On the multiple personalities of the Old Testament God. Miles reads the Bible as he would a novel or play, examining the motivations of the protagonist.

A thought provoking review of God through the Hebrew bible almost as though He were a literary character. Its opening discusses an almost unsureness of how to wield power around the creation and a struggle to communicate with human characters. Also, the contrast between God the being and God the Lord.

However, the book is an incredibly slow read and very academic in its syntax. The irony of describing God like he was a Shakespearean character but doing so in the most boring way is astounding. As interesting as the subject was, I couldn’t bring myself to keep reading after about 75 pages because it felt like trying to read a textbook cover to cover. This is a book for theologians, but not consumer friendly for the merely interested.

Had to give up. Got started on this book due to my brother's enthusiasm for the author's brilliant introduction. My siblings and I have never had much in the way of religious instruction and our ignorance of The Bible is gaping. This book was a wild introduction as it takes on the persona of God as a personality/person/entity. And the results are so creepy, scary--God as a tantrum-throwing toddler, etc. that I gave it up. My sibs ran out of gas as well.

But for serious Bible scholars and religionists, this book must surely be a revelation.

This book views God as a literary character and traces His development over the course of the Old Testament, from the wrathful bullying busybody of Genesis to the less hands-on, more mysterious, more cosmic deity who never speaks again after Job. Deconstructing God might have been another appropriate title for this book, and if that notion sounds appealing to you, you'll probably like this book.

I have heard quite a bit about this book and have owned it for many years, but I had put off reading it. Now I am a little perplexed why, since I found it as powerful and captivating as I had heard and hoped. I loved what strategy Miles chose for the book. He would write a literary biography of God as presented in the Hebrew Bible (which has a significantly different ordering of the same books than in the Old Testament books of the Christian Bible). He does not bother with historical criticism or with the evolution of the text but takes the Bible's main character as presented. I thought this a particularly effective strategy since it parallels how many people actually read their Bibles. Since this is not written as a religious book, but as a literary study, Miles is free to point out the contradictions, losses, changes, failures, and evolution of the character God without worrying about the religious crises that might ensue. So he is free to point out that God does not express love for Israel until Isaiah or how God gradually disappears from playing an active as the Tanak comes to a close. I suspect I will be reading this again and again.

"This is the Lord God, a parentless, childless being, a cosmic orphan, literally the only one of his kind."

I LOVED this. If you're a scripture-obsessed atheist like me (or even if you're not!), you'll love this too. What a sincerely magnificent work. What is God but a tormented, lonely, accidental creature? Man that was good.

A dense read, but one I did end up enjoying quite a bit.

I have been wrestling with the idea of God’s presence for quite a while. That has intensified as I have been asked to participate in a summer series of services focusing on that theme.
Jack Miles adds much to the discussion through his book. I need to note that Miles looks only at the Old Testament; the New Testament is quoted only a handful of times. He does not examine it as presented in the Christian Canon but via the Tanakh in which the books are arranged in a different order. In this way we see a chronological progression (or regression) of God in the life of Israel and the Jews. Miles tells us of an active God at creation; for Miles Creation is the climax of God’s existence. We do not hear God’s voice after his final speech in Job.
Miles also questions the heart of God, claiming that God’s motives behind his wondrous acts for Noah, Abraham and his family, Moses, etc. do not include love. Many say that the portrait of God differs greatly from Old to New Testament.
A good book but a bit over my head in places.

Three stars waxing

This is a religious book that has no opinion on faith or religion, a fact that I'm sure contributed to its winning the Pulitzer prize. Mr. Niles takes the Old Testament and treats it as source material for answering the question "Who is this God person anyway?"

I think that believers would find this book interesting, those looking for good information on the groundings of biblical theology even more so. And perhaps most of all, anyone with an interest in the religions of the ancient Near-East will find much to like about this book.

Recommended.

“But whatever the inner complexity of or inner conflict within a Vishnu, there is always for the devotee the possibility of imaginative as well as conceptual escape. There is always, in other words, another god to whom, at will, the incompatible may be transferred. It is not so for the devotee of the Lord God. Everything redounds to the Lord God’s credit. Everything also redounds to his blame. He has no cosmic opponent but himself. No one can escape him, and he cannot escape himself. To the extent that the Tanakh can be called a tragedy at all, it is a tragedy—like Hamlet and explaining Hamlet—whose inevitability is this inevitability of character. The Lord God’s character is contradictory, and he is trapped within its contradictions.
If he were, for example, either the omnipotent Lord of Heaven or the solicitous Friend of the Poor but not both, he could escape the trap. But he is indeed both, and he cannot escape. What is a problem of theodicy for the poor man whose suffering is not alleviated (“ How can a good God …?”) is a conflict of identity for the God who does not alleviate it. Again, if he were only the tender, solicitous husband of Isaiah 40+ and not also the sword-in-hand butcher of Joshua, he could escape. But he is both, and he cannot escape. He is trapped as Hamlet is trapped—in himself.”


“After each of his major actions, he discovers that he has not done quite what he thought he was doing, or has done something he never intended to do. He did not realize when he told mankind to “be fertile and increase” that he was creating an image of himself that was also a rival creator. He did not realize when he destroyed his rival that he would regret the destruction of his image. He did not realize that his covenant with Abraham, the reconciliation of such contrary urges within his own character, would require him, precisely because he had so effectively made Abraham into a great nation, to go to war with Egypt. He did not realize when he went to war with Egypt that his victory would leave him with an entire people on his hands and would require him to become a lawgiver for them and conquer a land for them to live in. He did not realize when he gave them the law that where there is law, there can be transgression, and that, therefore, he himself had turned an implicitly unbreakable covenant into an explicitly breakable one. He did not realize when he began to withdraw from his alliance with Israel, after Israel’s first, minor infidelities, that the aftermath would be the rise of a king, David, whose charisma would draw the Lord almost despite himself into a quasi-parental relationship with his semiabandoned ally. He did not realize when his erstwhile ally deserted him wholesale and he made Assyria and Babylonia the tools of his vengeance that he was creating a new international role for himself. He did not realize that once they had inflicted his punishment for him, his feelings, rather than only those of a vindicated suzerain, would also be those of a grieving husband for a battered wife. He did not realize as he contemplated her suffering that he would find a meaning in human suffering unlike any he had ever seen before.”

Fantasic book great way to understand the great book that is so hard to read and furthermore to understand. Recommend it highly.

في التوراة ثمة شواهد كثيرة على تناقض صورة يهوه ، فهي صورة لإله لا يعرف الاعتدال في انفعالاته، ويسلم بأن الغضب والغيرة يأكلانه أكلاً، فقد جمع في نفسه الرحمة إلي الشدة، والقدرة الخلاقة إلي روح التخريب. فكان كل شيء ممكنا، وما كان لصفة من صفاته أن تقف عقبة في وجه الأخرى.
فالطريقة التي تعبر بها الطبيعة الالهية عن نفسها في التوراة تدل علي أن صفاتها الفردية ليست متصلة ببعضها

- بالرغم من غياب الأصالة في فكرة تقسسيم السيرة الإلهية إلي ما قبل سفر أيوب وما بعده ، فالكتاب يعد تطوير أدبي جذاب لنظرية التحليل النفسي حول سيكولوجية الإله اليهودي ، وهي الرؤية التي صاغها كارل يونغ في كتاب : ( الإله اليهودي : بحث في العلاقة بين الدين وعلم النفس . كارل يونغ )

تتضح لا أخلاقية “يهوه” في إطار افتقاده للحكمة التي تؤهله لمعرفة ذاته، ففي غياب الوعي بالذات يطغي الحياد الأخلاقي، ولم تكن تلك المرة الأولى التي يظهر فيها التناقض الداخلي ليهوه، فقد نقض العهد الذي اعطاه لداود من قبل. ولكي يظل في مزاج حسن كان يدعو شعبه ليمدحوه ويستعطفوه، فهو بحاجة دائمة ليبقي علي صلة بالإنسان لأنه يفتقد الصلة بذاته، وكلما كان اعتماده على الانسان يزداد ليشعر بوجوده، كان يزداد افتقاره للحكمة التي يتأمل بها ذاته.

“إن الشخصية التي تتكشف عن مواصفات كهذه، يمكنها إقناع نفسها أنها موجودة فقط عبر ارتباطها بهدف ما، هذه التبعية للهدف توجد عندما يكون الشخص مفتقرا للتأمل الداخلي”

لهذا يعتبر (يونغ) أن سفر أيوب هو العلامة المميزة علي طريق تطور الصورة الإلهية، فالفشل الذي حققه عند محاولة إفساد أيوب جعله يتساءل: إذا كان الإنسان على معرفة به، أفلم يكن من الأولى أن يعرف ذاته!