Reading the Lines: A Fresh Look at the Hebrew Bible

by Pamela Tamarkin Reis

Defying conventional wisdom with witty iconoclasm, Pamela Tamarkin Rets proves in these thought-provoking essays that you don't have to be a scholar to formulate intelligent, original opinions about the Bible. In refreshingly readable prose, Ms. Reis presents eleven essays on debated cruxes of the Hebrew Bible, all of which have been published in serious academic journals despite the author's lack of traditional credentials.
Using everyday analogies and paradigms drawn from contemporary life, and infusing her approach with references to literary figures from Cervantes to Edmund Wilson to Ring Lardner, Reis's analyses display originality and unpretentious intellect. Her compelling opinions and down-to-earth approach will show lay readers that the Bible is neither too hard nor too far away and will oblige scholars to approach their own interpretations with more rigorous attention to every word.

227 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2002

Reviews

[Joshua Reitano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pamela Tamarkin Reis approaches well-known biblical narratives with a fresh lens, attempting to reconstruct the psychological and political motivations behind various characters and events. Rather than relying on traditional source-critical methods, she embraces a literary and often psychological approach, treating the biblical text as a coherent narrative crafted with intent. Her central aim is to highlight the internal logic and thematic richness of the Hebrew Bible, offering readings that assume narrative unity rather than fragmentation.

While some of Reis’ arguments are more persuasive than others—occasionally leaning heavily on speculative reconstructions—there is no doubt that she engages the biblical text with seriousness and care. Her critiques of the documentary hypothesis (& source criticism more broadly) are devastating and humorous, exposing the weaknesses and inconsistencies that plague that tradition. I wish I would have had this book when I was completing my M.A. in Comparative Religion (source criticism was gospel at my school, and while I could identify the methodological weaknesses of the approach, it would have been helpful to have Reis' work as back up).

The biggest thing this book does is to expose the limitations of reading the Bible as a stitched-together patchwork. The narrative background that prefaces each chapter is the most compelling part of the book—often more insightful than the academic essays that follow. This book was enthusiastically recommended to me by a pastor friend. I'm really glad I read it, though I'm pretty sure I didn't like it as much as he did.

[Kathleen Brandt · Rating 5 out of 5]

While this book was heavy reading, I was fascinated by the author's views and interesting take on Bible stories. The twists and turns of her interpretations work well with my own reading, understanding and teaching the Bible.

[Daniel Chaikin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was just tough to read. The ideas are quite good...no, more than that, they are fascinating. But I can only see it through the exhaustion of plodding through these essays.

Reis combines the literary ideas of Robert Alter with her own notion that the bible, or at least the Old Testament, is not a flawed document, but actually has come down to us as intended. This should put her squarely in the under-represented bible-as-literature camp - one that sits outside the last say 100 years of debates on the Bible. One camp is religious and takes the Bible as either infallible, or otherwise somehow of unique religious divine-like origin. The other camp see the bible as a human creation, and spends their efforts picking apart the human errors and trying to lay the bible's origins into some real historical context. The main result of the later is the Documentary Hypothesis - that the bible is a collection of multiple stories from different sources, randomly stitched together, contradictions all. In general, what is nice about the literary take is that it looks the bible as a work of literature to be valued and studied. It's becomes something special, regardless of the religious or non-religious take.

Reis takes a side step even from the literary camp. She sees the Bible as human, but feels that the authors put everything together in a precise and careful manner. In other words, there are no mistakes or contradictions. What we see as errors are our mistakes, viewing an old work through 20th-century eyes and missing the original context and long-lost clues. This is faith, mind you a different kind of faith than the usual in this context. Her resulting ideas are interesting and revealing; her articles, arguing for this (citation, citation) and against this (citation, citation), are... just... really... hard... on... the... attention... span.

So, what comes out of this: Basically she cuts into the hidden stuff in the text that reverses the way we understand some common stories. For example, she destroys Hagar; and she exposes Tamar and argues the rape of Tamar was not a rape, but consensual! I found article on Jephthah's sacrifice of her daughter cited on the online Yale bible course. She gets where she gets by really thinking things through over and over again, and by picking apart the Hebrew text and finding the common translation and understanding errors. She also adds in a few questionable ideas and I might argue her confidence is unjustified. But regardless her ideas are good and of value to anyone with an interesting in this kind of thing.