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A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible
The Bible, we are constantly reminded, is the best-selling book of all time. It is read with intense devotion by hundreds of millions of people, stands as authoritative for Judaism and Christianity, and informs and affects the politics and lives of the religious and non-religious around the world. But how well do we really know it? The Bible is so familiar, so ubiquitous that we have begun to take our knowledge of it for granted. The Bible many of us think we know is a pale imitation of the real thing.
In A Most Peculiar Book , Kristin Swenson addresses the dirty little secret of biblical studies ― that the Bible is a weird book. It is full of surprises and contradictions, unexplained impossibilities, intriguing supernatural creatures, and heroes doing horrible deeds. It does not provide a simple what "the Bible says" on a given topic is multi-faceted, sometimes even contradictory. Yet, Swenson argues, we have a tendency to reduce the complexities of the Bible to aphorisms, bumper stickers, and slogans. Swenson helps readers look at the text with fresh eyes. A collection of ancient stories and poetry written by multiple authors, held together by the tenuous string of tradition, the Bible often undermines our modern assumptions. And is all the more marvelous and powerful for it.
Rather than dismiss the Bible as an outlandish or irrelevant relic of antiquity, Swenson leans into the messiness full-throttle. Making ample room for discomfort, wonder, and weirdness, A Most Peculiar Book guides readers through a Bible that will feel, to many, brand new.
In A Most Peculiar Book , Kristin Swenson addresses the dirty little secret of biblical studies ― that the Bible is a weird book. It is full of surprises and contradictions, unexplained impossibilities, intriguing supernatural creatures, and heroes doing horrible deeds. It does not provide a simple what "the Bible says" on a given topic is multi-faceted, sometimes even contradictory. Yet, Swenson argues, we have a tendency to reduce the complexities of the Bible to aphorisms, bumper stickers, and slogans. Swenson helps readers look at the text with fresh eyes. A collection of ancient stories and poetry written by multiple authors, held together by the tenuous string of tradition, the Bible often undermines our modern assumptions. And is all the more marvelous and powerful for it.
Rather than dismiss the Bible as an outlandish or irrelevant relic of antiquity, Swenson leans into the messiness full-throttle. Making ample room for discomfort, wonder, and weirdness, A Most Peculiar Book guides readers through a Bible that will feel, to many, brand new.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2021
116 people are currently reading
2743 people want to read
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April 4, 2023
Dangerous Love
The Bible is a literary object that, perhaps above all others, allows, often demands, interpretation. It is in fact a record of its own interpretive history in its distinctive styles, evolving narratives and changing historical concerns. It is consequently not surprising that the Bible has generated so many distinct, often mutually hostile, interpretive communities. The fact that each of these communities attempts to stop the process of interpretation is a negation of the primary message of the book itself.
Kristin Swenson unashamedly “loves the Bible.” And she does an outstanding job of introducing the literary complexity of the Bible’s contents (and its concomitant religious and theological density). Her approach is appreciative rather than critical, which gives her exposition a lightness I haven’t encountered anywhere else in such an ambitious overview. She does what she says on the tin: “This book looks squarely at what’s so weird, difficult, and disconcerting both about and in the Bible, and in the process shows how those qualities can actually enrich one’s relationship, religious or not, to the text.”
Yet Swenson’s exposition of the ‘openness’ of biblical meaning raises a rather significant point that she documents repeatedly but declines to address. The progressive editions and emendations of scriptural material are not random, nor are they the correction of past texts by some inspired scribe who had a better channel of communication to the Divine. These changes are always purposeful and their consistent purpose is to explain the unexpected events of contemporary recent history. In other words the Bible is a series of cumulative rationalisations of how we find ourselves in our present circumstances given that we are meant to be protected by a caring and merciful divinity.
So, when the residents of the kingdom of Judah were dispossessed in the 6th century BCE and carried off to Babylon, the sharp reduction in their standard of living had to be explained. Clearly an all-powerful God like YHWH would not allow such trauma without reason. A new interpretation of their religious tradition was necessary. And the reason was discovered after sufficient prayer and discussion. The Judahites had become lax in their divine observance and therefore their temple had been destroyed, and they expelled from their homeland.
But the re-interpretation of history went even further. The Babylonia exile was just the latest of a series of misfortunes for those committed to YHWH. Some might find this discouraging in their current condition of exile. It was necessary, then, to provide comfort that the world, creation itself, was not against them, something that had been rumoured in religious cults from the East. This is a rather fundamental issue and the result is a new introduction to all the other collected scriptures. We know this result as the first chapter of the Book of Genesis in which the Judahites are assured of the essential goodness of the world and thereby given renewed hope for the future.
The emerging Jewish sect of Jesus followers pursued the same tradition of ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’ as their forebears. This was few centuries after Hebrew religious authorities had closed the book, as it were, on further interpretations of the Tanach or Jewish Bible. But the Christians found their feet in the literary genre surprisingly quickly. If anything the series of Christian rationalisations of events was even more dramatic than that of their Hebrew predecessors.
For example, the first gospel which was written down (but not the first Christian writing which was produced by Paul of Tarsus who had no personal knowledge of Jesus at all) is that of Mark. The earliest versions of Mark tell a story of Jesus’s life that ends rather abruptly with the deposit of his body in a stone tomb after his crucifixion for sedition. The tone of disappointment and sadness is unmistakable. Only later versions include any mention of a resurrection or subsequent earthly activities.
But by the time of the writing of the last gospel, that of John about 30 or so years later, Jesus has become the Word of God who has always existed and will continue to do so for eternity. And with the writing of the ‘final’ book of the Christian Bible, The Apocalypse, this same Jesus, the one who advocated meekness and mercy somewhat earlier in the biblical progression, is a divine figure of judgment and wrath on those who do not accept him as Lord of Creation. The ‘good news’ of universal salvation is now diluted to a small ‘remnant’ of humanity. Thus devotees were given hope that the failure of predictions by Jesus (and the ever-influential Paul) about the imminent Second Coming were not serious, a mere error in interpretation perhaps. Jesus would eventually return as promised with an extreme violence that the unbelievers will suffer in revenge for their unbelief regardless of the way they had lived their lives.
So, pacé Swenson, while the inexhaustibility of the Bible’s message is something that she would like fundamentalists as well as interested literate readers to appreciate, there is a danger, an element of evil, she appears to discount. The Bible can rationalise anything. It was constructed precisely by doing so and inherently encourages the practice among its committed readers. This is why it is so easy for otherwise illiterate but ambitious preachers and untold numbers of amateur moral experts to rationalise their rather unbiblical prejudices from slavery and misogyny to homo- and xenophobia. The prediction of the imminent end of the world put forward by various Christian sects have clearly been ill-founded. But rather than threaten the sects’ dissolution, failure has always generated a new interpretive analysis and ever greater enthusiasm for spreading the new interpretation abroad.*
These people aren’t necessarily stupid (although many undoubtedly are). They may not even been consciously ill-willed. Evil people rarely are; their greed, lust for power, violence, and other nasty behaviour is always rationalised as just and necessary. They know the Bible is open to interpretation. But more important they know from biblical history that they can use it to rationalise absolutely any view they care to put forward. When they can’t rationalise, they excise as with Luther’s rejection of the Epistle of James, Jesus’s brother, because it offended Luther’s Pauline interpretation of Christianity. The ruse is performed without shame, often with popular approval.
So, for example, the Catholic Church has employed biblical references to rationalise not just its policies but its authority to make such (sometimes murderous) policies against women leaders, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists, colonial subjects, as well as its own dissenting members. Protestant sects have used it to simultaneously demand personal freedom while denying personal freedom to enslaved people, intuitive women (witches), pregnant women, gay people, and sex workers as well as other Christians. Totalitarian regimes use it to justify their excesses of power including torture, murder, and large-scale repression. Conservatives in democratic regimes use it to combat almost all progressive policies in education, racial equality, social welfare, military spending, and the judicial system.
The Bible is, then, a sort of training ground for the worst kind of human hypocrisy. It demonstrates what is possible through the re-writing of history, the deconstruction and inversion of concepts, and the invention of spin. In this sense the Bible does indeed show the relativity of not just history but all of human experience. But that is not what readers of the Bible have been taught to expect. Implicitly they already know that the Bible is a tool for enforcing and verifying conformity to some tribal or party-line. It can be quoted abundantly to attract power and to cause strife simply because it is so indefinite, so contradictory, so rich in meaning. And its status as ‘sacred’ means that it will be listened to, taken as gospel.
So I would love to love Swenson’s book as much as she loves the Bible. But I can’t because I don’t want yet more harm does in its name. As long as this collection of myths, legends, fragmentary histories, and religious insights carries the reputation of ‘sacred,’ it is a dangerous weapon to humanity… and beyond. Swenson’s book, therefore, might just be the vehicle for spreading the malaise.
* How can one resist the comparison between such biblical rationalisations and predictions and those of the present Republican Party in America? The My Pillow guy apparently has not lost any credibility among the Party faithful in light of either his fact-free conference or his several failed predictions of Trump triumphant. I don’t think it is at all an exaggeration to suggest that the Religion of the Book has been a how-to guide to this sort of insanity. And the audience doesn’t even need a warm-up; they’re primed from childhood.
The Bible is a literary object that, perhaps above all others, allows, often demands, interpretation. It is in fact a record of its own interpretive history in its distinctive styles, evolving narratives and changing historical concerns. It is consequently not surprising that the Bible has generated so many distinct, often mutually hostile, interpretive communities. The fact that each of these communities attempts to stop the process of interpretation is a negation of the primary message of the book itself.
Kristin Swenson unashamedly “loves the Bible.” And she does an outstanding job of introducing the literary complexity of the Bible’s contents (and its concomitant religious and theological density). Her approach is appreciative rather than critical, which gives her exposition a lightness I haven’t encountered anywhere else in such an ambitious overview. She does what she says on the tin: “This book looks squarely at what’s so weird, difficult, and disconcerting both about and in the Bible, and in the process shows how those qualities can actually enrich one’s relationship, religious or not, to the text.”
Yet Swenson’s exposition of the ‘openness’ of biblical meaning raises a rather significant point that she documents repeatedly but declines to address. The progressive editions and emendations of scriptural material are not random, nor are they the correction of past texts by some inspired scribe who had a better channel of communication to the Divine. These changes are always purposeful and their consistent purpose is to explain the unexpected events of contemporary recent history. In other words the Bible is a series of cumulative rationalisations of how we find ourselves in our present circumstances given that we are meant to be protected by a caring and merciful divinity.
So, when the residents of the kingdom of Judah were dispossessed in the 6th century BCE and carried off to Babylon, the sharp reduction in their standard of living had to be explained. Clearly an all-powerful God like YHWH would not allow such trauma without reason. A new interpretation of their religious tradition was necessary. And the reason was discovered after sufficient prayer and discussion. The Judahites had become lax in their divine observance and therefore their temple had been destroyed, and they expelled from their homeland.
But the re-interpretation of history went even further. The Babylonia exile was just the latest of a series of misfortunes for those committed to YHWH. Some might find this discouraging in their current condition of exile. It was necessary, then, to provide comfort that the world, creation itself, was not against them, something that had been rumoured in religious cults from the East. This is a rather fundamental issue and the result is a new introduction to all the other collected scriptures. We know this result as the first chapter of the Book of Genesis in which the Judahites are assured of the essential goodness of the world and thereby given renewed hope for the future.
The emerging Jewish sect of Jesus followers pursued the same tradition of ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’ as their forebears. This was few centuries after Hebrew religious authorities had closed the book, as it were, on further interpretations of the Tanach or Jewish Bible. But the Christians found their feet in the literary genre surprisingly quickly. If anything the series of Christian rationalisations of events was even more dramatic than that of their Hebrew predecessors.
For example, the first gospel which was written down (but not the first Christian writing which was produced by Paul of Tarsus who had no personal knowledge of Jesus at all) is that of Mark. The earliest versions of Mark tell a story of Jesus’s life that ends rather abruptly with the deposit of his body in a stone tomb after his crucifixion for sedition. The tone of disappointment and sadness is unmistakable. Only later versions include any mention of a resurrection or subsequent earthly activities.
But by the time of the writing of the last gospel, that of John about 30 or so years later, Jesus has become the Word of God who has always existed and will continue to do so for eternity. And with the writing of the ‘final’ book of the Christian Bible, The Apocalypse, this same Jesus, the one who advocated meekness and mercy somewhat earlier in the biblical progression, is a divine figure of judgment and wrath on those who do not accept him as Lord of Creation. The ‘good news’ of universal salvation is now diluted to a small ‘remnant’ of humanity. Thus devotees were given hope that the failure of predictions by Jesus (and the ever-influential Paul) about the imminent Second Coming were not serious, a mere error in interpretation perhaps. Jesus would eventually return as promised with an extreme violence that the unbelievers will suffer in revenge for their unbelief regardless of the way they had lived their lives.
So, pacé Swenson, while the inexhaustibility of the Bible’s message is something that she would like fundamentalists as well as interested literate readers to appreciate, there is a danger, an element of evil, she appears to discount. The Bible can rationalise anything. It was constructed precisely by doing so and inherently encourages the practice among its committed readers. This is why it is so easy for otherwise illiterate but ambitious preachers and untold numbers of amateur moral experts to rationalise their rather unbiblical prejudices from slavery and misogyny to homo- and xenophobia. The prediction of the imminent end of the world put forward by various Christian sects have clearly been ill-founded. But rather than threaten the sects’ dissolution, failure has always generated a new interpretive analysis and ever greater enthusiasm for spreading the new interpretation abroad.*
These people aren’t necessarily stupid (although many undoubtedly are). They may not even been consciously ill-willed. Evil people rarely are; their greed, lust for power, violence, and other nasty behaviour is always rationalised as just and necessary. They know the Bible is open to interpretation. But more important they know from biblical history that they can use it to rationalise absolutely any view they care to put forward. When they can’t rationalise, they excise as with Luther’s rejection of the Epistle of James, Jesus’s brother, because it offended Luther’s Pauline interpretation of Christianity. The ruse is performed without shame, often with popular approval.
So, for example, the Catholic Church has employed biblical references to rationalise not just its policies but its authority to make such (sometimes murderous) policies against women leaders, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists, colonial subjects, as well as its own dissenting members. Protestant sects have used it to simultaneously demand personal freedom while denying personal freedom to enslaved people, intuitive women (witches), pregnant women, gay people, and sex workers as well as other Christians. Totalitarian regimes use it to justify their excesses of power including torture, murder, and large-scale repression. Conservatives in democratic regimes use it to combat almost all progressive policies in education, racial equality, social welfare, military spending, and the judicial system.
The Bible is, then, a sort of training ground for the worst kind of human hypocrisy. It demonstrates what is possible through the re-writing of history, the deconstruction and inversion of concepts, and the invention of spin. In this sense the Bible does indeed show the relativity of not just history but all of human experience. But that is not what readers of the Bible have been taught to expect. Implicitly they already know that the Bible is a tool for enforcing and verifying conformity to some tribal or party-line. It can be quoted abundantly to attract power and to cause strife simply because it is so indefinite, so contradictory, so rich in meaning. And its status as ‘sacred’ means that it will be listened to, taken as gospel.
So I would love to love Swenson’s book as much as she loves the Bible. But I can’t because I don’t want yet more harm does in its name. As long as this collection of myths, legends, fragmentary histories, and religious insights carries the reputation of ‘sacred,’ it is a dangerous weapon to humanity… and beyond. Swenson’s book, therefore, might just be the vehicle for spreading the malaise.
* How can one resist the comparison between such biblical rationalisations and predictions and those of the present Republican Party in America? The My Pillow guy apparently has not lost any credibility among the Party faithful in light of either his fact-free conference or his several failed predictions of Trump triumphant. I don’t think it is at all an exaggeration to suggest that the Religion of the Book has been a how-to guide to this sort of insanity. And the audience doesn’t even need a warm-up; they’re primed from childhood.
September 24, 2021
Get a clue people...
"Whenever there’s a disagreement about the Bible, an appeal to “what it says in the original” usually isn’t far behind. Indeed, going back to an original can resolve disagreements, shed light on interpretations, peel away accretions of interpretation, and lend credibility to one reading over another. When it comes to the Bible, “going back to the original” usually means referring to the ancient Hebrew and Greek texts, since those are, respectively, the languages of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible and of the New Testament, from which our translations come.
The trouble is, we don’t actually have an original Bible.
We simply don’t have a single Bible that old or that otherwise stands as The One that gave rise to them all. Our earliest versions come from hundreds of years after the Bible’s contents (both Jewish and Christian versions) were finalized. There is no authoritative ur-text that we can consult for the final word. For readers accustomed to appealing to the Bible as the definitive Word of God, this information can land like a heavy blow— disorienting at best, debilitating at worst."
===
"One of the ways that the Bible is problematic is that in the face of all its oddities, many readers seem to think that in order to live up to their religious responsibility as Jews or Christians, they must set aside other learning (in the sciences, say, or history or geography), universal human ethics (such as the inherent equality of persons, the rightness of exercising kindness and goodwill), and simple common sense (that a text composed millennia ago wouldn’t originally refer to a modern individual, that one person’s idolatry may be another’s orthodoxy, and that actual human beings were involved in composing the Word of God). It is deeply problematic to assume that to be a good religious person one must take the Bible not only to mean exactly what one reads it to say (in the translation one happens to be using) but also that it is prescriptive as such, without any space for interpretation, much less protest."
====
Most of what was in this book was not new to me.
You may not realize that most American Christians don’t read the Bible. Various studies, such as Harold Bloom’s “American Religion” and the Bible section of the “Authoritarians” study, document this. This goes for both Testaments. This means they don’t know much about what’s actually in the Bible.
Although the author has a light touch, not judgmental, never mind snarky, she is true to the title of the book per the Bible being “peculiar.” That’s putting it mildly. A close reading shows that the Bible is full of contradictions and a mix of fairy tales (e.g. the story of Jonah) and horrible acts of violence, genocide, done in the name of God. Unfortunately, these have selectively been used by modern believers as justification for similar acts.
I submit that if professing believers actually read the Bible closely they might lose their faith. I had a roommate in college who came close. At the beginning of a school year, he set out to read the Bible cover to cover. Throughout that time he’d bring up incidents from the Bible, eyes wide, and say “Can you believe this?” In the end, he had stumbled over the truth, but managed to dust himself off and hurry on his way as if nothing had happened.
This danger very may well be why pastors and other church leaders don’t actually encourage their flocks to read the Bible as much as one might think. In typical church settings a verse or two is used as a jumping off point in sermons to go on about politics, the End Times, or how God wants you to be rich. Whatever helps fill up the collection plate.
I’d recommend dipping into this book in a topical fashion. It really is full of revelations that most have no idea about.
==========
Take the Bible quiz....
https://bonvoyaged.com/test-your-know...
"Whenever there’s a disagreement about the Bible, an appeal to “what it says in the original” usually isn’t far behind. Indeed, going back to an original can resolve disagreements, shed light on interpretations, peel away accretions of interpretation, and lend credibility to one reading over another. When it comes to the Bible, “going back to the original” usually means referring to the ancient Hebrew and Greek texts, since those are, respectively, the languages of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible and of the New Testament, from which our translations come.
The trouble is, we don’t actually have an original Bible.
We simply don’t have a single Bible that old or that otherwise stands as The One that gave rise to them all. Our earliest versions come from hundreds of years after the Bible’s contents (both Jewish and Christian versions) were finalized. There is no authoritative ur-text that we can consult for the final word. For readers accustomed to appealing to the Bible as the definitive Word of God, this information can land like a heavy blow— disorienting at best, debilitating at worst."
===
"One of the ways that the Bible is problematic is that in the face of all its oddities, many readers seem to think that in order to live up to their religious responsibility as Jews or Christians, they must set aside other learning (in the sciences, say, or history or geography), universal human ethics (such as the inherent equality of persons, the rightness of exercising kindness and goodwill), and simple common sense (that a text composed millennia ago wouldn’t originally refer to a modern individual, that one person’s idolatry may be another’s orthodoxy, and that actual human beings were involved in composing the Word of God). It is deeply problematic to assume that to be a good religious person one must take the Bible not only to mean exactly what one reads it to say (in the translation one happens to be using) but also that it is prescriptive as such, without any space for interpretation, much less protest."
====
Most of what was in this book was not new to me.
You may not realize that most American Christians don’t read the Bible. Various studies, such as Harold Bloom’s “American Religion” and the Bible section of the “Authoritarians” study, document this. This goes for both Testaments. This means they don’t know much about what’s actually in the Bible.
Although the author has a light touch, not judgmental, never mind snarky, she is true to the title of the book per the Bible being “peculiar.” That’s putting it mildly. A close reading shows that the Bible is full of contradictions and a mix of fairy tales (e.g. the story of Jonah) and horrible acts of violence, genocide, done in the name of God. Unfortunately, these have selectively been used by modern believers as justification for similar acts.
I submit that if professing believers actually read the Bible closely they might lose their faith. I had a roommate in college who came close. At the beginning of a school year, he set out to read the Bible cover to cover. Throughout that time he’d bring up incidents from the Bible, eyes wide, and say “Can you believe this?” In the end, he had stumbled over the truth, but managed to dust himself off and hurry on his way as if nothing had happened.
This danger very may well be why pastors and other church leaders don’t actually encourage their flocks to read the Bible as much as one might think. In typical church settings a verse or two is used as a jumping off point in sermons to go on about politics, the End Times, or how God wants you to be rich. Whatever helps fill up the collection plate.
I’d recommend dipping into this book in a topical fashion. It really is full of revelations that most have no idea about.
==========
Take the Bible quiz....
https://bonvoyaged.com/test-your-know...
January 19, 2023
3.5 stars - An accessible intro to a wide range of textual, form, etc criticism of the Christian Bible
August 14, 2021
There are many people, especially evident here in the United States, for whom the Bible is the be all and end all of all things. They are probably the people who would benefit most from reading this book, but they are the least likely to do so. That means that the rest of us can enjoy it, even if we might know quite a bit about what it is pointing out. I learned a thing or two from reading it.
This book is pretty much what it says it is—an exploration of the strangeness of the Bible. It is an odd book, full of contradictory things and strange stories. There’s a lot of mainstream regular stuff too, largely because it has helped define the mainstream as we know it. For those less familiar with the Good Book, Swenson is an able guide. She approaches the text with humor and reverence. She knows what strikes the modern eye as weird. And she’s a very good writer.
As someone who edits books like this for a living, it’s nice to be able to sit back and just read one. Funnily enough, I found myself paying close attention to it, even though I know a fair bit about the subject myself. I guess that’s a measure of how the book draws you in. If you’re interested, I wrote more about it here: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.
This book is pretty much what it says it is—an exploration of the strangeness of the Bible. It is an odd book, full of contradictory things and strange stories. There’s a lot of mainstream regular stuff too, largely because it has helped define the mainstream as we know it. For those less familiar with the Good Book, Swenson is an able guide. She approaches the text with humor and reverence. She knows what strikes the modern eye as weird. And she’s a very good writer.
As someone who edits books like this for a living, it’s nice to be able to sit back and just read one. Funnily enough, I found myself paying close attention to it, even though I know a fair bit about the subject myself. I guess that’s a measure of how the book draws you in. If you’re interested, I wrote more about it here: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.
July 14, 2023
87th book of 2023.
This is a quirky, tongue-in-cheek, mostly facetious book by Swenson and published by Oxford University Press. Despite her obvious playing, I didn't find that Swenson was insulting or mocking of the Bible or any of its believers. Her tone does make for a readable and approachable text though, a kind of pop-theology book, if such a thing exists. Some of the many things she explores/points out in the Bible are:
- Chapter-verse divisions didn't appear till the sixteenth century.
- There is no indication concerning who Matthew, Mark, John and Luke were. The gospels were not written by these men, only their names were later attributed to them. (Interestingly, Swenson discusses this as a historical fact and explains it was the norm: writers rarely put their own names on their work, but instead chose a famous name and used that instead, to get more readership. In effect, I would write a novel and then claim Sally Rooney had written it.)
- Paul, despite writing most of the Bible, never met Jesus in person (only in a vision - doesn't count).
- The earliest Hebrew Bibles didn't have any vowels in them. So translation is hard. A lot of the stuff in this book is about translation. Swenson even jokes that the "original" Bible was likely a translation, if Jesus spoke in Aramaic, which is likely.
- God appears to be both male and female, and also one of many, a council, of gods. She tackles the Christian monotheism and uses countless of examples from throughout the Bible which note the concept of other gods.
- Most "good" people in the Bible do bad things. Moses, for example, kills a man.
- There is nothing in the Bible about homosexuality or abortion.
-There are some awful parts to the Bible: she discusses the end of Judges and even prewarns the reader as it is 'so full of pornographic violence as to be virtually unreadable'.
I found the beginning about the history of the physical Bible, as a text, more interesting than her deconstruction and myth-busting, but that's just my personal tastes. I found it fascinating reading about the scrolls, the oral tradition, the writers, the journey the text has been on. That's the history that excites me.
This is a quirky, tongue-in-cheek, mostly facetious book by Swenson and published by Oxford University Press. Despite her obvious playing, I didn't find that Swenson was insulting or mocking of the Bible or any of its believers. Her tone does make for a readable and approachable text though, a kind of pop-theology book, if such a thing exists. Some of the many things she explores/points out in the Bible are:
- Chapter-verse divisions didn't appear till the sixteenth century.
- There is no indication concerning who Matthew, Mark, John and Luke were. The gospels were not written by these men, only their names were later attributed to them. (Interestingly, Swenson discusses this as a historical fact and explains it was the norm: writers rarely put their own names on their work, but instead chose a famous name and used that instead, to get more readership. In effect, I would write a novel and then claim Sally Rooney had written it.)
- Paul, despite writing most of the Bible, never met Jesus in person (only in a vision - doesn't count).
- The earliest Hebrew Bibles didn't have any vowels in them. So translation is hard. A lot of the stuff in this book is about translation. Swenson even jokes that the "original" Bible was likely a translation, if Jesus spoke in Aramaic, which is likely.
- God appears to be both male and female, and also one of many, a council, of gods. She tackles the Christian monotheism and uses countless of examples from throughout the Bible which note the concept of other gods.
- Most "good" people in the Bible do bad things. Moses, for example, kills a man.
- There is nothing in the Bible about homosexuality or abortion.
-There are some awful parts to the Bible: she discusses the end of Judges and even prewarns the reader as it is 'so full of pornographic violence as to be virtually unreadable'.
I found the beginning about the history of the physical Bible, as a text, more interesting than her deconstruction and myth-busting, but that's just my personal tastes. I found it fascinating reading about the scrolls, the oral tradition, the writers, the journey the text has been on. That's the history that excites me.
October 10, 2021
I’ve read the Bible all the way through many times. I enjoy reading scripture and try to make it a part of my daily routine. Just like in Constitutional law there are various theories of interpretation. The two main camps of interpretation textualism and original intent. The Bible is similar. The literalists, like the textualists, see the Bible as the inerrant literal word of God. The original intent camp grapple with the history and contradictions in an attempt to weave a coherent practical theology. The one thing Bible scholars “know” about the miracles of Jesus, for example, is that the documents reporting them were written decades and centuries after Jesus by various local religious communities. How and why any one of these stories came about is the subject of a never-ending series of competing theories.
Kristin Swenson, teaches religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her purpose in writing this book was to reignite our interest in the Bible. She points out the Bible’s weird parts as well as compellingly poetic and heroic. In a world that is increasingly secular many people in the 21st century, haven’t read the bible all the way through and even fewer have plunged its depths.
The sheer fact of the Bible’s messiness with its millennia of manipulation, invites us to read more as participants in meaning-making than consumers of absolutist declarations. I literalist will not like this book. One seeking to understand the complexities will find it worthwhile. Some readers may suspect that Ms. Swenson takes her ability to read ancient Hebrew as license to find whatever she wants in biblical texts. The author clarifies that the Bible is a heterogenous library of very different kinds of texts. She expounds on how those texts were composed by different people, writing in different literary traditions, over the course of a thousand years. She explains that this very fact makes internal contradictions and incongruities inevitable and then examines some of those contradictions.
The style is almost like Bill Bryson reads the bible kind of approach that makes it very engaging. Swenson states the obvious - that nobody named Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John actually wrote the Gospels that bear those names, that Elohim in the Book of Genesis is clearly plural. Yes, it contains countless contradictions, from the number of animals on Noah’s Ark to who killed Goliath to what exactly happened at the Resurrection. As powerful as Christianity has been in the world for the last two thousand years, even so readers of the Bible are both inspired and troubled. And if they're not they aint paying attention.
A Most Peculiar Book has a very specific patch of ground to cover, and it covers that patch well. This is a talky, hey-did-you-know look at the oddities of the most famous book in the world, most readers will be surprised and amused on virtually every page.
Quotes:
We all want the easy way, the clear and straightforward path to making a decision, to naming what is right and wrong. That’s simply human. If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us are happy to defer to an authority, someone with the credentials and qualifications to make the decision, call the shots. It’s a lot of work to wrestle with complexity, much less to reckon with those pesky gray areas. But it’s our responsibility, and is finally much more satisfying, to go through that difficult process in order to arrive at a decision or judgment that we can own with deep, personal integrity as the result of a hard-won clarity. I’m going on about this because the case of abortion is one of these issues that must be wrangled with rather than superficially adopted because of what some confident authority has told you to believe.
Jews and Christians—for whom the Bible is Scripture, that is, religiously authoritative—benefit from reading the Bible, thinking about it, analyzing and critiquing it as literature. To do so does not require they abandon their faith or belief in the Bible as God’s Word. It might, however, mean rethinking assumptions about how God speaks. More peculiar is the flip-side truth: people who do not accept the Bible as authoritative can nevertheless read it as Scripture, and I don’t mean only by recognizing that it’s sacred and/or treating it with the respect of a text that is authoritative for some people. I mean that a so-called secular, maybe atheist reader might discover passages or qualities that stimulate his or her own sense of the holy, a sense of truth and beauty. That doesn’t mean that he or she will convert to Judaism or Christianity. Such a reader may well be profoundly committed to another religion, or to none. But the Bible endures and invites continual engagement, and there is something in it for everyone—something if not holy, then at least intriguing, even meaningful.
“Look closely. Besides texts of lofty wisdom, inspiration, comfort, and guidance, the Bible contains bewildering archaisms, inconsistencies, questionable ethics, and a herky-jerky narrative style. Yet those features barely get a passing glance these days.”
Kristin Swenson, teaches religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her purpose in writing this book was to reignite our interest in the Bible. She points out the Bible’s weird parts as well as compellingly poetic and heroic. In a world that is increasingly secular many people in the 21st century, haven’t read the bible all the way through and even fewer have plunged its depths.
The sheer fact of the Bible’s messiness with its millennia of manipulation, invites us to read more as participants in meaning-making than consumers of absolutist declarations. I literalist will not like this book. One seeking to understand the complexities will find it worthwhile. Some readers may suspect that Ms. Swenson takes her ability to read ancient Hebrew as license to find whatever she wants in biblical texts. The author clarifies that the Bible is a heterogenous library of very different kinds of texts. She expounds on how those texts were composed by different people, writing in different literary traditions, over the course of a thousand years. She explains that this very fact makes internal contradictions and incongruities inevitable and then examines some of those contradictions.
The style is almost like Bill Bryson reads the bible kind of approach that makes it very engaging. Swenson states the obvious - that nobody named Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John actually wrote the Gospels that bear those names, that Elohim in the Book of Genesis is clearly plural. Yes, it contains countless contradictions, from the number of animals on Noah’s Ark to who killed Goliath to what exactly happened at the Resurrection. As powerful as Christianity has been in the world for the last two thousand years, even so readers of the Bible are both inspired and troubled. And if they're not they aint paying attention.
A Most Peculiar Book has a very specific patch of ground to cover, and it covers that patch well. This is a talky, hey-did-you-know look at the oddities of the most famous book in the world, most readers will be surprised and amused on virtually every page.
Quotes:
We all want the easy way, the clear and straightforward path to making a decision, to naming what is right and wrong. That’s simply human. If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us are happy to defer to an authority, someone with the credentials and qualifications to make the decision, call the shots. It’s a lot of work to wrestle with complexity, much less to reckon with those pesky gray areas. But it’s our responsibility, and is finally much more satisfying, to go through that difficult process in order to arrive at a decision or judgment that we can own with deep, personal integrity as the result of a hard-won clarity. I’m going on about this because the case of abortion is one of these issues that must be wrangled with rather than superficially adopted because of what some confident authority has told you to believe.
Jews and Christians—for whom the Bible is Scripture, that is, religiously authoritative—benefit from reading the Bible, thinking about it, analyzing and critiquing it as literature. To do so does not require they abandon their faith or belief in the Bible as God’s Word. It might, however, mean rethinking assumptions about how God speaks. More peculiar is the flip-side truth: people who do not accept the Bible as authoritative can nevertheless read it as Scripture, and I don’t mean only by recognizing that it’s sacred and/or treating it with the respect of a text that is authoritative for some people. I mean that a so-called secular, maybe atheist reader might discover passages or qualities that stimulate his or her own sense of the holy, a sense of truth and beauty. That doesn’t mean that he or she will convert to Judaism or Christianity. Such a reader may well be profoundly committed to another religion, or to none. But the Bible endures and invites continual engagement, and there is something in it for everyone—something if not holy, then at least intriguing, even meaningful.
“Look closely. Besides texts of lofty wisdom, inspiration, comfort, and guidance, the Bible contains bewildering archaisms, inconsistencies, questionable ethics, and a herky-jerky narrative style. Yet those features barely get a passing glance these days.”
March 7, 2021
This was a very readable piece of non-fiction that I think was suitable for either a believer or non-believer to better understand the Bible and why it has some of the odd things it has.
I wouldn't have minded a deeper dive into some of the reasons the contradictions probably existed. This was touched on in many places but I think if we'd had more of that this could have really been a 5 star for me. I just felt like it slightly missed the mark because the main point the author makes about why the book is peculiar is that there are lots of writers and editors over a long period of time and most instances of its strangeness are simply chalked up to that.
I wouldn't have minded a deeper dive into some of the reasons the contradictions probably existed. This was touched on in many places but I think if we'd had more of that this could have really been a 5 star for me. I just felt like it slightly missed the mark because the main point the author makes about why the book is peculiar is that there are lots of writers and editors over a long period of time and most instances of its strangeness are simply chalked up to that.
February 16, 2021
As a child, when I thought about the origins of the Bible, I pictured an old, white-robed, balding, guy sitting at a long wooden table with scrolls piled up around him. He is surrounded by fluffy clouds and a few helpful cherubs. His look is pensive. His quill pen is hovering above parchment paper and his white beard is slung over his shoulder so as not to fall into the inkwell. After he pens the last words of the book of Revelation, he flings a leather-bound Bible earthwards.
To be honest, many aspects of that childhood perception have lingered with me into adulthood. That is, until I read Kristin Swenson’s A Most Peculiar Book, which as the subtitle states, is about the inherent strangeness of the Bible.
With an obvious love of and respect for the material, Swenson methodically and meticulously discusses the surprising, contradictory and sometimes inexplicable (by modern standards) parts of the Bible. I have a strong Sunday school/church going background. Many times, while reading the book, I’d think, “Wait up, that’s not in the Bible!” Then, sure enough, when I checked chapter and verse, I read the words in black and white. (Note to reader: chapters and verses are a fairly recent addition to the Bible.)
Even though her topic is dense and complicated, Swenson’s prose is light and whimsical, evidencing her obvious affection for the material. I found myself engaged and entertained on every page. Her presentation of the information is story-based which makes it easier for a lay person to grasp. Swenson’s writing is provocative; some of her conclusions will challenge beliefs some Bible readers have clung to for years.
My favorite quote from the book is this: “To really, genuinely “believe in” the Bible surely begins with saying yes to its invitation for a relationship. Taking it seriously means considering what the Bible is, how it comes to us, and what it contains. It means recognizing its oddities and engaging with them.”
This is a fascinating book, well worth reading.
To be honest, many aspects of that childhood perception have lingered with me into adulthood. That is, until I read Kristin Swenson’s A Most Peculiar Book, which as the subtitle states, is about the inherent strangeness of the Bible.
With an obvious love of and respect for the material, Swenson methodically and meticulously discusses the surprising, contradictory and sometimes inexplicable (by modern standards) parts of the Bible. I have a strong Sunday school/church going background. Many times, while reading the book, I’d think, “Wait up, that’s not in the Bible!” Then, sure enough, when I checked chapter and verse, I read the words in black and white. (Note to reader: chapters and verses are a fairly recent addition to the Bible.)
Even though her topic is dense and complicated, Swenson’s prose is light and whimsical, evidencing her obvious affection for the material. I found myself engaged and entertained on every page. Her presentation of the information is story-based which makes it easier for a lay person to grasp. Swenson’s writing is provocative; some of her conclusions will challenge beliefs some Bible readers have clung to for years.
My favorite quote from the book is this: “To really, genuinely “believe in” the Bible surely begins with saying yes to its invitation for a relationship. Taking it seriously means considering what the Bible is, how it comes to us, and what it contains. It means recognizing its oddities and engaging with them.”
This is a fascinating book, well worth reading.
August 26, 2021
This was a fun read. In A Most Peculiar Book, religious studies professor, Kristin Swenson, explores some of the contradictions, misunderstandings, and non-sensical head-scratchers in the Bible. Swenson works best when she is historicizing the Bible-as-text, placing these various issues within their proper historical, cultural, and linguistic contexts (Swenson can read Ancient Hebrew). I especially enjoyed her analysis of the changes in literary technologies from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the bounded version of the modern Bible that we inherited today. She reminds us that the bounded text is itself a cultural and technological product, which imposed a linear narrative structure upon the fragmented format of the scrolls. Swenson beautifully shows how something as taken-for-granted as the medium - that is, ‘The Good Book’ as a book - has historical determinations that influenced the readings of scripture over time.
What Swenson doesn't do so well - or rather, what she doesn't convincingly show - is just what should be done with all of these oddities. Her thesis broadly falls under two claims. In the first, she argues that the Bible is inherently strange. Check. From here, she then makes a normative judgment, prescribing the best way to read the text. Given that the Bible is messy, she argues that we cannot and should not read it literally. Rather, we have a “responsibility” to approach scripture with a critical lens, in the same way a student would approach the material in a comparative histories course. Swenson writes: “Among the most admirable, most lovable qualities of the Bible is its diversity. The Bible says not one thing but many. And the ways in which it disagrees with itself are instructive. Those contradictions give pause. They make us create space to consider thoughtfully how we might read beyond the literal, maybe revise received traditions and interpretations in light of new knowledge and experience.”
The problem I see with this claim, however, is twofold. On the one hand, Swenson – who is a Christian herself – is speaking from her own experience. She is a professional intellectual, afforded not only the cognitive abilities and literacy skills that are necessary to think on a higher level, but also the privilege of having the relative leisure to devote time to these challenging critical exercises. The reality is that most Christians are not religious studies professors or theologians – they are average people with a strong desire for unambiguous meaning and guidance. This tendency to read scripture literally is not, as Swenson seems to imply, exclusively a tendency among “modern readers”. It is a common disposition toward scripture that has presumably been around as long as scripture itself. I would submit, then, that there is something inherently authoritative about scripture, which not only justifies a literal approach, but may even demand it.
Recall Kierkegaard’s exploration of the Abraham and Isaac story in Fear and Trembling. God commands his favourite person, Abraham, to kill his son, Isaac. A strange request indeed. After much confusion and a period of questioning God’s motives, Abraham decides to go ahead and kill his son. Just as he is about to commit the murder, God intervenes and stops it from happening. We are left with the impression that Abraham, in proving his absolute allegiance to God, is rewarded with the life of his son.
In Kierkegaard’s reading, the Abraham story is emblematic of faith itself. Christianity is absurd, rationality cannot resolve irrationality, and the only proper disposition toward the absurdity of faith is complete acceptance and submission to God’s will – a “leap of faith” as it were. After all, who are Christians to question God’s will? Who can truly understand God’s motivation other than God Himself? I’ve always found this interpretation to be very persuasive within the context of the nature of faith as religious ideology.
So let us come back to the main issue here. Is the Bible scripture, or is it a collection of myths, metaphors and language games? Is it authoritative, or is it interpretive? Is it literal, or is it free-play? Swenson seems to compromise and suggest that it is both. From her perspective, this makes perfect sense – after all, she is both an intellectual and a Christian. But for what it’s worth, I am not so sure that a Christian can have it both ways. “Either/or”, as Kierkegaard would say. Either scripture is an authoritative text and the transmitted word of God, or it is a free-play of interpretations for human use. Perhaps any rational attempt to decide which passage is authoritative and which passage is interpretive ultimately misses the point of faith itself. Either/or.
What Swenson doesn't do so well - or rather, what she doesn't convincingly show - is just what should be done with all of these oddities. Her thesis broadly falls under two claims. In the first, she argues that the Bible is inherently strange. Check. From here, she then makes a normative judgment, prescribing the best way to read the text. Given that the Bible is messy, she argues that we cannot and should not read it literally. Rather, we have a “responsibility” to approach scripture with a critical lens, in the same way a student would approach the material in a comparative histories course. Swenson writes: “Among the most admirable, most lovable qualities of the Bible is its diversity. The Bible says not one thing but many. And the ways in which it disagrees with itself are instructive. Those contradictions give pause. They make us create space to consider thoughtfully how we might read beyond the literal, maybe revise received traditions and interpretations in light of new knowledge and experience.”
The problem I see with this claim, however, is twofold. On the one hand, Swenson – who is a Christian herself – is speaking from her own experience. She is a professional intellectual, afforded not only the cognitive abilities and literacy skills that are necessary to think on a higher level, but also the privilege of having the relative leisure to devote time to these challenging critical exercises. The reality is that most Christians are not religious studies professors or theologians – they are average people with a strong desire for unambiguous meaning and guidance. This tendency to read scripture literally is not, as Swenson seems to imply, exclusively a tendency among “modern readers”. It is a common disposition toward scripture that has presumably been around as long as scripture itself. I would submit, then, that there is something inherently authoritative about scripture, which not only justifies a literal approach, but may even demand it.
Recall Kierkegaard’s exploration of the Abraham and Isaac story in Fear and Trembling. God commands his favourite person, Abraham, to kill his son, Isaac. A strange request indeed. After much confusion and a period of questioning God’s motives, Abraham decides to go ahead and kill his son. Just as he is about to commit the murder, God intervenes and stops it from happening. We are left with the impression that Abraham, in proving his absolute allegiance to God, is rewarded with the life of his son.
In Kierkegaard’s reading, the Abraham story is emblematic of faith itself. Christianity is absurd, rationality cannot resolve irrationality, and the only proper disposition toward the absurdity of faith is complete acceptance and submission to God’s will – a “leap of faith” as it were. After all, who are Christians to question God’s will? Who can truly understand God’s motivation other than God Himself? I’ve always found this interpretation to be very persuasive within the context of the nature of faith as religious ideology.
So let us come back to the main issue here. Is the Bible scripture, or is it a collection of myths, metaphors and language games? Is it authoritative, or is it interpretive? Is it literal, or is it free-play? Swenson seems to compromise and suggest that it is both. From her perspective, this makes perfect sense – after all, she is both an intellectual and a Christian. But for what it’s worth, I am not so sure that a Christian can have it both ways. “Either/or”, as Kierkegaard would say. Either scripture is an authoritative text and the transmitted word of God, or it is a free-play of interpretations for human use. Perhaps any rational attempt to decide which passage is authoritative and which passage is interpretive ultimately misses the point of faith itself. Either/or.
March 24, 2021
This is a must-read for anyone who's interested in studying the Hebrew and/or Christian Bible.
April 7, 2023
DNF at ~ 60% but only because my library loan expired before I finished. I won't borrow it again to finish it however.
The very best part of the book is the author's reminder that the bible (bibles, there are several) is a collection of works from many known and unknown authors spanning centuries. Some were written contemporaneously and others were written decades or centuries after the events depicted within the writings (even though they read as current events). Historical context is paramount.
I've never read the bible but am familiar with parts of it by way of 16 years of Catholic schooling and attendance at mass. I was most interested in the sections of the book that dealt with parts of the bible familiar to me; I thought they were very enlightening and well presented. I skimmed through many of the sections that didn't interest me and it didn't spoil the reading experience for me in any way. I also skimmed through parts that overlapped with How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee which I read very recently and enjoyed greatly. Ehrman's book came across as a tightly structured lecture whereas this book felt a little too informal and had a slight off-the-cuff vibe.
The very best part of the book is the author's reminder that the bible (bibles, there are several) is a collection of works from many known and unknown authors spanning centuries. Some were written contemporaneously and others were written decades or centuries after the events depicted within the writings (even though they read as current events). Historical context is paramount.
I've never read the bible but am familiar with parts of it by way of 16 years of Catholic schooling and attendance at mass. I was most interested in the sections of the book that dealt with parts of the bible familiar to me; I thought they were very enlightening and well presented. I skimmed through many of the sections that didn't interest me and it didn't spoil the reading experience for me in any way. I also skimmed through parts that overlapped with How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee which I read very recently and enjoyed greatly. Ehrman's book came across as a tightly structured lecture whereas this book felt a little too informal and had a slight off-the-cuff vibe.
April 13, 2021
Well done, a great perspective well told. Reminded me a lot of a class I took in college about the Biblical narrative, but this went even a step further, making a lot of scholarly theory and linguistic/historical context accessible to a casual reader. I would highly recommend to anyone curious about scholarly views on how to approach and appreciate the Bible for what it really is, in ways that might be separate from faith and doctrine.
March 21, 2021
Although this book does contain many interesting quirks and oddities about the Bible, Swenson regularly engages in her own misinterpretations, contradictions, and retrofitting to shoehorn her own point of view into the texts of the Bible. I'd recommend not engaging with this book and saving your time and money.
March 21, 2021
A book about what you did not know about the bible.
June 25, 2021
The only thing I really cringed at while reading was the authors liberal use of the name of G-d. Continually using the Christian pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton.
August 11, 2021
Extremely readable at times, in other parts, not so much.
March 7, 2025
helpful primer on the bible and its history. cautions against a literalist reading due to what gets/got lost in translation + the fact that multiple authors = inconsistencies. also thoughtfully explores the biblical basis for certain american culture war issues today (eg, abortion, gay marriage). author is funny!
June 9, 2021
Today’s Nonfiction post is on A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible by Kristin Swenson. It is 261 pages long and is published by Oxford press. The cover is part of a medieval painting of Moses receiving the Commandment from god. There is some foul language, discussion of sex, sexuality, and rape, and lots of violence in this book. The intended reader is someone who is interested in the history of the Bible and how it was made. There Be Spoilers Ahead.
From the dust jacket- The Bible, we are constantly reminded, is the best-selling book of all time. It is read with intense devotion by hundreds of millions of people, stands as authoritative for Judaism and Christianity, and informs and affects the politics and lives of the religious and non-religious around the
world. But how well do we really know it? The Bible is so familiar, so ubiquitous that we have begun to take our knowledge of it for granted. The Bible many of us think we know is a pale imitation of the real thing.
In A Most Peculiar Book, Kristin Swenson addresses the dirty little secret of biblical studies that the Bible is a weird book. It is full of surprises and contradictions, unexplained impossibilities, intriguing supernatural creatures, and heroes doing horrible deeds. It does not provide a simple
worldview: what "the Bible says" on a given topic is multi-faceted, sometimes even contradictory. Yet, Swenson argues, we have a tendency to reduce the complexities of the Bible to aphorisms, bumper stickers, and slogans. Swenson helps readers look at the text with fresh eyes. A collection of
ancient stories and poetry written by multiple authors, held together by the tenuous string of tradition, the Bible often undermines our modern assumptions. And is all the more marvelous and powerful for it.
Rather than dismiss the Bible as an outlandish or irrelevant relic of antiquity, Swenson leans into the messiness full-throttle. Making ample room for discomfort, wonder, and weirdness, A Most Peculiar Book guides readers through a Bible that will feel, to many, brand new.
Review- An interesting survey of the Bible, how it was made, and some of the many problems within it. Swenson is a good writer and she approaches her topic with insight, humor, and first-hand knowledge. But that said, this is a very brief overview of the Bible and she does not go in depth with one issue or topic in the Bible. She does cover the whole Bible and does talk about some of the history of how it was made and the problems that brings with it. It is very well written, easy to read, and if you have never studied the Bible before, this is a good place to start.
I give this book a Four out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.
From the dust jacket- The Bible, we are constantly reminded, is the best-selling book of all time. It is read with intense devotion by hundreds of millions of people, stands as authoritative for Judaism and Christianity, and informs and affects the politics and lives of the religious and non-religious around the
world. But how well do we really know it? The Bible is so familiar, so ubiquitous that we have begun to take our knowledge of it for granted. The Bible many of us think we know is a pale imitation of the real thing.
In A Most Peculiar Book, Kristin Swenson addresses the dirty little secret of biblical studies that the Bible is a weird book. It is full of surprises and contradictions, unexplained impossibilities, intriguing supernatural creatures, and heroes doing horrible deeds. It does not provide a simple
worldview: what "the Bible says" on a given topic is multi-faceted, sometimes even contradictory. Yet, Swenson argues, we have a tendency to reduce the complexities of the Bible to aphorisms, bumper stickers, and slogans. Swenson helps readers look at the text with fresh eyes. A collection of
ancient stories and poetry written by multiple authors, held together by the tenuous string of tradition, the Bible often undermines our modern assumptions. And is all the more marvelous and powerful for it.
Rather than dismiss the Bible as an outlandish or irrelevant relic of antiquity, Swenson leans into the messiness full-throttle. Making ample room for discomfort, wonder, and weirdness, A Most Peculiar Book guides readers through a Bible that will feel, to many, brand new.
Review- An interesting survey of the Bible, how it was made, and some of the many problems within it. Swenson is a good writer and she approaches her topic with insight, humor, and first-hand knowledge. But that said, this is a very brief overview of the Bible and she does not go in depth with one issue or topic in the Bible. She does cover the whole Bible and does talk about some of the history of how it was made and the problems that brings with it. It is very well written, easy to read, and if you have never studied the Bible before, this is a good place to start.
I give this book a Four out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.
January 20, 2022
There is probably not a single topic in this book that is new. The Bible has been studied, quarreled over, attacked, defended, and explained over and over for generations. Professor Swenson’s book is a fun read, however, and I personally learned some new things. For example, that Moses would sometimes grow horns. You can see the horns in medieval pictures.
About the only new topic in the book is the controversy over Pope Francis wanting to change the wording of the Lord’s Prayer. “Lead us not into temptation”. Pope Francis wants to change that phrase, because he says God would never deliberately lead us into temptation. But Professor Swenson says the Pope is technically wrong -- he should go back and read the Greek New Testament carefully. Her book treats many of these puzzling provocative passages.
The book points out in its title that the Bible sure is peculiar. When we think of a book we think of something like a mystery novel, or a chemistry text book, or a biography. The Bible is wildly different from any of these – definitely in a class all of its own. The Bible is more like a coral reef that has grown and divided sloppily over the centuries.
Many parts of the book could as well be in an atheistic attack on the Bible. Professor Swenson covers many of the contradictions in the Bible, such as in Genesis where God could be singular or plural, or inconsistent accounts of Jesus’ life in the Gospels. She also reminds us of the godawful behavior of many of the Bible’s “heroes”. But she loves the Bible.
She thinks that pondering the contradictions in the Bible actually helps us. “Good for the soul.” Her attitude towards the Bible seems to be like we might have for an old grandma. Confused and a bit dotty, but lovable because of her foibles.
About the only new topic in the book is the controversy over Pope Francis wanting to change the wording of the Lord’s Prayer. “Lead us not into temptation”. Pope Francis wants to change that phrase, because he says God would never deliberately lead us into temptation. But Professor Swenson says the Pope is technically wrong -- he should go back and read the Greek New Testament carefully. Her book treats many of these puzzling provocative passages.
The book points out in its title that the Bible sure is peculiar. When we think of a book we think of something like a mystery novel, or a chemistry text book, or a biography. The Bible is wildly different from any of these – definitely in a class all of its own. The Bible is more like a coral reef that has grown and divided sloppily over the centuries.
Many parts of the book could as well be in an atheistic attack on the Bible. Professor Swenson covers many of the contradictions in the Bible, such as in Genesis where God could be singular or plural, or inconsistent accounts of Jesus’ life in the Gospels. She also reminds us of the godawful behavior of many of the Bible’s “heroes”. But she loves the Bible.
She thinks that pondering the contradictions in the Bible actually helps us. “Good for the soul.” Her attitude towards the Bible seems to be like we might have for an old grandma. Confused and a bit dotty, but lovable because of her foibles.
June 19, 2021
If you've studied the Bible, or even only read it thoughtfully once or twice, and perhaps read a book or two about it, there won't be much here you don't know already. But Kristin Swenson has such an enthusiastic, engaging and good-humoured style that it's a joy to read what you may already know, and indeed to have such a handy compendium of many of the Bible's problems, oddities and contradictions.
A book like this shouldn't be necessary, really. But having recently encountered an intelligent and educated Christian who really believes that a good and loving God created the vast majority of the human race in order to condemn them to hell - because only if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ can you be 'saved' - I realise again how vital books like this are. Obviously written for an American context, it does rather labour the fact that the Bible nowhere actually forbids abortion. But even for the rest of us who don't have to wrestle with American 'Christianity', there is much here to love and treasure. Like the reminder that Jesus teaches we will be judged according to what we have done, not according to what we say we believe. And the Good News is not about what will happen to us when we die, but about how we can live here and now when we know God as a loving Parent.
A book like this shouldn't be necessary, really. But having recently encountered an intelligent and educated Christian who really believes that a good and loving God created the vast majority of the human race in order to condemn them to hell - because only if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ can you be 'saved' - I realise again how vital books like this are. Obviously written for an American context, it does rather labour the fact that the Bible nowhere actually forbids abortion. But even for the rest of us who don't have to wrestle with American 'Christianity', there is much here to love and treasure. Like the reminder that Jesus teaches we will be judged according to what we have done, not according to what we say we believe. And the Good News is not about what will happen to us when we die, but about how we can live here and now when we know God as a loving Parent.
August 26, 2021
Luther's call to live 'By Scripture Alone' is fundamental to many expressions of the Christian church today. Kristin Swenson takes this seriously, but then observes that a mere literal reading of the Bible can be disturbing. The Bible reveals many inconsistencies and contradictions. One writer exhorts turning swords into ploughs, while another, ploughs into swords. Swenson's call is "approach the text in the most generous and open-minded way. Think for yourself with the best information available." Good advice written with clarity and wit.
August 12, 2021
I will say there are a ton of interesting points made in this book. So many stories that I wasn't aware of that made me pause and think; however, I was completely torn on her view of still believing even as she disproved everything. She points out a ton of places in the Bible where God is evil, even so far as admitting that he created all the evil in the world and that there is proof that there is more than one God. Yet, she ends every chapter with "the Bible should encourage you to analyze more closely while still believing. Don't just throw the whole thing out!" Why, after all of that, would I ever still want to believe? If everything is false and wrongly translated, why believe in any of it at all? I just got so hung up on this attitude that it kind of ruined the book for me, but I can't deny that there were some interesting points made. On an additional note, I felt like more analysis would have strengthened the chapters.
April 8, 2021
This is a good book, that covers a lot of similar ground to what I've read in the works of Bart Ehrman and others. The main point is that examining this book means being aware of not only what it says, but why it says it and the context of which it was written. There is a history of the Bible, in the Bible, and behind the Bible that people should try to account for. Just pointing to the page and beating someone over the head with a particuar quote taken out of context can be of more harm than good.
May 1, 2021
One of those books which is pleasant to read because you agree with nearly everything that is said in it. Somewhat liberal interpretation but very sensible. The gist is that one should not force any theology into the Bible, instead letting its contradictions, strangeness, and beauty express itself. These days I don't think I believe many of the central tenets of Christianity. Nevertheless, I cannot deny that the Bible has and will always be a great source of inspiration and interest to me.
March 11, 2021
Excellent book.
This will become my go-to recommendation for a concise and easy-to-read treatise on the bible using modern biblical scholarship.
This will become my go-to recommendation for a concise and easy-to-read treatise on the bible using modern biblical scholarship.
November 13, 2021
2021 bk 339. Looking through the other reviews, I am convinced that this is a book of extreme likes or dislikes, very few were 'eh about it. I fall on the like side of the equations. When asked to describe the book, I said it is a volume that is very good at pointing out the contradictions that occur in the various books of the Bible. Some spoke of her glibness, I think she was not writing this for the professional seminarian or theologian but for the thinking popular reader looking for discernment, and that requires a lighter hand. My take away is that her 10 Commandments of Reading the Bible (near the end of the book) are very important and ones I need to remember. We all need the reminder that taking a single scripture out of context only destroys the total message, along with her other 9 messages.
February 12, 2023
Ordentlig dårlig! Forfatteren har en rekke kampsaker (feks pro abort, antisemittisme fra kristne, fri seksualitet, mm.) som hun gjør så godt hun kan for å tvinge på leseren. Hun prøver å bruke Bibelen, men dette alltid faller for kort, gjennom så mange halvsannheter. Det starter ofte bra, men skeier fort ut og ender opp helt feil plass. + En en haug med elendig argumentasjon. Progressiv kristendom-propaganda!
April 12, 2023
Interesting subject matter though I wasn’t a fan of the informal writing style (pet peeve: too many sentences start with “And”). It feels like author is taking a critical approach—pointing out the contradictions, inconsistencies, misogyny, etc of The Bible—while also trying not to offend true Believers, a sometimes awkward blend.
November 13, 2024
3.5 ⭐️’s rounded up
November 8, 2021
Very interesting. I learned a lot about the bible- -its history, context, translation, contradictions and weirdness. The narrator was really good.
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