About Man and God and Law: The Spiritual Wisdom of Bob Dylan

by Stephen Daniel Arnoff

About Man and God and Law is the story of how Bob Dylan sparked a revolution of the spirit and why it matters today. Many of our assumptions about empathy, sensual pleasure, and the essence of work, community, country, race, and the divine have germinated in Bob Dylan’s need to know what’s blowing in the wind and how it feels. Tracing his work and vision through themes that have shaped religious and cultural history for millennia, Stephen Daniel Arnoff uncovers how Bob Dylan has re-enchanted ancient questions of meaning and purpose throughout popular culture, inspiring a pantheon of prophetic musicians along the way. This field guide to Dylan's spiritual wisdom aims to make good on the promise that if we look closely enough at his body of work—precisely at a moment when the world we thought we knew seems like uncharted territory—we can open up our eyes to see not only where we really are, but where we need to go.

258 pages, Paperback

Published May 3, 2022

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this entertaining exegesis, Arnoff presents Dylan as a maddening "prophet" of a "congregation" finding in American music the home and community 0nce provided by religion. Dylan is "framing a mandate for musical salvation that repurposes the ancient art of memory and a mapping of America as landscapes for holding faith." The argument is not that Dylan created a religion or sought that kind of position, but that his fearless if cynical views on American society struck a common place in so many people seeking a spiritual identity but found their traditional observances lacking. As any religion is built on the stools of Man and God and Law, Arnoff makes his case for each in separate sections, calling on song, story and scholarship. As "Man," Dylan is alternately prophet, reporter, and entertainer, but his own fierce commitment to living his life drives his vision and underlies the learnings presented in his songs. Dylan is not saying "look at me," or "join me," but "I see you." He writes what he sees, and remembers.

God, for Arnoff's Dylan, is the infinite, and each song stretches the "man" not to comprehension, but to feeling God's immanence. God is not being worshipped, but godliness is to be experienced as available to the open-hearted seeker. Law provides order, but Dylan is also the judge who interprets law to his own ends. "Not a letter she left, not a card or a note, she was gone with the man in the long black coat." This book got me thinking about the Grateful Dead a lot, who hold in my panoply a place similar to that Dylan occupies in Arnoff's. The Dead create a consistent world and invite you to inhabit it; Dylan pokes holes in the created world and moves on to observe the next. A good read.

[Wes F · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking forward very much to reading this book, which seemed to purport being a focus on the "spiritual wisdom" to be found in Dylan's music. Alas, I was quite disappointed after reading it and finding very little actual, specific, cogent insight into Dylan's spiritual wisdom. From what I can tell, it is written by modernistic Jewish author who doesn't appear to hold much faith/belief in his own religion's revealed Truth from Almighty God found in the Old Testament, let alone knowledge or belief in the New Testament's continued revelations of the God of the Universe. Lots of pretty vague talk about nature and human civilization and philosophies. Come on, Arnoff! How can you so carefully have evaded Dylan's clear spiritual wisdom expounded from "Slow Train Coming" to "Rough & Rowdy Ways?" Like from "I've Made Up My Mind to Give Myself to You" when Dylan says: "If I had the wings of a snow-white dove
I'd preach the gospel, the gospel of love
A love so real, a love so true
I've made up my mind to give myself to you." I strongly suggest you do a good study on what "the gospel of love" is, my friend. Why not meet the Messiah you've been waiting for, before you miss Him altogether?

[Justin Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I was expecting some song analysis or discussion of interesting spiritual themes in the lyrics of Bob Dylan. But I'm halfway through and I can't tell what the author is trying to accomplish - I keep thinking it's all preamble and he's finally going to start getting to the point in the next chapter.