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The Book of All Books
A book that begins before Adam and ends after us. In this magisterial work by the Italian intellectual superstar Roberto Calasso, figures of the Bible and its whole outline emerge in a new one that is often astonishing and disquieting, as indeed—more than any other—is the book from which they originate
Roberto Calasso’s The Book of All Books is a narration that moves through the Bible as if through a forest, where every branch—every verse—may offer some revelation. Where a man named Saul becomes the first king of a people because his father sent him off to search for some donkeys that had gone astray. Where, in answer to an invitation from Jerusalem’s king, the queen of a remote African realm spends three years leading a long caravan of young men, girls dressed in purple, and animals, and with large quantities of spices, to ask the king certain questions. And where a man named Abraham hears these words from a divine “Go away from your land, from your country and from the house of your father toward the land that I will show you”—words that reverberate throughout the Bible, a story about a separation and a promise followed by many other separations and promises.
The Book of All Books, the tenth part of a series, parallels in many ways the second part, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. There, gods and heroes of the Greek myths revealed new physiognomies, whereas here many figures of the Bible and its whole outline emerge in a new one that is often astonishing and disquieting, as indeed is the book—more so than any other—from which they originate.
Roberto Calasso’s The Book of All Books is a narration that moves through the Bible as if through a forest, where every branch—every verse—may offer some revelation. Where a man named Saul becomes the first king of a people because his father sent him off to search for some donkeys that had gone astray. Where, in answer to an invitation from Jerusalem’s king, the queen of a remote African realm spends three years leading a long caravan of young men, girls dressed in purple, and animals, and with large quantities of spices, to ask the king certain questions. And where a man named Abraham hears these words from a divine “Go away from your land, from your country and from the house of your father toward the land that I will show you”—words that reverberate throughout the Bible, a story about a separation and a promise followed by many other separations and promises.
The Book of All Books, the tenth part of a series, parallels in many ways the second part, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. There, gods and heroes of the Greek myths revealed new physiognomies, whereas here many figures of the Bible and its whole outline emerge in a new one that is often astonishing and disquieting, as indeed is the book—more so than any other—from which they originate.
465 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 23, 2021
109 people are currently reading
1926 people want to read
About the author
Roberto Calasso
66 books679 followersRoberto Calasso (1941 – 2021) was an Italian writer and publisher.
Calasso was born in Florence in 1941, into a family of the Tuscan upper class, well connected with some of the great Italian intellectuals of their time.
Calasso worked for the publishing firm of Adelphi Edizioni since its founding by Roberto Bazlen in 1962 and became its Chairman in 1999. In 2015, he bought out the company to prevent it from being acquired by a larger publishing firm. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.
He was the author of an unnamed ongoing work reflecting on the culture of modernity, which began with The Ruin of Kasch in 1983, a book admired by Italo Calvino. Dedicated to the French statesman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord or, Talleyrand, it was followed in 1988 by The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, in which the tale of Cadmus and his wife Harmonia becomes a pretext for re-telling the great tales of Greek mythology and reflecting on the reception of Greek culture for a contemporary readership. Another world civilization is surveyed in Ka (1996, where the subject of the re-telling is Hindu mythology). K restricts the focus to a single author, Franz Kafka; this trend continues with Il rosa Tiepolo (Tiepolo Pink), inspired by an adjective used by Marcel Proust to describe a shade of pink used by Venetian artist Giambattista Tiepolo in his paintings. With La folie Baudelaire, Calasso once more broadens his scope from fresco to a whole civilisation, that of Paris in the latter half of the 19th century, reconsidering the lives and works of the post-romantic generation of writers and artists from Baudelaire to Valéry. In one of his more recent works, Ardore (2010), the author returns to India for an exhaustive analysis of the theory and practice of Vedic sacrifice and its significance for post-modern epistemology.
Along with his status as a major analyst specifically of the works of Kafka, Calasso was, more broadly, active in many essays in retrieving and re-invigorating the notion of a Central European literary culture. He also served as the president of the International Alexander Lernet-Holenia Society, which promotes the publication, translation and study of this multi-genre Austrian writer and his focus on the identity crisis of his characters at odds with postimperial Austria and Central Europe.
Calasso was born in Florence in 1941, into a family of the Tuscan upper class, well connected with some of the great Italian intellectuals of their time.
Calasso worked for the publishing firm of Adelphi Edizioni since its founding by Roberto Bazlen in 1962 and became its Chairman in 1999. In 2015, he bought out the company to prevent it from being acquired by a larger publishing firm. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.
He was the author of an unnamed ongoing work reflecting on the culture of modernity, which began with The Ruin of Kasch in 1983, a book admired by Italo Calvino. Dedicated to the French statesman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord or, Talleyrand, it was followed in 1988 by The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, in which the tale of Cadmus and his wife Harmonia becomes a pretext for re-telling the great tales of Greek mythology and reflecting on the reception of Greek culture for a contemporary readership. Another world civilization is surveyed in Ka (1996, where the subject of the re-telling is Hindu mythology). K restricts the focus to a single author, Franz Kafka; this trend continues with Il rosa Tiepolo (Tiepolo Pink), inspired by an adjective used by Marcel Proust to describe a shade of pink used by Venetian artist Giambattista Tiepolo in his paintings. With La folie Baudelaire, Calasso once more broadens his scope from fresco to a whole civilisation, that of Paris in the latter half of the 19th century, reconsidering the lives and works of the post-romantic generation of writers and artists from Baudelaire to Valéry. In one of his more recent works, Ardore (2010), the author returns to India for an exhaustive analysis of the theory and practice of Vedic sacrifice and its significance for post-modern epistemology.
Along with his status as a major analyst specifically of the works of Kafka, Calasso was, more broadly, active in many essays in retrieving and re-invigorating the notion of a Central European literary culture. He also served as the president of the International Alexander Lernet-Holenia Society, which promotes the publication, translation and study of this multi-genre Austrian writer and his focus on the identity crisis of his characters at odds with postimperial Austria and Central Europe.
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January 15, 2024
Our Stories
These are stories told by our mothers and fathers and our uncles and aunts around the campfire in the desert, by strangers from abroad put up for the night, and by the village elders in the communal meetings on holidays. These are our stories and we love them.
They are mysterious, and frightening stories. Sometimes they are confusing in their portrayal of horrid acts by those whom we are meant to respect. But they are always about about us, about who we are and what made us who we are. They allow us to know the characters who inhabit them as if they could show up tomorrow - the aged Bedouin Abraham (the only one called ‘Jew’) and his wife Sarah (who lied to and then laughed at God), the beautiful David and his foreign wife Bathsheba, the irascible Isaiah, and the woeful Ezekiel. And they often do appear just like that in our dreams.
But most of all these stories are about being chosen, being selected, being different. This is nothing to brag about because what it means in practice is that we are always being judged, being subject to constant evaluation, if not by God then by people who resent our being chosen.
And the worst part is that we aren’t being judged individually but collectively. We are held responsible for each other. If our neighbours don’t tow the line, everyone suffers. Sometimes it isn’t clear who screwed up, but we know everyone will get it in the neck. Believe me, it’s no picnic being chosen.
According to the stories, we are a fractious bunch. We argue constantly. We tried governing by a committee of wise men. But you can’t fight wars by committee. And our experiment with monarchy didn’t go well at all. Lots of in-fighting, intrigue and murders among us - often at the behest of God, or so the bosses say. They say it’s because we are disobedient. Maybe it was the bosses who were disobedient.
But sometimes even if we do what we’re told or make just some silly mistake, God gets really angry and takes it out on… guess who? He seems awfully unpredictable,…and well, irrational on occasion. Some say our grandfather Moses has seen him and talked with him but he had to spend forty years in Egypt, forty in the land of Midian, forty in the desert to get ready for that one conversation. Mostly now we only get hearsay from the the prophets who seem to pop up out of nowhere.
God used to live elsewhere until we made a home for him here. He wasn’t all that keen but we wanted to make sure he was close by to help out, especially in a fight, of which there were many. So we bought Jerusalem, evicted the residents, and built a first class temple. But then we didn’t behave correctly and he sent people to destroy the sanctuary we built for him and he went to live somewhere else again. It took a long time to get him to return.
Meanwhile God was so angry that he made us move as well. But he gave us the Torah so we would know how to live correctly even though we didn’t have a temple and weren’t in the land he had promised to us forever. The Torah became our temple and our home.
Then he gave us other writings as well but we weren’t always sure they were really his - like King Solomon’s Song of Songs (“a splinter driven into some chemically alien geographic strata,” some would say) and the book of Ecclesiastes in which God isn’t even mentioned.
So we argued a lot; but I don’t think we killed anyone about it. I think we took Qoholeth to heart when he said “Calmness avoids great mistakes.” We tried to be calm but its clear we think too much, which leads to discussions, which creates arguments, which… well you get the picture.
Truth be told, we like travel. It seems like we’ve always moved around a lot. The first words God said to grandfather Abraham were “Go away from your land, from your country and from the house of your father toward the land that I will show you.” But grandfather was already on a journey and wasn’t all that clear about where his homeland was anyway.
Since then it seems we’ve always been on the move. We’re always packing up and “going away” or more likely being “chased away” - from Ur, from Egypt, from Judah and Israel, and only God knows how many places after that.
What holds us together as a family is the Torah,… and Wisdom, that presence of God which has been with us since we left Egypt and roamed in the desert. This is the same Wisdom that “sat on the Father’s knee, singing together with the presiding Angels” and “played like a child at his feet.”
And it is the same Wisdom that “issued from the mouth of the Father in the form of a cloud… and covered the earth like a cloud.” The Torah and Wisdom were with God before the world was created. They will remain with God, and us, until it is destroyed. This is why we were chosen.
These are stories told by our mothers and fathers and our uncles and aunts around the campfire in the desert, by strangers from abroad put up for the night, and by the village elders in the communal meetings on holidays. These are our stories and we love them.
They are mysterious, and frightening stories. Sometimes they are confusing in their portrayal of horrid acts by those whom we are meant to respect. But they are always about about us, about who we are and what made us who we are. They allow us to know the characters who inhabit them as if they could show up tomorrow - the aged Bedouin Abraham (the only one called ‘Jew’) and his wife Sarah (who lied to and then laughed at God), the beautiful David and his foreign wife Bathsheba, the irascible Isaiah, and the woeful Ezekiel. And they often do appear just like that in our dreams.
But most of all these stories are about being chosen, being selected, being different. This is nothing to brag about because what it means in practice is that we are always being judged, being subject to constant evaluation, if not by God then by people who resent our being chosen.
And the worst part is that we aren’t being judged individually but collectively. We are held responsible for each other. If our neighbours don’t tow the line, everyone suffers. Sometimes it isn’t clear who screwed up, but we know everyone will get it in the neck. Believe me, it’s no picnic being chosen.
According to the stories, we are a fractious bunch. We argue constantly. We tried governing by a committee of wise men. But you can’t fight wars by committee. And our experiment with monarchy didn’t go well at all. Lots of in-fighting, intrigue and murders among us - often at the behest of God, or so the bosses say. They say it’s because we are disobedient. Maybe it was the bosses who were disobedient.
But sometimes even if we do what we’re told or make just some silly mistake, God gets really angry and takes it out on… guess who? He seems awfully unpredictable,…and well, irrational on occasion. Some say our grandfather Moses has seen him and talked with him but he had to spend forty years in Egypt, forty in the land of Midian, forty in the desert to get ready for that one conversation. Mostly now we only get hearsay from the the prophets who seem to pop up out of nowhere.
God used to live elsewhere until we made a home for him here. He wasn’t all that keen but we wanted to make sure he was close by to help out, especially in a fight, of which there were many. So we bought Jerusalem, evicted the residents, and built a first class temple. But then we didn’t behave correctly and he sent people to destroy the sanctuary we built for him and he went to live somewhere else again. It took a long time to get him to return.
Meanwhile God was so angry that he made us move as well. But he gave us the Torah so we would know how to live correctly even though we didn’t have a temple and weren’t in the land he had promised to us forever. The Torah became our temple and our home.
Then he gave us other writings as well but we weren’t always sure they were really his - like King Solomon’s Song of Songs (“a splinter driven into some chemically alien geographic strata,” some would say) and the book of Ecclesiastes in which God isn’t even mentioned.
So we argued a lot; but I don’t think we killed anyone about it. I think we took Qoholeth to heart when he said “Calmness avoids great mistakes.” We tried to be calm but its clear we think too much, which leads to discussions, which creates arguments, which… well you get the picture.
Truth be told, we like travel. It seems like we’ve always moved around a lot. The first words God said to grandfather Abraham were “Go away from your land, from your country and from the house of your father toward the land that I will show you.” But grandfather was already on a journey and wasn’t all that clear about where his homeland was anyway.
Since then it seems we’ve always been on the move. We’re always packing up and “going away” or more likely being “chased away” - from Ur, from Egypt, from Judah and Israel, and only God knows how many places after that.
What holds us together as a family is the Torah,… and Wisdom, that presence of God which has been with us since we left Egypt and roamed in the desert. This is the same Wisdom that “sat on the Father’s knee, singing together with the presiding Angels” and “played like a child at his feet.”
And it is the same Wisdom that “issued from the mouth of the Father in the form of a cloud… and covered the earth like a cloud.” The Torah and Wisdom were with God before the world was created. They will remain with God, and us, until it is destroyed. This is why we were chosen.
February 25, 2022
When I read of Calasso’s death last summer my heart sank. There is no one like him. His books spanned the variegated worlds of mythology: Indian, Greek, Hebrew, modern (Tiepolo, Baudelaire, Kafka, Walser, Benjamin). The specter haunting many of his books is the unspeakable ritual of sacrifice, yet that’s only one of many presences. His approach might be linked with the work of René Girard, but Calasso is more elliptical and (I’m tempted to say) more graceful. The elegance of Italian humanism infuses his research and presentation.
The Book of All Books is not the equal of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony but it is still full of revelations. I’m writing this review after reading that of BlackOxford, and I happily refer any interested readers to his review for a sense of the whole.
I grew up with these stories. Long ago I spent a few years reading theology and enjoyed seeing forgotten scholars like Umberto Cassuto and Gerhard von Rad reappear. None of this diminished the surprise I experienced in reading Calasso’s retellings of these tales. What a bizarre, terrifying, alien world the Hebrews inhabited. What a terrifying God they worshipped and feared. One example: everyone knows the story of Moses at the burning bush, the revelation of YHWH, the instruction to go to Pharaoh, to demand of him “Let my people go!” Yet immediately following this passage in Exodus, we read
And it happened on the way at the night camp that the LORD encountered [Moses] and sought to put him to death. And Zipporah [Moses’ wife] took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched it to his feet, and she said, “Yes, a bridegroom of blood you are to me.” And He let him go. (Exodus 4:24-25, Robert Alter’s translation)
WTF? These are the stories they don’t tell you in Bible school.
One more excerpt, on the Prophets. This is classic Calasso:
If in the ancient world the Jews were accused of having instituted a “life hostile to humankind” — Hecataeus was already saying as much — many of the children of Israel felt the same way about their prophets. These men shared a certain spitefulness, spoke with great vehemence, and as a matter of principle deployed only two registers: condemnation and consolation, vast deserts of condemnation, that is, relieved by rare oases of inconceivable sweetness. There was no question of modulation. Those who listened to them, on the other hand, shifted constantly from one register to another, taking care, whether by instinct or design, to avoid the extremes.
I read Calasso not to learn about a subject but to rethink and reimagine everything I thought I knew. Other writers spell things out. Calasso reflects at depth, shifting perspectives so that thinking becomes felt experience, knowledge deepened into curiosity, reading alerted to the rustling metamorphoses of meaning. Echos are everywhere. If the world is a book, Calasso is one of the few who seems to have read it all.
The Book of All Books is not the equal of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony but it is still full of revelations. I’m writing this review after reading that of BlackOxford, and I happily refer any interested readers to his review for a sense of the whole.
I grew up with these stories. Long ago I spent a few years reading theology and enjoyed seeing forgotten scholars like Umberto Cassuto and Gerhard von Rad reappear. None of this diminished the surprise I experienced in reading Calasso’s retellings of these tales. What a bizarre, terrifying, alien world the Hebrews inhabited. What a terrifying God they worshipped and feared. One example: everyone knows the story of Moses at the burning bush, the revelation of YHWH, the instruction to go to Pharaoh, to demand of him “Let my people go!” Yet immediately following this passage in Exodus, we read
And it happened on the way at the night camp that the LORD encountered [Moses] and sought to put him to death. And Zipporah [Moses’ wife] took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched it to his feet, and she said, “Yes, a bridegroom of blood you are to me.” And He let him go. (Exodus 4:24-25, Robert Alter’s translation)
WTF? These are the stories they don’t tell you in Bible school.
One more excerpt, on the Prophets. This is classic Calasso:
If in the ancient world the Jews were accused of having instituted a “life hostile to humankind” — Hecataeus was already saying as much — many of the children of Israel felt the same way about their prophets. These men shared a certain spitefulness, spoke with great vehemence, and as a matter of principle deployed only two registers: condemnation and consolation, vast deserts of condemnation, that is, relieved by rare oases of inconceivable sweetness. There was no question of modulation. Those who listened to them, on the other hand, shifted constantly from one register to another, taking care, whether by instinct or design, to avoid the extremes.
I read Calasso not to learn about a subject but to rethink and reimagine everything I thought I knew. Other writers spell things out. Calasso reflects at depth, shifting perspectives so that thinking becomes felt experience, knowledge deepened into curiosity, reading alerted to the rustling metamorphoses of meaning. Echos are everywhere. If the world is a book, Calasso is one of the few who seems to have read it all.
December 19, 2021
Calasso is always rewarding. This book, on the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, offers some rich meditations on its narratives and themes. His interpretation of the binding of Isaac, for example, really provokes thought, as does his highlighting the tension in the biblical texts between different books, Ruth and Nehemiah (I think), regarding the place of non-Israelites in Israel. Calasso does get a little too fixated on the theme of blood sacrifice, and I didn't enjoy this book as much as either the Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony or Literature and the Gods, but The Book of All Books was still well worth reading, and I'll definitely be exploring more Calasso in the future.
January 30, 2022
Reading a Calasso book for the first time is really just a preparation for reading it a second time. So let me just say this:
This book is a bit starker than his other books, most likely because the Hebrew Bible is itself a bit stark. But it’s just as insightful and likely to incite daydreaming as any of his other books. Maybe not the best place for a newbie to start, but it’s certainly everything one could want a Calasso book on the Bible to be and more.
For me, this felt almost like a continuation of his book on Kafka - as if Kafka had somehow given us a key to focusing in on the irrepressible mysteries of the Hebrew Bible.
Needless to say, many mysteries lie here.
This book is a bit starker than his other books, most likely because the Hebrew Bible is itself a bit stark. But it’s just as insightful and likely to incite daydreaming as any of his other books. Maybe not the best place for a newbie to start, but it’s certainly everything one could want a Calasso book on the Bible to be and more.
For me, this felt almost like a continuation of his book on Kafka - as if Kafka had somehow given us a key to focusing in on the irrepressible mysteries of the Hebrew Bible.
Needless to say, many mysteries lie here.
October 12, 2023
What a journey Robert Calasso takes you on in ‘The Book of Books’! I feel almost afflicted by a vague delirium upon finishing it; as though my mind has been drawn through the proverbial eye of the needle at hideous speeds on a camel’s back. This multifaceted book sees Calasso elusively pivot in style throughout. Primarily, it is a retelling of select stories from the Old Testament; specifically the books of Samuel, David, and Solomon, with substantial portions of Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Leviticus included for good measure.
However, it is much more than that. Calasso provides us with a frightening tour of Israel’s primordial founding fathers, the Patriarch sons of Abraham, and their mercurial God Yahweh. The ostensibly straightforward retellings of Old Testament narratives are punctuated with profound metaphysical and psychological analyses and commentaries, intriguing Latin and Hebrew etymologies, historical anecdotes, as well as passages with recondite allusions to ancient occult practices, blood sacrifice, and Baal worship.
A recurrent theme throughout the book, expediently highlighted in the selected stories, is the evolution of the practice of sacrifice. The final chapter, ‘Messiah’, brilliantly culminates this discussion, bringing the idea of liturgy, with bread and wine symbolically representing the body and blood of Christ, thus displacing and negating the centuries-old bestial practice of sacrifice.
Overall, this book served as an excellent aid to better understanding aspects of the scriptures. There was a chapter that read like a polemic aimed at Freud and his writings on Moses, that I felt was a bit incongruous. Notwithstanding this, 'The Book of Books' certainly helped me gain a firmer grasp on the chronology of Israel’s lineage of kings and certain biblical figures who, I’m ashamed to say, I hitherto knew very little of other than their names.
Take, for instance, the tale of Simeon and Levi. They enact a cruel revenge on Shechem after their sister, Dinah, daughter of Jacob, is raped. They dupe the tribe of Shechem into adopting Israelite customs through circumcision, then invade and slaughter them while they are enfeebled and recovering from their self-inflicted wounds.
Then there is the story of Jezebel, who, in her stubborn pertinacity, refuses to cease her worship and proselytising of Baal. Her defiance leads to her death by defenestration, as she is thrown out of a castle window by her disloyal eunuchs and later eaten by a pack of wild dogs.
I was saddened to learn of Robert Calasso’s death. in him, we have lost a meticulous and perspicacious scholar whose literary contributions I have much enjoyed. In my opinion, 'The Book of Books' is not of the same calibre as 'The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony', but it was a highly enjoyable and edifying read nonetheless. 4 stars.
However, it is much more than that. Calasso provides us with a frightening tour of Israel’s primordial founding fathers, the Patriarch sons of Abraham, and their mercurial God Yahweh. The ostensibly straightforward retellings of Old Testament narratives are punctuated with profound metaphysical and psychological analyses and commentaries, intriguing Latin and Hebrew etymologies, historical anecdotes, as well as passages with recondite allusions to ancient occult practices, blood sacrifice, and Baal worship.
A recurrent theme throughout the book, expediently highlighted in the selected stories, is the evolution of the practice of sacrifice. The final chapter, ‘Messiah’, brilliantly culminates this discussion, bringing the idea of liturgy, with bread and wine symbolically representing the body and blood of Christ, thus displacing and negating the centuries-old bestial practice of sacrifice.
Overall, this book served as an excellent aid to better understanding aspects of the scriptures. There was a chapter that read like a polemic aimed at Freud and his writings on Moses, that I felt was a bit incongruous. Notwithstanding this, 'The Book of Books' certainly helped me gain a firmer grasp on the chronology of Israel’s lineage of kings and certain biblical figures who, I’m ashamed to say, I hitherto knew very little of other than their names.
Take, for instance, the tale of Simeon and Levi. They enact a cruel revenge on Shechem after their sister, Dinah, daughter of Jacob, is raped. They dupe the tribe of Shechem into adopting Israelite customs through circumcision, then invade and slaughter them while they are enfeebled and recovering from their self-inflicted wounds.
Then there is the story of Jezebel, who, in her stubborn pertinacity, refuses to cease her worship and proselytising of Baal. Her defiance leads to her death by defenestration, as she is thrown out of a castle window by her disloyal eunuchs and later eaten by a pack of wild dogs.
I was saddened to learn of Robert Calasso’s death. in him, we have lost a meticulous and perspicacious scholar whose literary contributions I have much enjoyed. In my opinion, 'The Book of Books' is not of the same calibre as 'The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony', but it was a highly enjoyable and edifying read nonetheless. 4 stars.
January 17, 2025
Pese a una primera parte espléndida y muy acertada en su hermenéutica, es inferior en profundidad a "El ardor" o "Las Bodas de Cadmo y Harmonia" (dos obras muy difícilmente superables, por otro lado). En su conjunto, para un lector avezado en cuestiones bíblicas, resulta menos elocuente de lo que se esperaría en Calasso, pese a las dosis de clarividencia bíblica que deja caer en casi todos los capítulos.
En contraste con sus grandes obras, Calasso define aquí en exceso los términos de su investigación y, por eso, su carga ensayistica derrota la verdad inserta en toda ficción literaria. Así, "El libro de todos los libros", juzgado como ensayo (especialmente en lo que dedica a Freud o al sacrificio), se queda alejado de la excelencia. Incluso, habría que decir, su interpretación acerca del contexto de "Moisés y la religión judia" es débil y descentrada (Véase Embracing the void, de Boothby, para un buen estudio psicoanalítico sobre la religión).
Con todo, y en particular para aquellos que no hayan leído el Antiguo Testamento (o incluso si lo han hecho), Calasso ofrece suficientes glosas, subrayados e interpretaciones como para impactar al ingenuo, hacer pensar al catequista y hacer repasar al aficionado.
En definitiva, notable y gustosa, aunque en ocasiones entremezcle sin claridad interpretaciones rabinicas, paganas y cristianas.
En contraste con sus grandes obras, Calasso define aquí en exceso los términos de su investigación y, por eso, su carga ensayistica derrota la verdad inserta en toda ficción literaria. Así, "El libro de todos los libros", juzgado como ensayo (especialmente en lo que dedica a Freud o al sacrificio), se queda alejado de la excelencia. Incluso, habría que decir, su interpretación acerca del contexto de "Moisés y la religión judia" es débil y descentrada (Véase Embracing the void, de Boothby, para un buen estudio psicoanalítico sobre la religión).
Con todo, y en particular para aquellos que no hayan leído el Antiguo Testamento (o incluso si lo han hecho), Calasso ofrece suficientes glosas, subrayados e interpretaciones como para impactar al ingenuo, hacer pensar al catequista y hacer repasar al aficionado.
En definitiva, notable y gustosa, aunque en ocasiones entremezcle sin claridad interpretaciones rabinicas, paganas y cristianas.
November 13, 2019
Specie in là con gli anni e lodati come intellettuali, il rischio della hybris letteraria talvolta gioca brutti scherzi. Una "riscrittura" di brani biblici "narrati" da Calasso non lascia nulla al lettore, se non una noia indicibile. E quell'unica volta che Calasso sceglie di confrontarsi con qualche interpretazione ... ecco un pippone di quasi 50 pagine su Freud!
Direi che si possono leggere direttamente i brani biblici. Il testo è senz'altro più affascinante e le storie sono molto più avvincenti.
Un libro che è davvero una perdita di tempo (data anche la lunghezza) ... se avete quel tempo da spendere leggete direttamente sulla Bibbia le storie di Abramo, di Noè, di Giosia, di Davide, di Salomone ... mooolto meglio!
Io pentito dei soldi e del tempo persi.
Direi che si possono leggere direttamente i brani biblici. Il testo è senz'altro più affascinante e le storie sono molto più avvincenti.
Un libro che è davvero una perdita di tempo (data anche la lunghezza) ... se avete quel tempo da spendere leggete direttamente sulla Bibbia le storie di Abramo, di Noè, di Giosia, di Davide, di Salomone ... mooolto meglio!
Io pentito dei soldi e del tempo persi.
October 24, 2019
Quando verrà il messia, passerà inosservato.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 21, 2021
Recommended if you like Calasso or philosophical retellings of the old testament.
Otherwise, stay away.
Otherwise, stay away.
April 4, 2024
Absolutely marvellous. Unveils stories told for millennia in all their original pathos and ambiguity; rendering apparent their enduring fascination. The exegesis regularly borders on the sublime - Calasso effortlessly makes connections that elude even practiced students of scripture. The brilliance of the work is not limited to its own explicit content - Calasso regularly suggests interpretations which, knowingly or otherwise, he falls short of offering himself. This is perhaps testament to his skill, or, as likely, to the unlimited fecundity of the Bible itself.
October 12, 2022
Visionary, learned, perplexing- typically Calasso.
March 30, 2025
L'Antic Testament és present a la nostra Cultura - llibres, música, pel.lícules, quadres... el temple del rei Salomó, l'arca de Noè, la torre de Babel, el sacrifici d'Isaac...
Roberto Calasso és un Savi, un referent en la Cultura Universal, que en aquest llibre explica, ordena i posa significat i context a moltes d'aquestes històries, ubicant-les cronològicament i també en relació amb altres Cultures. I ho fa d'una forma entenedora, clara i sense requerir coneixements previs.
Se centra sobretot en els primers Reis d'Israel, els Fundadors i els Profetes. Analitza també dos conceptes fonamentals a l'Antic Testament: la Culpa i el Sacrifici.
Una lectura que m'ha resultat fascinant, també exigent, i interessantíssima. Ideal per qui ha intentat o s'ha plantejat llegir l'Antic Testament i no ha passat dels primers llibres.
Roberto Calasso és un Savi, un referent en la Cultura Universal, que en aquest llibre explica, ordena i posa significat i context a moltes d'aquestes històries, ubicant-les cronològicament i també en relació amb altres Cultures. I ho fa d'una forma entenedora, clara i sense requerir coneixements previs.
Se centra sobretot en els primers Reis d'Israel, els Fundadors i els Profetes. Analitza també dos conceptes fonamentals a l'Antic Testament: la Culpa i el Sacrifici.
Una lectura que m'ha resultat fascinant, també exigent, i interessantíssima. Ideal per qui ha intentat o s'ha plantejat llegir l'Antic Testament i no ha passat dels primers llibres.
March 5, 2022
Calasso’s work reads, at first, like a commentary on the Old Testament, a response to Cassuto, Freud and others who take a literary tact on what’s normally the work of rabbis. But it slowly becomes clear that Calasso’s interest is narrow, focused on the changing meaning of sacrifice and substitution, and the relationship between sacrifice and expiation.
The analysis is far ranging, literate and deeply humane, engaging with other scholars in a way that doesn’t require a Divinity degree to understand. Parks’ translation is invisible- there’s no awkwardness to suggest that this wasn’t originally written in English. If you like this sort of thing, this is certainly the kind of thing you’ll like.
The analysis is far ranging, literate and deeply humane, engaging with other scholars in a way that doesn’t require a Divinity degree to understand. Parks’ translation is invisible- there’s no awkwardness to suggest that this wasn’t originally written in English. If you like this sort of thing, this is certainly the kind of thing you’ll like.
July 31, 2025
The book is an entertaining and interesting re-telling of the Bible (ie Torah, Prophets and Scriptures). For those who haven't read the Bible this will be a useful overview; for those who have some knowledge of the Bible this will be an opportunity to refresh and deepen that knowledge, including references to some of the myths and legends that built up around the stories of the Bible (although Calasso often mixes these into the general discussion of the Bible as if they have equal status as textual sources).
The reason for my less than fulsome rating is my frustration and annoyance with the text. Again and again, we get notes instead of exegesis; suggestions and impressions in place of argument. Presumably Calasso sees himself in Freud's 'ability...to bring new variations' to the old myths. But it needs hardly be said here that he has barely dipped a toe into the vast sea of Biblical analysis and interpretation, particularly where it might challenge his ideas, nor does he even glimpse at the evidence that runs counter to his assertions (eg Freud's discussion of 'Thutmose' is breathlessly retold without mentioning how discredited it has become).
His numerous questionable interpretations are annoyingly unsubstantiated. They may be minor: for example, the claim that 'from the last chapters of Genesis through to ...the revelation of the burning bush' the Bible names only 'Elohim' (p170 — But perhaps this is simply because there is no talking to God in those chapters directly in the second person, except for Gen 49:18 (where the tetragrammaton is used, contrary to the above assertion), so that would appear to be a reasonably simple distinction and therefore not a case in which God is 'named' as such.)
On the next page, he repeats an earlier suggestion that Moses' wife throws their son's foreskin onto Moses' testicles: 'touching his father's genitals was the most effective way' etc. This is bewildering, as the text quite clearly reads that she threw it at his feet. Why the error, what source? Who knows?
Occasionally these interpretational frolics become quite bewildering (as in the discussion of the apparent fight between God and Raab, Prince of Waters, at the Red Sea (p188 - subsequently spelled 'Rahab' on p181, with a completely unsubstantiated reference to this rebellion, whereas most commentators identify Rahab with Egypt;or the egregious reference to "the Canaanite goddess Anath, Yahweh's consort"— thereby eradicating in one phrase the entire Bible and his own preceding discussion!). At these points, it's telling that the otherwise meticulous footnotes are silent. Or the self-contradictions, eg in one para (282-283: 'the most insidious of the Mesopotamian gods as far as Yahweh was concerned was Ea....The Bible never names him, never disapproves of him' (! A bit of an epistemological conundrum, that!)
More important, however, are fundamental and tendentious misinterpretations such as the following on p136 regarding Abraham's purchase of the burial plot at Machpelah: 'For the children of Israel, if a thing is sacrosanct, it must be bought. Which is the opposite of the common notion that the most important things have no price.' Or his assertion that Yahweh had deliberately specified bad laws to be followed by Israel (347) when this is clearly not the understanding most interpreters would make of this passage (eg cf Rashi) - as Calasso himself says, his reading is not corroroborated by any other text, which one thinks might have made him pause.
Apart from the surprisingly anti-Semitic overtones of this conclusion, which are perhaps unintended but certainly tone deaf for such a sensitive reader (elsewhere, he deals explicitly with some anti-semitic myths), he is simply wrong. This passage emphasises the importance of establishing a stake in the Land of Israel through legal and ethical procedures, and thus a forerunner of one of the most important themes in the whole Torah, that of the importance of such rules for moving the children of Israel from an itinerant rabble to a nation. Not that any of this is the point, as far as Calasso is concerned. For him, it's the vengeful, bloodthirsty Yahweh and the Jews as his instruments who are the focus; so, we're told, Noah's curse on Ham is 'the gong that set the history of the Jews in motion' (p318), rather than the massive shift from such tribal canons of retribution to systems of law and morality that are the engines of Jewish history.
I was similarly frustrated with his discussion of the blood sacrifice in the Temple; once again, he had the opportunity to emphasise the importance of the proscription against consuming blood, the opposite of so much anti-Semitic myth-making, but he barely mentions the point in his haste to link the Temple sacrifice to the crucifixion. He refers to 'a new and deeply disturbing way of applying the principle of substitution' (p211) instead of recognising what a deeply civilising approach this was by comparison with the human sacrifices taking place elsewhere.
In fact there is, throughout, a tendency to focus on the undoubtedly bloodthirsty aspects of the Bible without balancing this with a recognition of the texts' emphasis on establishing systems of law and morality, on forgiveness and compassion instead of retribution and vengeance etc, as if these are all confined to the New Testament instead of the old.
The reason for my less than fulsome rating is my frustration and annoyance with the text. Again and again, we get notes instead of exegesis; suggestions and impressions in place of argument. Presumably Calasso sees himself in Freud's 'ability...to bring new variations' to the old myths. But it needs hardly be said here that he has barely dipped a toe into the vast sea of Biblical analysis and interpretation, particularly where it might challenge his ideas, nor does he even glimpse at the evidence that runs counter to his assertions (eg Freud's discussion of 'Thutmose' is breathlessly retold without mentioning how discredited it has become).
His numerous questionable interpretations are annoyingly unsubstantiated. They may be minor: for example, the claim that 'from the last chapters of Genesis through to ...the revelation of the burning bush' the Bible names only 'Elohim' (p170 — But perhaps this is simply because there is no talking to God in those chapters directly in the second person, except for Gen 49:18 (where the tetragrammaton is used, contrary to the above assertion), so that would appear to be a reasonably simple distinction and therefore not a case in which God is 'named' as such.)
On the next page, he repeats an earlier suggestion that Moses' wife throws their son's foreskin onto Moses' testicles: 'touching his father's genitals was the most effective way' etc. This is bewildering, as the text quite clearly reads that she threw it at his feet. Why the error, what source? Who knows?
Occasionally these interpretational frolics become quite bewildering (as in the discussion of the apparent fight between God and Raab, Prince of Waters, at the Red Sea (p188 - subsequently spelled 'Rahab' on p181, with a completely unsubstantiated reference to this rebellion, whereas most commentators identify Rahab with Egypt;or the egregious reference to "the Canaanite goddess Anath, Yahweh's consort"— thereby eradicating in one phrase the entire Bible and his own preceding discussion!). At these points, it's telling that the otherwise meticulous footnotes are silent. Or the self-contradictions, eg in one para (282-283: 'the most insidious of the Mesopotamian gods as far as Yahweh was concerned was Ea....The Bible never names him, never disapproves of him' (! A bit of an epistemological conundrum, that!)
More important, however, are fundamental and tendentious misinterpretations such as the following on p136 regarding Abraham's purchase of the burial plot at Machpelah: 'For the children of Israel, if a thing is sacrosanct, it must be bought. Which is the opposite of the common notion that the most important things have no price.' Or his assertion that Yahweh had deliberately specified bad laws to be followed by Israel (347) when this is clearly not the understanding most interpreters would make of this passage (eg cf Rashi) - as Calasso himself says, his reading is not corroroborated by any other text, which one thinks might have made him pause.
Apart from the surprisingly anti-Semitic overtones of this conclusion, which are perhaps unintended but certainly tone deaf for such a sensitive reader (elsewhere, he deals explicitly with some anti-semitic myths), he is simply wrong. This passage emphasises the importance of establishing a stake in the Land of Israel through legal and ethical procedures, and thus a forerunner of one of the most important themes in the whole Torah, that of the importance of such rules for moving the children of Israel from an itinerant rabble to a nation. Not that any of this is the point, as far as Calasso is concerned. For him, it's the vengeful, bloodthirsty Yahweh and the Jews as his instruments who are the focus; so, we're told, Noah's curse on Ham is 'the gong that set the history of the Jews in motion' (p318), rather than the massive shift from such tribal canons of retribution to systems of law and morality that are the engines of Jewish history.
I was similarly frustrated with his discussion of the blood sacrifice in the Temple; once again, he had the opportunity to emphasise the importance of the proscription against consuming blood, the opposite of so much anti-Semitic myth-making, but he barely mentions the point in his haste to link the Temple sacrifice to the crucifixion. He refers to 'a new and deeply disturbing way of applying the principle of substitution' (p211) instead of recognising what a deeply civilising approach this was by comparison with the human sacrifices taking place elsewhere.
In fact there is, throughout, a tendency to focus on the undoubtedly bloodthirsty aspects of the Bible without balancing this with a recognition of the texts' emphasis on establishing systems of law and morality, on forgiveness and compassion instead of retribution and vengeance etc, as if these are all confined to the New Testament instead of the old.
June 19, 2022
Roberto Calasso’s legacy as a thinker, writer and publisher has yet to be truly reckoned with in our times. After his passing in July 2021 at the age of 80, numerous posthumous translations of his later works are beginning to appear in English.
The Book of All Books (FSG, 2021) is the tenth entry in a gripping, sprawling, untitled series of tomes exploring connections between mythology, literature and the modern world. The series began in 1983 with the publication of The Ruin of Kasch, which creates a timewarp between an archaic African folktale and the French Revolution. Subsequent volumes examine everything from the Vedas and Greek Mythology to Baudelaire and Kafka; and Calasso now turns his attention upon the Hebrew Bible.
If you take the time to read the volumes of Calasso’s gigantic magnum opus [and no, they don’t need to be read in order -jump in where your interest lies!], you will discover certain important and recurring themes, actually obsessions, to which Calasso always returns. These include: that which is left unsaid/unwritten, erotic potency and intimate intensity, hidden connections and esoteric logics, echoes of mythic events which recur in world history, and most importantly, the central role of sacrifice. Such as when Yahweh came down after the flood to the roasting smell of Noah’s burnt offering, the first holocaust. The text centers around who offers what when, and how those offerings are received.
Read the rest of the review, with photos of the book, quotes, and additional recommended reading at my website:
https://asatkhora.com/2022/06/19/the-...
The Book of All Books (FSG, 2021) is the tenth entry in a gripping, sprawling, untitled series of tomes exploring connections between mythology, literature and the modern world. The series began in 1983 with the publication of The Ruin of Kasch, which creates a timewarp between an archaic African folktale and the French Revolution. Subsequent volumes examine everything from the Vedas and Greek Mythology to Baudelaire and Kafka; and Calasso now turns his attention upon the Hebrew Bible.
If you take the time to read the volumes of Calasso’s gigantic magnum opus [and no, they don’t need to be read in order -jump in where your interest lies!], you will discover certain important and recurring themes, actually obsessions, to which Calasso always returns. These include: that which is left unsaid/unwritten, erotic potency and intimate intensity, hidden connections and esoteric logics, echoes of mythic events which recur in world history, and most importantly, the central role of sacrifice. Such as when Yahweh came down after the flood to the roasting smell of Noah’s burnt offering, the first holocaust. The text centers around who offers what when, and how those offerings are received.
Read the rest of the review, with photos of the book, quotes, and additional recommended reading at my website:
https://asatkhora.com/2022/06/19/the-...
January 8, 2025
Este texto de Roberto Calasso nos habla del Antiguo Testamento y de muchos de los personajes que alli aparecen estableciendo relaciones con Dios o con otros hombres. Jueces, Reyes, Profetas, elegidos por Dios para poder transmitir un mensaje que en muchas ocasiones se muestra confuso y recoge las costumbres de pueblos cercanos al elegido, cuyos principales artífices ni siquiera eran de allí. Tradiciones que escapan a la lógica pero que tratan de dar sentido a lo que entendemos como sagrado, una palabra que comparte la raíz con sacrificio, de ello hablamo el también italiano Giorgio Agamben en su libro "Homo Sacer".
Sin duda es una lectura apasionante, con una gran profundidad temática donde se aprecian diferencias de comportamiento entre Adonai, Yahve o Dios. Ya decía Peter Sloterdijk que parece que el Dios del Nuevo Testamento y el del Antiguo no es el mismo sino que uno se ha impuesto al otro y ha cambiado todos los viejos planteamientos que tenía. Esa sucesión de nombres nos hace pensar de forma similar.
Sin duda es una lectura apasionante, con una gran profundidad temática donde se aprecian diferencias de comportamiento entre Adonai, Yahve o Dios. Ya decía Peter Sloterdijk que parece que el Dios del Nuevo Testamento y el del Antiguo no es el mismo sino que uno se ha impuesto al otro y ha cambiado todos los viejos planteamientos que tenía. Esa sucesión de nombres nos hace pensar de forma similar.
September 2, 2025
It kinda feels wrong to write a review after a first reading, as Calasso is just so incredibly deep and hard to grasp on initial try.
To "get" many of the parts of this book, a superb knowledge of the Old Testament is required, as well as an understanding of cultural and historical processes in and out of Canaan. There's also a suspicion on my part that the book play in some interesting narrative game, where it needs to be reshuffled to your own liking, as the parts are only loosely connected chronologically.
Anyway, this is a profound analysis of a myth, of THE myth, and a commentary on social structures that go on for thousands of years. Less of a history, very light on listing the sources, it may not overhaul your understanding of pretext to Christianity and Jewish tradition, but it will definitely open up a new, different kind of analytical voice whenever you stumble on anything related to it.
To "get" many of the parts of this book, a superb knowledge of the Old Testament is required, as well as an understanding of cultural and historical processes in and out of Canaan. There's also a suspicion on my part that the book play in some interesting narrative game, where it needs to be reshuffled to your own liking, as the parts are only loosely connected chronologically.
Anyway, this is a profound analysis of a myth, of THE myth, and a commentary on social structures that go on for thousands of years. Less of a history, very light on listing the sources, it may not overhaul your understanding of pretext to Christianity and Jewish tradition, but it will definitely open up a new, different kind of analytical voice whenever you stumble on anything related to it.
December 15, 2022
Perhaps because studied the Old Testament in some depth in seminary, with a sometimes emphasis on literary criticism, I wasn't that impressed by this book. It lacks insight. It just drifts along from one (sometimes) interesting observation about some story or text to another. Many of his observations have been made by other scholars. His perspective sometimes reminds me of Kenneth Burke's "Cult of the kill." He relies on some really old resources (ie von Rad--who is good, but there is so much more out there). Most frustrating is his penchant for mixing and matching Biblical details with those from several other sources--mostly rabbinic--without letting the reader know which is which. This had me going back to the Biblical story many times, wondering what I had forgotten! Usually, no much--but I wish he had done a better job of making notes for his readers.
April 15, 2025
I enjoyed this retelling of the Bible in nonchronological order, along with his cheeky observations and reflections, but I am not sure what I just read. He got me to see familiar stories in a new light, but I got a little lost when he spent so much time on Freud and Moses. I was intrigued by his question of why so many cultures gave up on sacrificing animals around the same time (since I had never thought about that before), and I think I see what he is getting at, how religions evolve and change along with us and how the Bible led us to who we are today, but I could not reproduce his argument very well. Still, as I said, I enjoyed the tour of the Bible, seeing things I had never seen before.
February 2, 2024
A long meditation on the Old Testament that helps ground its relations and bloodlines. Calasso pays special attention to the development of concepts of “election”, “sacrifice”, and “substitution” withn Judeo-Christian faith. Some of the conclusions drawn along the book are dangerous without being brave or well-founded. Nevertheless, Calasso manages to crack open centuries of religious tradition and present them to a laymen audience, but do not expect it to be didactic or a history of religions; at least basic knowledge of the Bible is necessary. Surely, the authors cited along the way do it better and with more solid arguments.
May 5, 2025
I picked this up happily after reading a review in The American Scholar, but it just didn't deliver for me. It's true that Calasso can land some gorgeous zingers. My favorite remains the one that got me go for the book: "the Bible has no rivals when it comes to the art of omission, of not saying what everyone would like to know." Yep, that's the book I grew up reading/studying 3-7 times a week.
I suspect that for someone looking for a way to approach the Bible for the first time, Calasso's treatment will be a delight. For myself, it was a bit more summary, although I did appreciate how he kept his narrative at the human, rather than divine, scale.
I suspect that for someone looking for a way to approach the Bible for the first time, Calasso's treatment will be a delight. For myself, it was a bit more summary, although I did appreciate how he kept his narrative at the human, rather than divine, scale.
December 30, 2025
¿Por qué la tradición judía no busca reconciliarlo todo?
¿Por qué Dios no aparece como consuelo, sino como conflicto?
El libro de todos los libros, de Roberto Calasso, no es una “explicación” de la Biblia: es una lectura que toma en serio su aspereza, su violencia, su extrañeza. Aquí Yavhé no es una metáfora amable, sino una presencia que irrumpe, exige, separa y pone a prueba.
Calasso lee la Biblia como lo que también es: una narración donde el mal no es abstracto, donde Egipto no es solo un lugar, sino una forma del mundo del que hay que salir… aunque nunca del todo.
Un libro para discutir, incomodar y volver a leer la tradición sin anestesia.
¿Por qué Dios no aparece como consuelo, sino como conflicto?
El libro de todos los libros, de Roberto Calasso, no es una “explicación” de la Biblia: es una lectura que toma en serio su aspereza, su violencia, su extrañeza. Aquí Yavhé no es una metáfora amable, sino una presencia que irrumpe, exige, separa y pone a prueba.
Calasso lee la Biblia como lo que también es: una narración donde el mal no es abstracto, donde Egipto no es solo un lugar, sino una forma del mundo del que hay que salir… aunque nunca del todo.
Un libro para discutir, incomodar y volver a leer la tradición sin anestesia.
December 29, 2021
Net als zijn eerdere boeken magistraal, maar moeilijk om er een review van te schrijven. Calasso ontleedt a.h.w. het Oude Testament. Vindt tegenstrijdigheden, soms zelfs fouten, en probeert het verhaal te duiden. Niet altijd even makkelijk. Hij deed al hetzelfde met de Griekse Mythologie en met de oude Hindoe boeken. Ook nu weer denk je na lezing: wat moet ik nog geloven? Ik heb weer eens een stukje nagelezen in de officiele versie van het Oude Testament, en ik vind het weer onleesbaar en ongelofelijk bloederig. Die conclusie trok Calasso ook wel.
February 15, 2024
This book started so well, had some really interesting insights & thought provoking questions, and then around the middle there was a chapter on Freud & some esoteric questions he had regarding Moses. This chapter was dense & hard to follow, and also hard to fathom why it was included at all. From that point on this book became a chore to read. 5 stars up until that point, and 2 stars from then on.
May 27, 2024
Fascinating exploration / retelling of the Old Testament / Torah that, despite never making this point explicitly (and probably not intending it) left me more convinced than ever that religion is barking bloody mad, and it's astonishing that people still buy into this stuff. Yahweh / Elohim was a schizophrenic maniac, his prophets largely similar, and it's hard to blame his followers for constantly being unfaithful and buggering off to worship other, less psychotic and insecure gods.
January 17, 2021
Rilettura colta e interessante del Vecchio Testamento, che contribuisce ad aumentare il mio (già enorme) scetticismo sulla veridicità e supposta autorevolezza della Bibbia. Mi riesce difficile capire come persone colte, sagge e dotate di pensiero razionale, possano anche solo pensare che le storie narrate nel Libro dei libri siano state dettate da un qualche Dio.
February 8, 2023
Ik vind dit een buitengewoon interessant boek. Het is een soort erudiete navertelling van delen uit de boeken des ouden testaments. Erudiet, omdat Calasso bij zijn beschouwingen commentaren uit de Talmoed en van klassieke schrijvers betrekt. Fascinerend voor wie is opgegroeid met de Heilige Schrift.
January 18, 2020
Calasso ha fallito relegando la Bibbia nella Storia (tant’è che la successione dei capitoli è cronologica).
Così i personaggi vengono appiattiti sull’ebraismo, laddove la Bibbia - specie nelle sue parti sapienziali - è un universo iniziatico.
Così i personaggi vengono appiattiti sull’ebraismo, laddove la Bibbia - specie nelle sue parti sapienziali - è un universo iniziatico.
September 7, 2022
At times brilliant, at times pseudo intellectual garbage, and at times very deep (not ashamed to admit that there were some parts I didn't understand). But all in all, an interesting book that gives food for thought regarding the Old Testament.
February 8, 2023
Most of the first half or more of the book is an interesting and colorful cliff notes summary of parts of the Old Testament. But the book goes off the rails with Freud, and the endless exegesis is mind numbing and tedious.
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