Jack Miles is not only a wonderful writer of Biblical commentary, but an amazing reader of the Bible. Miles gives us the splendor of the "Stained Glass Window" of the Bible in its portrayal of the world's most awe inspiring literary character.
Following the Hebrew Bible in the order of the books--and not the revised Christian Old Testament ordering, Miles illuminates a God who starts out all powerful, but not all knowing, over time he becomes something of a mystery, perhaps even to himself. Each change signals a compelling historical reality of the Jewish victory and later misery and the drama of how God must react in order to stay relevant to his people. As the prophets and later writers begin bursting at the seams as Israel declines, Miles illuminates how God is also bursting. Though the text of the Hebrew Bible gives us a God who cannot be shaken, and is supreme, Miles presents the changes he must undergo in order to give us that sense of divine control. Each trial for Israel reveals something very new in God's character, revising the meaning of his prior actions, allowing him a new kind of future.
Mile's perspective perhaps is reminiscent of Leo Strauss' tough little book: Persecution and the Art of Writing. Strauss illuminates how great books often conceal as much as they reveal of their fundamental purpose. I'm also reminded of Northrop Frye's The Great Code, which celebrates the Bible's typology. Frye's conception of typology is what I would normally call "revision". However, Miles perhaps was a close reader of both Frye and Strauss, demonstrating the literary unity of a strong misreading.
Over-time, when Israel begins to be occupied by foreign captors, the God of Israel must somehow keep his covenant with his people. To do so, God becomes more mysterious, more powerful, yet more distant. Mile's observes that God no longer speaks after the nearly scandalous book of Job, he becomes more distant, and reclusive, culminating in the "ancient of days" in Daniel, and the repetitive round of I and II Chronicles.
Most humans consider God at some point in their life, which is why I heartily recommend this book. Miles confronts us with the God of the Old Testament, ignoring the New, giving us a refreshing look at God, his development, and his profound yet anguished relationship with his people.
After reading Miles, I contemplate the Jewish scribes who took God's punishment upon themselves, as captors invaded their lands. God somehow remains whole, unscathed, while the Jew offers himself, sinful, fallen, depraved. The World History of Jewish persecution aches with the pathos of the Jewish scribes who courageously took God's absence, and failure to act upon themselves. I don't see modern Christians doing anything quite like this, and I begin to wonder if the world will ever again see such religious courage?
The troubling question I had after reading Miles was what must God do to match such incredible love? The result perhaps is God's own persecution and Resurrection, in the New Testament. Could God's suffering for his people be a kind of parody of their suffering for him in the Old? It seems likely to me.
Miles finds completion in the Hebrew Bible, concluding that it needs no further revelation, although the modern reader familiar with the New Testament or the Hebrew Talmuds is left with a nagging doubt.
Miles raises serious questions for the New Testament, and all later theology in general, so I was quite happy to find a second book by him: Christ: Crisis in the Life of God, which I will try to review later.
For anyone interested in the literary aspects of the Bible, these are tremendous books to start with.
1 comment:
You write very well.
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