2. GENERATION. Creator: In the two tellings of creation, how does the character
called "God" differ from the character called "the Lord"?
Destroyer: God destroys the world before giving mankind any commandment to keep.
The great flood cannot then be a punishment for disobedience. How else might
it be explained? Creator/Destroyer: How is God's covenant with Abraham a compromise
within himself? How does the delayed birth and near-slaughter of Isaac betray
God's own mixed feelings? Friend of the Family: How does God's limited role
in Genesis 2550 differ from his role
in Genesis 125?
3. INTERLUDE. What makes God Godlike? What are the consequences for God of
having no past and of being the only one of his kind?
4. EXHILARATION. Liberator: Has God always been warlike? If not, why does he
become warlike in Egypt? Lawgiver: Has God always been concerned with ethics,
law, and worship? Why does he become concerned with such matters at Sinai? How
do the lawgiver and the warrior in him relate? Liege: Compare and contrast the
different emphases in the portrayals of God found in Leviticus, in Numbers,
and in Deuteronomy.
5. TRIBULATION. Conqueror: What treatment does God instruct Joshua to mete
out to the natives of Canaan? What does this tell us about God? Father: Has
God been mankind's father from the start of his story? If not, what is there
about David that brings forth paternal feelings in God? How is the Absalom story
a comment on the meaning of divine fatherhood? Arbiter: Has God been concerned
to determine the fate of whole nations before sending Assyria and Babylon against
his chosen people? What is it that first leads him to assume this role and this
power?
6. INTERLUDE. Does God fail? When the covenant between God and Israel breaks
down, there are obviously horrendous consequences for Israel. What are the consequences
for God?
7. TRANSFORMATION. Executioner: How are the oracles of the prophet Isaiah like
the letters of a great general published after a war? Judging from these "letters,"
what two attitudes conflict in God's mind? Holy One: In the latter chapters
of Isaiah, God speaks of himself as mysterious for the first time. Why only
now? What is about himself that awes him?
8. INTERLUDE. Does God love? What evidence is there in the text that love was
God's motive for any of his actions before the post-exilic restoration of Israel
to the promised land? If love is a discovery for God, how has he made the discovery?
9. RESTORATION. Wife: When God brings Israel back from exile, does he keep
the promises he made through Isaiah? Counselor: The Psalms praise God for many
reasons, but one of them stands out as both new and supremely important. What
is that one? Guarantor: If the amalgam of divine personalities in God's character
includes a goddess as well as several gods, what is the goddess like? Where
does she stand in the range of possible feminine personalities?
10. CONFRONTATION. Fiend: Was God within his rights to punish Job for no reason?
At the end of their long struggle, does Job yield to God, or does God yield
to Job? What is the meaning of God's last words?
11. OCCULTATION. Sleeper: What effect does the Song of Songs produce coming
mmediately after the Book of Job? Bystander: Naomi, a Jew, tells her Moabite
daughter-in-law Ruth to worship a false god. Are we surprised? Recluse: As we
read the passionate pleas of the Book of Lamentations, do we expect God to respond?
What effect does the contrast between the expectations of he speaker and our
own expectations produce? Puzzle: How anxious about God's commands and God's
plans is the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes?
12. INCORPORATION. Absence: In the Book of Esther, when the Israelites face
a genocidal
threat like the one they faced earlier in Pharaoh's Egypt, how do they respond?
Ancient of Days: On his last appearance in the Bible, how does God look? Scroll:
Does God bring his people out of captivity and back to Zion, or is it vice versa:
Do God's people bring God out of captivity and back to Zion? Perpetual Round:
Why does the Tanakh end as it does? Is its ending happy?
13. POSTLUDE: Does God lose interest? What did God want when he created mankind
as his
image? As we have seen his life go by, which of his images was his most perfect
image? At the end of his life, has God achieved his creative purpose? Has he
got what he was after?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jack Miles was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1942. Raised a Roman
Catholic, he entered the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) after high school and, as
a Jesuit in training, spent two years at the Pontifical Gregorian University
in Rome studying philosophy and another year studying Hebrew and archaeology
at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1967, just after the Six Days War,
he left Israel and went to Harvard University, where in 1971 he was awarded
a doctorate in Near Eastern languages, specializing in Hebrew and in the Bible.
Miles was impatient with the heavily historical way the Bible was studied at
Harvard (and at virtually all American universities). After only four years
of full-time teaching, he gave up on academic life. For ten years, he worked
in book publishing, first as an editor at Doubleday in New York and then as
executive editor of the University of California Press. While living in Los
Angeles, he began writing for the Los Angeles Times, where in 1985 he became
literary editor and in 1991 was appointed to the newspaper's prestigious editorial
board.
Having left the Jesuits in 1970 and become an Episcopalian in 1980, Miles found
to his surprise that questions he thought he had left behind, questions about
the Bible and about the difficult character of God,
were crowding in on the political issues that it was his professional responsibility
to address as a member of the Times editorial board.
In 1990, unable to keep these questions at bay any longer, he went on leave
from the newspaper and began the book that in 1995 was published as GOD: A Biography.
Shortly after the publication of this book, he left the Times to take the position
he now holds as director of the Humanities Center
at the Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, California, a small town about
an hour east of downtown Los Angeles.
Miles remains active as a journalist. He is a contributing editor at The Atlantic
Monthly and his work appears frequently in both scholarly and popular publications,
including The New York Times.
The discussion topics and author biography that follow are meant to enhance your
group's reading of Jack Miles's God: A Biography. We hope that they will provide you
with new ways of looking at--and talking about--a work that has been praised for its
audacious and erudite approach to a question that has preoccupied Jews and Christians,
believers and unbelievers, for close to six millennia: Who is God? Or, rather, what sort
of character is God?
1.
NOTE: Though
God: A Biography quotes virtually all the biblical verses it comments on, a reading of it will be greatly enhanced if the reader can have a copy of the Bible at hand. The text from which Miles quotes is
The Jewish Publication Society TANAKH, but any complete (that is, uncondensed) translation in which the verses follow the traditional numbering may be used.
KEYNOTE. Why might someone who does not believe in God nonetheless want to know something about God?
PRELUDE. Does God's life have a beginning and an end in the Bible? Does the Bible tell us that God cannot change and does not grow, or is this an idea we have from elsewhere? Does the Bible tell us we cannot understand God? How is the order of God's life different in the Christian Old Testament and the Jewish Tanakh? How does the way that historians confront conflict in God's character differ from the way that literary critics confront it? [The discussion in this chapter is rather theoretical, and some groups may find the reading more enjoyable if they jump ahead to Chapter 3 and only refer back to Chapter 2 as objections arise that may be answered there.]
2. GENERATION. Creator: In the two tellings of creation, how does the character called "God" differ from the character called "the Lord"? Destroyer: God destroys the world before giving mankind any commandment to keep. The great flood cannot then be a punishment for disobedience. How else might it be explained? Creator/Destroyer: How is God's covenant with Abraham a compromise within himself? How does the delayed birth and near-slaughter of Isaac betray God's own mixed feelings?
Friend of the Family: How does God's limited role in Genesis 2550 differ from his role
in Genesis 125?
3. INTERLUDE. What makes God Godlike? What are the consequences for God of having no past and of being the only one of his kind?
4. EXHILARATION. Liberator: Has God always been warlike? If not, why does he become warlike in Egypt? Lawgiver: Has God always been concerned with ethics, law, and worship? Why does he become concerned with such matters at Sinai? How do the lawgiver and the warrior in him relate? Liege: Compare and contrast the different emphases in the portrayals of God found in Leviticus, in Numbers, and in Deuteronomy.
5. TRIBULATION. Conqueror: What treatment does God instruct Joshua to mete out to the natives of Canaan? What does this tell us about God? Father: Has God been mankind's father from the start of his story? If not, what is there about David that brings forth paternal feelings in God? How is the Absalom story a comment on the meaning of divine fatherhood? Arbiter: Has God been concerned to determine the fate of whole nations before sending Assyria and Babylon against his chosen people? What is it that first leads him to assume this role and this power?
6. INTERLUDE. Does God fail? When the covenant between God and Israel breaks down, there are obviously horrendous consequences for Israel. What are the consequences for God?
7. TRANSFORMATION. Executioner: How are the oracles of the prophet Isaiah like the
letters of a great general published after a war? Judging from these "letters," what two attitudes conflict in God's mind? Holy One: In the latter chapters of Isaiah, God speaks of himself as mysterious for the first time. Why only now? What is about himself that awes him?
8. INTERLUDE. Does God love? What evidence is there in the text that love was God's motive for any of his actions before the post-exilic restoration of Israel to the promised land? If love is a discovery for God, how has he made the discovery?
9. RESTORATION. Wife: When God brings Israel back from exile, does he keep the promises he made through Isaiah? Counselor: The Psalms praise God for many reasons, but one of them stands out as both new and supremely important. What is that one? Guarantor: If the amalgam of divine personalities in God's character includes a goddess as well as several gods, what is the goddess like? Where does she stand in the range of possible feminine personalities?
10. CONFRONTATION. Fiend: Was God within his rights to punish Job for no reason? At the end of their long struggle, does Job yield to God, or does God yield to Job? What is the meaning of God's last words?
11. OCCULTATION. Sleeper: What effect does the Song of Songs produce coming mmediately after the Book of Job? Bystander: Naomi, a Jew, tells her Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth to worship a false god. Are we surprised? Recluse: As we read the passionate pleas of the Book of Lamentations, do we expect God to respond? What effect does the contrast between the expectations of he speaker and our own expectations produce? Puzzle: How anxious about God's commands and God's plans is the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes?
12. INCORPORATION. Absence: In the Book of Esther, when the Israelites face a genocidal
threat like the one they faced earlier in Pharaoh's Egypt, how do they respond? Ancient of Days: On his last appearance in the Bible, how does God look? Scroll: Does God bring his people out of captivity and back to Zion, or is it vice versa: Do God's people bring God out of captivity and back to Zion? Perpetual Round: Why does the Tanakh end as it does? Is its ending happy?
13. POSTLUDE: Does God lose interest? What did God want when he created mankind as his
image? As we have seen his life go by, which of his images was his most perfect image? At the end of his life, has God achieved his creative purpose? Has he got what he was after?