Book group choice: The Bible: A Biography
The book group was surprised as was I that I finished the book. Maybe it tells me I am more interested in theology than I thought.
The group was evenly split between those who enjoyed it and those who didn’t. Paraphrasing one of our members, “ I already knew the Bible was not divinely inspired.”
Armstrong is ambitious in her attempts to bring ordinary folk through a biography of the Bible in 229 pages. Each chapter could be a lecture on a degree course. Armstrong provides extensive references for each chapter and a Glossary. I found myself going back and forth to the Glossary as I was mixing Midrash with Mishnah, just one example of many.
I was reading with pace but by chapter six of eight, I realised I wasn't retaining what I was reading. I took up my pen and started to take notes. If I needed to take up my pen it tells you this book was teaching me.
Some of us think we know the Bible but perhaps we need to ask ourselves “What Bible?” Armstrong was illustrating that very point as she dealt with how the Jewish Bible came together best referred to as the ‘Tanakh’ (now you need the Glossary!) Then there are the many different translations depending on what culture was most dominant at the time.
Armstrong informs us that different books of the Tanakh at least those after the Torah were written to influence the direction of Judaism. She hits against some of my assumptions as although I was aware of the development over 300 years of the New Testament canon I had never thoughts that the Tanakh went through a similar process. Yes, it seems I just assumed it had always been there like the apple in the Garden of Eden.
I was surprised when she wrote that some of the books inserted symbolic characters like Daniel to lend authority to what was being written. It began to feel like propaganda rather than sacred texts.
Yet she does not remove the power of these writings to give the reader an experience of transcendence. The subject of each chapter is how a different time brought a different reading to the same words citing Hasidism as bringing a prayerful approach to the reading of the Tanakh and the monastic period giving Christians ‘Lectio Divina’ (where’s that Glossary?)
I was left wondering whether we were seeing different ages of humans going from an oral tradition to a written one. The written texts tried to become a portable Temple that was no longer. What could the next stage look like? Could we be in it where people value their personal experience as reflective of their spirituality rather than subscribing to a religion that brings with it conformity?
The texts as Armstrong shows remain valuable as a resource for the seeker to interact with it and take from it what aids them in their quest.
g
