A necessary, but not sufficient condition for being human and de-convolving our authentic selves from the ambiguous discourse that surrounds us, the attunement that entraps us, and the entanglement that is forced upon us by ‘time and chance’ (a quote from Ecclesiastics btw) is to understand the basis for the civilization that defines us, and for a lad like me who came along where the presumptions all around him growing up were always of a Christian persuasion and still are, after all 70% of America is Christian and it is an assumed default position such that the very fact for not having ‘faith’ or ‘belief in things unseen’ is considered yucky.
I’ve tried to read the Old Testament four years ago. I didn’t get too far. This time I had a plan. I read volume I and II of History of the Jews by Heinrich Graetz written in 1860 and The Complete Works of Josephus and The Guide for the Complex by Maimonides. I needed those books in order to put the Old Testament in context and also to understand what they meant to people who believed in them. For me, I can’t stress enough in order to grok what was being said I needed those books and I had to listen to the OT as a whole not as various parts because it really does relate to other pieces spread out and does cohere overall.
I can give an example. As the Book of Acts in the NT is probably the most important book ever written one can argue that the Book of Isaiah is just as important. Without Isaiah there might not have ever been a revival of the Jewish faith after the Babylonian Captivity, that statement, for example, is why it is most profitable to read the OT as a book instead of a series of books because otherwise one would not necessarily realize its importance. That became clear to me as I read the OT and the three books I mentioned above. (As for Acts, Paul and what he does to create his version of truth is arguably the most significant of all the apostles, so much so, as my Western Civilization history professor told his class 40 years ago ‘without Paul, there would not be Christianity’, it’s not that it is necessarily a true statement, it’s that someone could say it as a defendable proposition).
Isaiah itself actually reads intelligently (matter of fact, I would call it one of the most intelligently written books in the OT as Hebrews is in the NT). A lot of the OT is a slog. Ecclesiastics is always my favorite. Lady Wisdom in the Proverbs blew me away, but when they twice recommend beating the child as proper child rearing it just seemed weird, the many parts (in Proverbs and multiple other places) about blaming women for men who lusted after them seemed misogynistic, but I’m sure Donald Trump would have agreed with those parts if he ever reads them.
As the story unfolds and as I was reading the whole OT as if it were one book, what was happening and what was being revealed became painfully obvious to me. Sometimes, I would stop my bike and look up the book of the OT I was reading on Wiki to see what year it was written and what period of time it was discussing. The retrodiction prophecies after the fact seemed spookily spot on, or perhaps they were written after the fact and claimed otherwise. I’ll let the discerning reader decide for themselves.
There is a story of a people, or at least a group of people who self-identified as a people and their special relationship with the world who were not part of that self-identified group that comes through to me in ways that I had not known before. I’m glad I forced myself to listen to it all as if I were reading a book, and got to learn a little bit more about myself than I knew before, but I seriously doubt I’ll ever listen to it again as a whole because it can be a slog, and now after having read the three books referenced above and the OT as a whole it painfully obvious to me why the books were written.
The second review written November 1, 2022 follows:
I finished the book in less than a month and half. I re-listened to it cover-to-cover while only skipping Psalms and Proverbs. I recommend listening to it as if you are reading one book. I thought actors did a very good job in their narration, and I particularly liked Jim Caviezel’s portrayal of Jesus, because that’s how I thought Jesus would have been given the insanity that was happening around him.
I ride my bicycle everyday for at least 2 hours on lonely desert roads and always listen to a book as a way of educating myself. So, it was relatively easy to listen to this book cover-to-cover in such a short time frame.
There are somethings that become obvious when you listen to the Bible that way. I’m not quite sure why everyone doesn’t ride their bike everyday and listen to books, but that’s a mystery I’ll have to solve latter.
The Bible is not always quite what people think it is. The Old Testament makes an abrupt change at Isaiah, Ezekiel and those books around that spot. The writers of the book are no longer able to define themselves as a people by a geographical location and must account for their scattering away from the land of Judah and Israel and force a more realistic definition to who they are. It’s quite fascinating. The first half of the Old Testament never had to grasp with that complication. The second half does, and in some ways, God lets them have it for their previous disobedience, and clearly the writers of that part of the Bible see themselves differently than the writers of the first part of the Bible did.
Oddly, Baal seemed to be the go-to God at least for the people who were on the ground and had the world act upon them and they would pick Baal over Jehovah who would often lose his popularity from time to time, and the people of the book and the surrounding areas would show their allegiance to Baal even though they were first hand witnesses to the events of the time as if they thought Baal was more worthy of their devotion than Jehovah. Baal seemed to be as real as Jehovah and the people clearly would prefer him at times. They would weigh the evidence and preferred Baal over Jehovah multiple times in the stories even though they were written by those who preferred the Lord of Hosts.
The New Testament was even more surprising. The synoptic Gospels are very redundant, followed by the Book of John that gives the reader a Jesus on steroids. Jesus really seemed to mesh the Book of Ezekiel strongly into his way of thinking about the world and who he thinks he is and what his mission was. ‘Son of Man’ is invoked often in Ezekiel and the Book of John. The certainty of their own righteousness is never disputed in their narratives.
The Acts of the Apostle stand out as incredibly important. Romans and all of the other letters of Paul are best left unread.
Anybody who thinks their religion is super special because they are only Bible based as the early church was is lacking clarity. Paul says remarkably little about Christ except for the sacrifice on the cross and his rising from the cross and giving a promise of eternal life. Paul is hyper-focused on everything but what Jesus preached as if his murdering people who had disagreed with him on matters of opinion was made unimportant since he was hyper-focused on promising eternal life to anyone who would only believe in a Christ who died on the cross for their sins. “Saul, Saul, why do thy prosecute me”, Jesus said in a vision to Saul and Saul as Paul will know Jesus meant his church, that is those who believe Jesus gives eternal life if they only believe in the resurrection.
There is no Trinity in the Bible. The Bible as a whole clearly makes no mention of that formulation. That must come from Tradition outside of the Bible. Also, there is no real definition for what the Bible itself would be except for consensus and tradition outside of the Bible. Modern day churches that claim they are only Bible based and believe in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as three and one and one and three and also claim the Bible is sufficient need to explain why the Bible is what it is and the Trinity is definitely not obvious from the book we call today the Bible alone. There are quotes and pieces one can scrap together, but for a reader straight through it’s not obvious where the Trinity would come from except if one where to start with the Trinity as true and go from there.
Paul writes deceptively. His philosophy is riddled with begging the question and often childlike argumentation.
In each of the Synoptic Gospels Jesus was asked ‘Good teacher, what can I do to have eternal life’, and Jesus responded ‘don’t call me Good, only your father in heaven is Good’. Aquinas will define the purpose of life as the search for the Good; Aristotle, and Spinoza do that too, and Goodness is only a journey not a destination until after this life at least according to Jesus.
Hebrews and a couple of books after that are very, very good and are smartly written. The works of Paul have a lot to be desired. Paul gives salvation through faith alone thus saving Martin Luther from his internal torment, the books after Hebrews (which really are good philosophical works) such as James make it clear that faith without works are dead and do not fit the Protestant framework as neatly. Tis a pity that Pelagius lost the argument against Augustine.
The book I really disliked was Revelations. Martin Luther was right to have taken it out in his first Bible revision, he should not have ever put it back in. It is not worth the trouble and leads to a lot of non-sensical speculation.
Eschatology runs through the New Testament and the post Babylonian exile in the Old Testament. It’s too easy to act like the end times are always near and that opens the Bible up to bizarre interpretations. I should be careful here, it’s not necessarily Eschatology that was meant by the writers, since for the Old Testament the end times could refer to the Babylonian captivity and the bringing Judah and Israel back as a whole, and for the New Testament it could refer to the final destruction of the Temple and the very early Christian Church before it became universal (Catholic).
It’s all too easy to criticize the Bible by those who haven’t read it as a book, or worst yet, for those who think it’s the inerrant word of God and special plead the uniqueness of the Bible. As long as one doesn’t think the Bible is completely perfect, or completely imperfect it over all gives a good overall picture of how we became who we are as a people who have used the Bible as fundamental to our civilization and the understanding of ourselves, at least for Western European civilization-based societies.