Gott. Eine Biographie

God in Three Classic Scriptures

by Jack Miles, Martin Pfeiffer (Translator)

Im Alten Testament ist Gott die Hauptfigur, unwandelbar und ewig, das meinen wir zu wissen. Doch Jack Miles beweist, dass sich in diesem großen literarischen Kunstwerk der Menschheit der Charakter Gottes ständig wandelt. Wann immer wir ihm begegnen, von der Genesis bis zum Buch Hiob, zeigt er ein anderes Gesicht: als Schöpfer, Zerstörer, Freund der Familie, Befreier, Henker, Feind, Zuschauer, Vater, Liebender oder Frau. Eine grandiose Idee faszinierend dargestellt: Gott als Romanheld, das Alte Testament als Geschichte seines Lebens. Am Ende ein trauriger Befund: Hiob, der von Gott Geschlagene, bringt den Herrn zum Schweigen. Die Frage nach der Gerechtigkeit ist nicht beantwortet.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Biography, History, Theology, Philosophy, Spirituality

Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Jack Miles (b. 1942) is an American author and winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the MacArthur Fellowship. His work on religion, politics, and culture has appeared in numerous national publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times.

-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was excited about the idea that this was going to be a book analyzing the God of the Old Testament/Hebrew Tanakh as a literary character, which is exactly what the author, Jack Miles, promised he was going to give me. It didn't turn out that way, however, and even though I enjoyed learning a lot about the Old Testament, its historical context, its major figures, and the many deities who were amalgamated over time to become God, I can't help being very disappointed that Miles never really achieved his goal and that his editors let him publish a book where a thesis very clearly and explicitly articulated is never properly met. The reason I say this is because Miles never ceases defining God as a split personality. Of course there is plenty of historical proof that Elohim and Yahweh, etc. were initially separate deities, which goes a long way toward explaining why God can sometimes command two opposite things at once or repent his actions immediately after he has performed them, but if one really tries to think of God as a character, which is what Miles says he is setting out to do, I don't understand how it can be acceptable to say that his contradictions merely prove that he has more than one personality. If Hamlet or Captain Ahab were reduced by a literary critic to split personalities, people would immediately be annoyed that that critic was being lazy and unperceptive. The best characters (and many of the most intriguing real people -- look at any U.S. president) are often defined by their contradictions, because big, interesting personalities are usually inscrutably complex personalities. If I felt that Miles had treated God as that kind of character instead of continually reminding his readers that God is referred to by two different names in thus-and-such passage in the original Hebrew, I wouldn't feel like he totally failed to accomplish his supposed goal. To the very end of the book, he doesn't treat God the same way a critic would treat Ahab or Hamlet, but keeps defining him as a "fusion character". His final chapter even has a section called "Imagining the One God as Many". He just seems to miss the fact that God's unpredictability and inconsistency of character are exactly what make God such a great literary figure (singular).

The book was incredibly well researched and very clearly and carefully written, but I just can't escape feeling like Jack Miles failed to do what he set out to do and then published the book pretending to himself that he had. I wish somebody else would write the book that was promised.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing. It really opened my eyes. It's written by a former Jesuit named Jack Miles. Who is brilliant. This was given to me by a friend late in high school, while we were both struggling with our Catholic backgrounds. It deals with God as a literary character, and what his choices would mean if the Old Testament were analyzed simply from the perspective of literary criticism. I think it's fascinating and erudite. It is guaranteed to give you a few more questions about religion than you had before starting it. Everything is seen in a different light.

I would recommend having some basic religious education in the Judeo-Christian form, otherwise a lot of this is not going to make sense. But I would absolutely and completely recommend this to both Christians and Jews alike, or anyone who's had some measure of bible study. To say it is worth the read is obviously underestimating it.

[John Martindale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here we have an unique perspective of someone who doesn't appear to be a man of faith, within the book Miles considers God purely as a literary character that evolves in the unfolding of the canon as ordered in the Tanakh. If Miles is even close to correct in his reading of the Hebrew bible, the God that Jews and Christians worship has very little in common with the extremely ambiguous, amoral and multi-personalitied deity that he thinks the ancient writers conveyed. Towards the end of the book, Miles briefly retold the story of the Tanakh as it might be told if the Hebrews were polytheist, which would make it where the different personalities, motivations, intentions and moral tendencies would be found in different homogeneous gods, I found this part to interesting. Miles writes how since the Hebrews, believed in one God, the many different portraits are conglomerated into one, resulting in a very ambiguous being, one who is occasionally good and while at other times evil; a very unstable God with a divide self. Miles also details the progression of a God that seems to have no back story, or identity outside of man who he made in his own image. Within the story God acts, kills, kills some more, promises, reneges, kills some more, regrets, recalculates, readjust, viciously retaliates, only to eventually begin to fade, after being shown to be unjust be Job. Towards the close of the Tanakh, God comes comes reclusive, and inconsequential as the divine tragedy comes to a close.
I thought some of Miles interpretations seemed tenuous at best, occasionally I felt he suppressed some evidence, and he definitely gave certain passages a very negative spin. Though I think Mile's goes too far in his very uncharitable interpretation of the God portrayed in the Hebrew Scriptures, I still think he does bring to light some things that are actually there, things which the majority of Christians can't see, because the presupposition of the love and justice of God, means one automatically give the Old Testament a positive wholesome spin.

[Szplug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Miles won the Pulitzer for this absorbing study of the life of the Biblical God, beginning with the opening chapter of Genesis and taking us through the entirety of the Old Testament in the Jewish ordering of the books from the Torah. Jehovah makes for a stirring and multifaceted subject - an omniscient and omnipotent deity that was assembled from the personalities and powers of a variety of ancient pagan pantheons, running the gamut from demiurge to demon; a terrifying and vengeful master, breaking his creations and his promises; maturing to a remorseful and avenging spirit, ragged from love and unyielding in justice; and then apparently abandoning his children to exile and slavery, only to be discovered once more - remote but present, restless but steadfast - when his far-flung flock regathered in the Chosen Land.

Miles provides a remarkable exegesis, bringing erudition and analysis to this fascinating portrait of a singular entity who proved to be remarkably differentiated and inconsistent throughout his sorrow-filled paternity - imparting an eminently human element to his earthly involvement, the Almighty as a tyronic parent who experiences all the vicissitudes and difficulties of an evolving responsibility, adapting his divine mediations as his children mature within time - and yet emerged at the end with the sagacity, capacity, and audacity to resolve the crisis in his being through a human form: Jesus Christ, the subject of Miles equally excellent follow-up Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God.

[George Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is nothing I can write that can reach the level of scholarship, thought, writing, originality, and sheer mental discipline of this work. The author has taken the Hebrew Bible not as a religious work, but rather as a literary work. He then analyzes the character "God" in the same way he would analyze the character Prospero in Shakespeare's "The Tempest". He is not interested in theological questions, nor is he interested in proving religious interpretations. He is only interested in God, what he says, does, and even feels. When he refers to actual history and the formation of the Bible, he does so in order to explain what concepts, words, and comparisons meant to the Jews at the likely point in time when a particular book of the Bible is thought to have been written. It is a truly awesome accomplishment. "God: A Biography." should be read carefully and analyzed thoughtfully by all capable of setting aside their prejudices and preconceived notions. This book offers great rewards to all - regardless of their religious convictions.

[سپید · Rating 5 out of 5]

زیبا، دقیق و هول‌آور. جک مایلز فلسفهٔ قاره‌ای را کنار می‌گذارد و با نگاهی تحلیلی به‌سراغ یهوه می‌رود، این اصیل‌ترین و کلاسیک‌ترین کارکتر تمام اعصار ادبیات که از فرط هول‌آوری هرگونه نزدیکی به خودش را در دم تقبیح می‌کند. از نقش او در سرنوشت آدم و ابراهیم تا سکوتش در برابر مصائب ایوب. یهوه این‌ بار نه موجودی مقدس و مرموز که خدایی جایزالخطاست، لحظه‌ای الوهیم پیشمان است، لحظه‌ای ماری اغواگر، لحظه‌ای خدای شخصی ابراهیم است و لحظه‌ای یهوه که فرمان می‌دهد و کن فیکون می‌شود.
در کتاب مایلز، یهوه به‌تمامی شخصیت داستانی‌ست که خودش هم از حرکت بعدیش خبر ندارد، انگار اسیر میل ا‌ست، میلی زمینی که از هر لحظه از خلق انسان و زمین پشیمانش می‌کند، میلی ویرانگر که منجر به پشیمانی می‌شود و از قلب این پشیمانی چهره‌های دیگری از او متولد می‌شوند و هرلحظه کار را برایش پیچیده‌تر می‌کنند.
پ.ن: این کتاب را در دوران جنگ داورده‌روزه خواندم، زمانی که الوهیم با الله می‌جنگید، الله شاید صورتک دیگری از این کارکتر باشد…

[Ahad said · Rating 1 out of 5]

اقترح لي أبي قراءة الكتاب مع تحذير انه لم ينهِ قراءته خوفًا من الغرق في الافكار ، انه كتاب يبدو في بدايته مرعب و مليئ بالمغالطات التي ترعبك و لكن حين تكمل القراءة تستنتج انه كتاب مسيحي بحت يشرح فيه الكاتب عن الاله كشخصية أدبية، عنوان الكتاب يحمل غلط واضح حث كان من المفترض ان يكون العنوان سيرة الإله بدلا من الله.
لم انهِ قرائته لانني جاهلة في الجانب المسيحي، و ارتأيي ان احمل جهدي في البحث و القراءة في الجانب الاسلامي، التقوية الايمانية الثقافية ازكى من البحث و التفتيش في ديانات أخرى.

[KC · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read bits for
Intriguing information, but the author's prose is particularly dry and repetitive at times which makes the book hard to get to at times.
Otherwise, the analysis of God as a literary character is an analysis not often considered by individuals. Thus, Jack Miles' insights are unique and interesting to think about and may help us understand the motivations and character progression of God within the Old Testament/Tanakh.

[Lukas Sotola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant piece of literary criticism, friendly to the believer and the nonreligious alike.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

a six-months-belated, incomplete review, in four parts.

1). so, my favorite video game of all time is pillars of eternity. I think it’s pretty neat. there are lots of things I love about it, but one of its most interesting themes, in my opinion, is the way the narrative handles its theology.

(I am about to spoil pillars of eternity here btw, assuming that most people don’t care, but it really is a wonderful game and you should play it if it appeals to you.)

you go through this whole story, right, the setup to which involves a lot of “gods messing around in mortal affairs,” and towards the latter half of the game–and in the dlc–you even get to converse with some of the gods personally. most of them are at best petty, at worst wholly immature. there’s this sense of frustration, yeah, when you finally have the opportunity to talk to them, after all this time dealing with the consequences of their actions, and the only thing you can get out of them (despite the richly varied dialogue tree) is a sense of self-righteous obfuscation. and then–

and then!

right at the end of the game, just before the climax, you discover something: there are no gods. not really. millenia ago, a technologically advanced civilization, tired of existential uncertainty and religious warfare, went searching for the true gods, to finally bring peace and coherence to their world. instead, what they found, devastatingly, is that no gods exist; the universe is existentially a vacuum, with no purpose or meaning or ultimate authority in sight. faced with this, these ancient people decided that, if such a truth became known, mankind would no longer be able or willing to live. so they took it upon themselves to use their technology and become “the gods”—read, very powerful and godlike beings—and then they brutally erased every trace of what they had done, so that future generations would believe their divinity to be authentic and immutable, the way they themselves would have wanted the gods to be.

when you finally realize this in the game, it’s not only a powerful moment emotionally, but it just makes so much sense. because by this point, you’ve come to understand that the gods are fundamentally—well, if not human, then very imperfect beings with very human flaws, which are magnified by the unimaginable power and temporal perspective they bear. because here’s the thing, right: when a human society is trying to imagine or create a god, when they're trying to design divinity, the only materials they have to work with are fundamentally human stuff. anything beyond humanity, beyond mortality, is intrinsically beyond the power of mortal human beings to conceive.

okay. that was introduction #1. scratch that for now. let’s move on to introduction #2.

2). you know that idea that a lot of poetry is about defamiliarization?

I know the bible. I went to catholic school for ten years. I live in america, in a red state (I know, f’s in the chat. I also accept formal condolences and hallmark sympathy cards). I’ve been stuck in a quasi-religious existential crisis since I was about fourteen, in the latter half of the catholic school years, when I realized that I wasn’t actually religious but I also realized that I kind of wanted to be. I have only “not being able to afford college in america” to thank for not having gone to school for biblical exegesis. so, like, to reiterate this–I know the bible, if not professionally, then pretty well, yeah?

and yet, somehow, god: a biography, by jack miles, still managed to defamiliarize the text for me, to such a degree that I felt almost as though I had never really, truly, read it before. in the iconic, immortal (and rightfully memed) words of anne rice: it’s interrogating the text from (what might initially seem) the wrong perspective.

it’s like this: a few years ago, I visited the ruins of pompeii, and from the crumbling town square, in the flatly suffocating heat, you could see the menacing, lopsided slope of mount vesuvius, like an animal crouching in the distance, rationally dangerous, but presently asleep. later that same afternoon–exhausted, heat-sick, probably dehydrated, and definitely not wearing the right kind of shoes–I hiked to the top of mount vesuvius itself, and what strikes me now is that, from the caldera peak, my gaze wasn’t drawn to the ruins of pompeii at all. instead, what captured my eye was the bay of naples, the tranquil blue of the glimmering waters, the winking glass and metal of the modern buildings below, and the yellow flowers which grew up and down the mountainside in between.

pause. record scratch. let's start again.

3). Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles (neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or the absorption of energy. This difference in mass arises due to the difference in nuclear binding energy between the nuclei before and after the reaction. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers active or main sequence stars and other high-magnitude stars, where large amounts of energy are released.

is it appropriate, to parallel this with the kind of societal, cultural, and spiritual big bang that occurs (or once did) when disparate, conflicting elements of “god” are combined to form one shifting, inconsistent, unprecedented being? one erratic, unpredictable, incongruent mass, chemically unstable, and yet compelling, dynamic, moving, and in some strange way, comprehensible? not rational, but intelligible? an idea too complex to imagine, but not too convoluted to see?

4). I think that this book might be unreviewable, for the simple reason that–demonstrably–I could write a thousand different reviews of it, from a thousand different angles, and each one would only suffice to cover a portion of the whole, at least for me. I’ve started to write about this book so many times, and every time I write something different, but it still never feels right, you know? like, nothing I can come up with would encompass the scope of miles’s study here, and the richness it had and still carries for me. I think it’s great, and strange, and almost endlessly fascinating, sure, but what does that really even mean? if you have an interest in biblical exegesis, you should definitely read this, but it’s also wonderful as a purely literary critique. it’s food for thought about both our corporeal and our spiritual history. it’s probably, in a way, equally validating for both an atheist and a believer, and for anyone in between. it’s touching, and sobering. maybe most of all–it’s fascinating. and, like all great works which re-center the perspective from which we interpret the world, like the first aerial shot of a vast, sprawling city–it’s invaluable, and certainly unique.

[Zach Waldis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book with which I thoroughly disagreed, and thoroughly enjoyed. On the one hand, Miles is a vivid interpreter and helps you to really appreciate the Old Testament (or Tanakh, as he rather forcefully presents with his in my opinion forced narrative of an active beginning God and a closing God who "loses interest") as literature, compelling and enthralling literature. On the other hand, he pushes his thesis (narrative?) of "God in tension" to the breaking point. He finds the tension within Yahweh to be irreducible; he seems to have little favor for the idea that "God is one" (presented in the book as the view of the Dtr). For my part, certainly there is a tension in the character of the OT God, but it is not as irreducible as Miles says it is. For example, in the closing Miles blithely states that "....but it may also be taken as a statement about the initial untransparency of God to himself. He wants an image because he needs an image" (402). I found myself saying "Really? The text just doesn't say that!"

To sum up perhaps the major difference between myself and Miles is that I am a Christian interpreter. The literary drama of the First Testament finds its climax in Jesus Christ, not "God losing interest". Perhaps his biography is closer to the raw "tragedy" of a hopelessly deluded God, but I am one who thinks that the Biblical story (and indeed life itself) goes "Beyond Tragedy". From a literary standpoint, though, tragedy is quite the cathartic experience.

[Judith Bienvenu · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, this is a long book, and deep reading.
The author proceeds through every book in the Jewish bible (the Tanach). It has a lot more books in it than the Christian Old Testament, and does not include the New Testament.

What I found fascinating is that he basically rips up "God". The author lays out arguments that God is not omnipotent, not all powerful, not all loving, and is in fact a confusing mess of different personalities. And then ends the book saying how terrific the Tanach is.

I came to a very different conclusion. From his own arguments, I see the God of those books as a completely human construction. God gradually plays less and less a role in the stories until he's not there at all. Yes, I am an atheist. I feel that much of the worlds problems come from believing in this religion or that one -- that if "God is on my side" then he's not on yours, and that makes you less than me -- less important, less valuable, less "right", and okay for me to ignore, denigrate or kill.

So, it's a fascinating book. Long, hard to get through (I had started it several years ago and failed to finish it, but I finished it this time).

I think you may get out of it what you expect to get out of it.

I realize my views may offend some. It's not my objective to offend, but to make folks think.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was loaned this by a nominally Catholic friend who is attracted to offbeat books. Though an autobiography of the first person of the trinity, the creater of heaven and earth, is certainly unusual, this one made the mainstream, winning a Pulitzer for biography. Normally, I wouldn't have touched the thing, but this friend's recommendations have weight.

As it was, I found the deity's life story less interesting than any number of biographies I've read of human beings. What interest the book held was in seeing how the author handled the various gods of the Hebrew canon, combining disparate traditions into a single picture--which is, after all, what believing, conservative theologians do in any case. The job was done intelligently, but, for me, uncompellingly. Not being a Jew or a Christian, I have no motive to reconcile such irreconcilables.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Examines God as a character, the protagonist of the Tanakh/Old Testament. God doesn't always come out great—he's whiny and capricious, and doesn't always know what's doing. Turning God into a protagonist makes the inconsistencies of the text into a dramatically conflicted character. The book doesn't answer the tensions, ambiguities, and inconsistencies it highlights, but offers a reading of them; probes them rather than resolves them.

[Faheem · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here's my take: God: A Biography

'Jack Miles has set himself the somewhat controversial task of charting the ‘development’ of God in the Hebrew Bible, capturing His life in it from beginning to end. Laying no claim to any theological or historical truth, and interested only how it works as a piece of writing the ‘Biography of God’ will leave mesmerised all those who read it.

...'

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 5 out of 5]

Margaret Atwood recommended this book during an interview with Tyler Cowen, and I think it’s one of the most interesting things I’ve read in a year.

Miles guides us through the Tanakh from start to finish, interpreting what we can know about God the literary character – his motivations, his realizations, his changing relationship with his creations – based what he does and how and to whom he speaks.

Perhaps the results are familiar to someone versed in these books, but they were illuminating to me, as I’ve never read these books and only had a pedestrian understanding of the character.

Miles’s early passages about an inscrutable, ironic, and likely bluffing Abraham are fascinating, especially in light of other readers like Kierkegaard’s Fear and Suffering. Another early example of this contrarian reading is God’s interaction with Cain:

… it is crucial to note that the condemnation does not arise from Cain’s having broken any commandment of the Lord. The Lord has given no command not to kill. After the murder, when he says to Cain, “Hark, your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground!” it is as if he has at that moment discovered that murder merits condemnation. There is a groping and tentative quality on both sides of this relationship. The metaphor – “your brother’s blood cries out to Me” – may bespeak agitation rather than moral condemnation. Something is wrong, but does the Lord yet quite know what it is? The Lord acts and then infers his own intention from what he has done.

As he is going through the entire Tanakh, there are simply too many great passages to detail here, but Miles gives a serviceable summary about halfway through:

After each of his major actions, he discovers that he has not done quite what he thought he was doing, or has done something he never intended to do. He did not realize when he told mankind to “be fertile and increase” that he was creating an image of himself that was also a rival creator. He did not realize when he destroyed his rival that he would regret the destruction of his image. He did not realize that his covenant with Abraham, the reconciliation of such contrary urges within his own character, would require him, precisely because he had so effectively made Abraham into a great nation, to go to war with Egypt. He did not realize when he went to war with Egypt that his victory would leave him with an entire people on his hands and would require him to become a lawgiver for them and conquer a land for them to live in. He did not realize when he gave them the law that where there is law, there can be transgression, and that, therefore, he himself had turned in implicitly unbreakable covenant into an explicitly breakable one. He did not realize when he began to withdraw from his alliance with Israel, after Israel’s first, minor infidelities, that the aftermath would be the rise of a king, David, whose charisma would draw the Lord almost despite himself into a quasi-parental relationship with his semi-abandoned ally. He did not realize when his erstwhile ally deserted him wholesale and he made Assyria and Babylonia the tools of his vengeance that the was creating a new international role for himself. He did not realize that once they had inflicted his punishment for him, his feelings… would also be those of a grieving husband for a battered wife…The inference that one might make looking at [Genesis through the Twelve Minor Prophets] from the outside is that God is only very imperfectly self-conscious, and very slightly in control of the consequences of his words and actions. Even from inside that history, his own inferences come one at a time, often gropingly after the fact

As Miles puts it near the end of his biography: “The Lord God, at the start of the Tanakh, is a being in whom self-ignorance is joined to immense power… key among the things he does not yet know is that his ignorance of himself has something to do with his will to create.” After God’s long self-discovery comes his climactic fall during the Book of Job. This is where Miles is at his most engaging. Miles reads Job’s challenges to God, God’s blustery responses, and Job’s resulting resigned silence as a total inversion of the traditional interpretation of the text, and one far closer to
Archibald MacLeish’s J.B. than I originally suspected.

The half dozen examples that Miles provides to support his reading of Job are too long to cover exhaustively here. To choose probably the most important one, Miles attacks head-on Job 42:6, which most people cite as Job’s recantation that justifies the entire common interpretation. In the original Hebrew, this verse is actually very ambiguous. Miles translates Job 42:1-6 as “Then Job answered the Lord: “You know you can do anything; nothing can stop you. You ask ‘who is this ignorant muddler?’ Well I have said more than I knew, wonders quite beyond me. ‘You listen and I’ll talk’ you say, ‘I’ll question you and you’ll tell me.’ Word of you had reached my ears, but now that my eyes have seen you, I shudder with sorrow for mortal clay.”

What conclusion does Miles hammer us with?

Morally, Job has held out until the very end, treating the Lord’s speeches from the Whirlwind as his last trial. And thus, to return to the original puzzle, when the Lord praises Job at the end of the book, he is praising both Job’s earlier stubbornness with his human interlocutors and his final, utterly consistent, stiff-necked recalcitrance before the Lord himself. Job has won, the Lord has lost.

This moment ultimately neuters God, in a fascinating show of what Nietzsche would disdain as the winning out of Job’s slave morality, but which most people would simply see as Job’s dignity.

A view common to nearly all commentators on the Book of Job is that, one way or another, the Lord has reduced Job to virtual silence. Unnoticed is the fact that from the end of the Book of Job to the end of the Tanakh, God never speaks again. His speech from the whirlwind is in effect his last will and testament. Job has reduced the Lord to silence

After Job, God enters a steady decline. My Miles’s account, this decline terminates in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, where God ceases to be an active character for good, transitioning from a “demonstrated” reality to an “attributed” reality much more in line with how God is treated today. The preceding books, in particular Ester and Daniel, show a God steadily giving the plot’s impetus to other characters (e.g. the very secular Ecclesiastes 9:11-12). In doing so, Miles identifies a character arc for God that is “more poignantly real” than most literary characters.

Nothing that literature contrives, after all, is so artificial as its endings. Real lives never end with artistic finality. Either they are rudely interrupted as Ecclesiastes says, or they end in a slow fade that has none of the rounded perfection of a well-wrought last page. Real lives end, we might say, just as God’s life ends: a supreme effort falls slightly short (the voice from the whirlwind), a long period opens in which one has progressively less to say, and the devotion of one’s friends is slowly overtaken by their silence.

Going back over my bookmarks, there’s just too much here to get down. This is one of those rare books that has fascinating ideas on every page. I’m absolutely reading it again, probably after I’ve bothered to read the original :-P

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are different ways of approaching the Bible and the picture of God it portrays. One is to see it as full and perfect revelation... ie the overall picture of God is perfect and complete all the way through (leaving it incumbent on believers to reconcile the apparent disparities).

Another is to see it as progressive - the work of humans seeking to understand the nature of God, sometimes misreading situations and implications but nonetheless slowly arriving at a clearer picture of the character and nature of God as the millennia roll by.

This book by journalist Jack Miles, however, performs another move, flipping over that second approach so that God is trying to work himself out - ie figuring out, from creation onward, as he goes along, what it's going to entail to be the God of humankind and specifically Israel. Working out what it might mean to be God to something that he has made in his own image. That is, the book approaches God as a literary character undergoing character development brought about by the circumstances in which he finds himself in the story of which he is a part.

So, for example, because God promised land to Abraham's descendants he finds that he has to wrest that land from its current inhabitants, meaning he has to become a conqueror. He wasn't a conqueror before, he becomes one contingent on the (perhaps unexpected) necessity of the situation. This is an evolving God, responding to situations, altering course, and becoming who he is through his interrelating with humanity, various actions and circumstances.

(This approach seems vaguely similar to 'process theology'... God in process. Keith Ward in 'God and the Philosophers' links process philosophy to Hegel, and of Hegel he says, "We might even say that, for Hegel, Spirit is incomplete and unknown to itself until it does realise itself in an objective universe.")

The net effect is a very human God, tumultuous and somewhat unstable (at least until he settles into his groove around Deuteronomy), but with his instabilities and developments enacted (or acted out) with divine omnipotence.

Well anyway, I confess that the approach of the book feels starkly irreverent (and wrong) to a person schooled from day dot, first of all to see the Bible as a sacred text and its main subject as someone beyond treatment as merely a literary character. And then to see the deity I've come to worship as being portrayed with a kind of strangely off-kilter but concerted bias as full of foibles... well, a number of 'bullshits', 'bollockses' and 'what a load of nonsenses' were uttered in the early stages of my reading. (Disclosure: I tend towards the second of the two approaches to the Bible that I mentioned above, but the first was my original home base.)

Apart from my natural discomfort at the book's critique of a closely held picture and understanding, too often I felt the author was performing a skewed reading (as all readings are) of the character and then presenting it in ways that misleadingly verged on definitive. The author works hard to mitigate any perceived positivity in God's character (even after the shift of Isaiah 40, when God appears as loving 'for the first time' - "God has been surprised into a new sense of himself " p245).

Though it's vitally important work to wrestle with the nature of God, to be unsettled by its portrayal, this book is largely pessimistic and at times unnecessarily so. Maybe even purposefully contrary to established Jewish and Christian understandings (I guess for the sake of having something 'new' to say). It's also sometimes weirdly and sporadically psychoanalytical, in the Freudian vein. The reading experience wasn't helped by a somewhat dry writing style and passages that boringly reiterated biblical narratives with which I'm already over-familiar (that second complaint isn't entirely the author's fault).

By degrees, though, I relaxed a bit and allowed for the framework of the book (its main 'conceit', to use the literary term), let the book be what it is and allow the author to make his point. I was able to enjoy the journey a bit more and get a bit more out of it.

It's an impressive work in terms of scale. But sometimes I wondered if what I was reading wasn't a bit of a shambles. Even by the end, and taking the book on its own terms, I wasn't convinced that the project had been successful (Pulitzer Prize notwithstanding).

The narrative of the book follows the structure of the Hebrew Bible (what Christianity calls the 'Old Testament'), which ends with what Miles calls 'the books of silence' (the 'writings') - ie God makes his final big utterance in Job, and then more or less falls silent in such books as Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther. This allows Miles to chart the progression of the character of God from 'young' creator, through proactive intervener and speaker, to silent and distant ancient of days. Within that he has such headings as Destroyer, Liberator, Lawgiver, Conqueror, Father, Holy One, Sleeper, Bystander, Recluse, Puzzle.

The ordering of the Christian Bible, viewed through the same framework, would suggest a different narrative and character arc. The Christian Bible places the books of prophecy at the end of the 'Old Testament', the direct speaking of God building up to the revelation / incarnation of the Word / God in and through Jesus Christ. That narrative does not end in silence but in word become flesh allowing for such headings as Incarnate, Forgiver, Abba, Redeemer, Fellow Sufferer, Re-creator and such. Thus Christianity calls for a Part Two of the biography and maybe even a Part Three in the future. (And I see Miles went on to have a crack at that Part Two as well... 'promisingly' called 'Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God'... I assume with the same determination to say other than the orthodox - but I judge without knowing for sure.)

The author sets up this book as a work of literary criticism, not theology. But on the back cover, a reviewer states that it is "the most original and readable contribution to theology to come along in, well, a month of Sundays". So can a book examine the character of God without becoming theology or at least being implicit theology? I don't think so. And actually - as a side observation - that tells us something about what theology is - a literary form.

It all - theology 'proper', this book, and indeed the Bible itself - is an interweaving, a discussion, about who or what God is - a literary project in search of elucidation of the great known unknown. And that's all fueled by a deep fascination, if not hunger.

Misgivings about the end product of their endeavours aside, may people continue to write about God. May God long be the topic of conversation.

[Moaz Mohamed · Rating 5 out of 5]

في التوراة ثمة شواهد كثيرة على تناقض صورة يهوه ، فهي صورة لإله لا يعرف الاعتدال في انفعالاته، ويسلم بأن الغضب والغيرة يأكلانه أكلاً، فقد جمع في نفسه الرحمة إلي الشدة، والقدرة الخلاقة إلي روح التخريب. فكان كل شيء ممكنا، وما كان لصفة من صفاته أن تقف عقبة في وجه الأخرى.
فالطريقة التي تعبر بها الطبيعة الالهية عن نفسها في التوراة تدل علي أن صفاتها الفردية ليست متصلة ببعضها

- بالرغم من غياب الأصالة في فكرة تقسسيم السيرة الإلهية إلي ما قبل سفر أيوب وما بعده ، فالكتاب يعد تطوير أدبي جذاب لنظرية التحليل النفسي حول سيكولوجية الإله اليهودي ، وهي الرؤية التي صاغها كارل يونغ في كتاب : ( الإله اليهودي : بحث في العلاقة بين الدين وعلم النفس . كارل يونغ )

تتضح لا أخلاقية “يهوه” في إطار افتقاده للحكمة التي تؤهله لمعرفة ذاته، ففي غياب الوعي بالذات يطغي الحياد الأخلاقي، ولم تكن تلك المرة الأولى التي يظهر فيها التناقض الداخلي ليهوه، فقد نقض العهد الذي اعطاه لداود من قبل. ولكي يظل في مزاج حسن كان يدعو شعبه ليمدحوه ويستعطفوه، فهو بحاجة دائمة ليبقي علي صلة بالإنسان لأنه يفتقد الصلة بذاته، وكلما كان اعتماده على الانسان يزداد ليشعر بوجوده، كان يزداد افتقاره للحكمة التي يتأمل بها ذاته.

“إن الشخصية التي تتكشف عن مواصفات كهذه، يمكنها إقناع نفسها أنها موجودة فقط عبر ارتباطها بهدف ما، هذه التبعية للهدف توجد عندما يكون الشخص مفتقرا للتأمل الداخلي”

لهذا يعتبر (يونغ) أن سفر أيوب هو العلامة المميزة علي طريق تطور الصورة الإلهية، فالفشل الذي حققه عند محاولة إفساد أيوب جعله يتساءل: إذا كان الإنسان على معرفة به، أفلم يكن من الأولى أن يعرف ذاته!

[Kathy Kattenburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is magnificent. Jack Miles sets himself the task of examining the Tanakh (the Jewish Bible) as a work of literature, and God as the central character in it. Everything about God's relationship with human beings begins with the fact of God creating man in His -- God's -- image. Because this is how God, the literary character, first arrives on the scene, from that point on, everything God is, does, and becomes is in relation to, or in response to, what His creation does. God develops in the context of His relationship to humanity. This idea, of God working through *us* -- through people -- is immensely appealing to me. And as the author writes about that relationship, it's deeply moving as well.

God: A Biography is scholarly and erudite. Jack Miles is incredibly learned, about everything from literary tropes to ancient Near Eastern languages. And yet, somehow, his book is a page-turner -- compelling and hard to put down.

Miles also provides unexpected moments of laugh-out-loud humor. Take this passage, for instance, about the arguing, complaining relationship the Jewish people have with God:

" 'You're killing me,' Moses complains to God, 'so why haven't you killed me?' Similarly, the Israelites: 'You're killing us, so why didn't you kill us?' And God: 'Keep up this talk, and I'll kill you.' "

How can you resist a God like this, or a biography about a God like this?

[RC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts very strong, meanders a bit, returns with some real insight around the Book of Job, but then tapers off. A quiet and contemplative book, which like the book it tracks, the Old Testament, has bursts of hyper-violence and action, followed by longeurs. (This might account for why I kept putting it down for months, then somewhat reluctantly/dutifully picking it back up.) I couldn’t shake the feeling that Miles’s project, a reading the God of the Old Testament as a “coherent” unitary character, was slightly misbegotten, given the wild inconsistencies built into that character—a clear composite of different deities from different places and times.

[EBTESAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

ممل وصعب ويبي هلبا صبر بس حبيته

[Paula W · Rating 4 out of 5]

God, written as a literary character. I have some ideas on how to review this. Bear with me for a few days.

[Randy Cauthen · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the multiple personalities of the Old Testament God. Miles reads the Bible as he would a novel or play, examining the motivations of the protagonist.

[Patrick Green · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this book is is misleading. It does not describe the history of God's existence from a historical perspective. It explains the concept from a literary analysis. God is the protagonist of the Bible from author Jack Miles' position, and I think he wrote his argument adequately in this Pulitzer Prize winning book that should not have been given this specific award because it is not a biography. It is literary criticism. Despite how dry and scholarly it can sometimes be, it's a good one though.

All potential readers need to be told upfront that this book is not for anyone who is beginner in Bible studies or textual criticism. Miles deliberates on his thesis on God as a multi-personality protagonist with astute precision, academic language, and immense citation of the Bible. If you are not prepared for this, "God: A Biography" is going to be a slough to get through. For those who possess at least a moderate understanding of the source material, this book is a savory analysis of the Bible's primary protagonist.

It is quite impressive how Miles was able to walk the fine between proselytizing and providing a largely secular understanding of the influential character that is God. This book being a literary analysis, Miles is able to give a subjective interpretation of the God character without invoking lackluster assumptions about what is truthful of the Bible. This book is not about truth. It's about meaning. From that perspective, this book is well-deserving of its praise.

Miles studies the God character book by book of the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Testament of the Bible. This is both a saving grace and its weakness. This permits Miles to give this book great organization and clarity, but it suffers from all the deficiencies that the Tanakh suffers from as a work of literature. To put it bluntly, half of the Tanakh is horrendously dull because there are significant portions that do not have much involvement from God. Therefore, there is not much to talk about, so the last third of this book is repetitious and uninteresting.

Jack Miles has my respect. He crafted a highly nuanced book, one that I think believers and non-believers can derive quite a lot from. Well, as long as you aren't a stick in the mud and value different looks at a subject as complex as religion. If you are prepared for this book's thickness and boring bits, this book offers a lot to its readers.

[Saraelizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

I get what this author is trying to do. He's writing about God as if he is the main character in a great work of literature: the Bible. He's analyzing his actions and discussing his role in the story as if we might study Hamlet. I get that.
The problem is that God is not a character in a story that begins and ends with the story. If all you're doing is analyzing God based on his interactions with humans in the Bible, you're missing most of what God is.
Because that's all Miles does, he gets God's character completely wrong.
Miles is trying to humanize God, like a character in a book, and it just doesn't work. I know Miles wasn't trying to portray the religious God, but how can that be left out when that's what God IS??

Here's an excerpt from the book:

"As for the concrete particulars of what God wants mankind to be, this he only discovers as he goes along. His manner is always supremely confident, but he does not announce or seem even to know all his plans in detail or in advance. Again, and again, God is displeased with man, but often enough it seems that he discovers only in and through his anger just what pleases him. To change the analogy slightly, he is like a director whose actors never seem to get it right and who is, as a result, often angry but who doesn't, himself, always know beforehand what getting it right will be."

This is not God at all. God is omniscient, else how could we (and the peoples in the Bible) have faith in him?

In contrast, here is a quote from Joseph Smith:

"Without the knowledge of all things, God would not be able to save any portion of his creatures; for it is by reason of the knowledge which he has of all things, from the beginning to the end, that enables him to give that understanding to his creatures by which they are made partakers of eternal life; and if it were not for the idea existing in the minds of men that God had all knowledge it would be impossible for them to exercise faith in him. [As quoted by Bruce R. McConkie in Mormon Doctrine (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966), p.264]

The humanization of God kills faith.
So I guess you might say this is just an interesting study of the Bible, then. But since Miles got the main "character" all wrong, it's not a very good study in my opinion.

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only a former Jesuit could have written this. Treating God as the protagonist in an epic that's "more" chronological than Christian Scripture is thought-provoking, if not earthshaking. Jack Miles looks as the different roles Scripture gives to God. It has the effect of remaking the divine in very mortal form. This God grows in understanding. This God can be bested. This God is conflicted: "A monotheism in which the divine is not just conceived but also imagined as one must have a different effect on its adherents than one in which the divine is conceived as one but imagined -- and portrayed in art, drama, and folklore -- as many. ... It must foster a way of thinking of the self as similarly composite and similarly alone." This book is not for fundamentalists; the reader has to be able to keep the premise foremost while reading it. I think it also helps to read the book as the first of a two-volume work, the second being Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, Miles' sequel.

[Amir Badreldeen · Rating 5 out of 5]

الكتاب مهم وممتع للمهتمين بدراسة العهد القديم، يتناول فيه الكاتب سيرة الله كشخصية روائية رئيسية لأحد أهم النصوص الأدبية في التاريخ، يحلل الكاتب أفعال الله وأقواله والدوافع خلفها ويستخرج المشاعر التي تحملها عباراته، كذلك يدرس تكوين شخصية الاله العبراني وتطورها منذ سفر التكوين وكيف اختلفت وتغيرت - مع مراعاة عدم الترتيب لأني نسيته عادي - من الاله الذي خلق ادم على صورته ثم الى اله الطوفان الذي ندم على خلقه الي اله شخصي لفرد من سلالة ادم ومنه الى اله محارب ثم مشرع وأخيراً الى اله لكل الأمم ، كذلك يبين الكاتب الجذور القديمة للاله العبري المستمدة من المعتقدات القديمة والواضح تاثيرها في شخصية يهوه المنقسمة المتناقضة في كثير من المواضع في أوامره وأفعاله. الترجمة جيدة جداً

[Mallory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall I found this book very interesting. The premise is to read the Hebrew testament, focusing on God as the character in a piece of literature. It was an interesting point of view, and also provided some insights into how the Jewish community arranges these books of the Bible. There were also some historical insights to put the Hebrew testament into context, and also provided, for me, an additional fresh perspective for reading the Old Testament in the Bible. There definitely some moments where I raised an eyebrow or rolled an eye when I felt he was taking the literary reading of the God-character to the extreme. (For example, trying to bring a little bit of Freud in to analyze God? Please, no.) However, that may simply reveal the bias I have of growing up thinking of God as...God and not a literary character.

[Stephie Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, it was a very good book. It managed to hold my interest all the way through. The premise is to tell the character development of god as a literary analysis of the TANAKH, the Hebrew Bible. The TANAKH has a different arrangement of the books than the Christian Old Testament. After the Deuteronomistic History comes the Prophets and then the rest of the books. It is a very interesting look at God as portrayed through time in the TANAKH. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Even though, Jack Miles is an ex-Jesuit and a Christian, he leaves out any discussion of whether any of the Bible is true. He provides a strictly literary viewpoint. Occasionally, he makes reference to historians and theologians, but only to emphasize a point. As an atheist I like this approach. My sensitivities regarding my atheism were not impinged upon.

[Judith · Rating 4 out of 5]

God: a Biography by Jack Miles offers a thorough literary approach to the Bible, through the life of its protagonist, God. Setting aside puzzles of historical veracity, and ignoring issues of religious interpretation, Miles examines the character as written, from Creator to the Ancient of Days. Character development requires an authoritative ordering of the books , and Miles shows how the sequence of the Hebrew scriptures, the Tanakh, as opposed to the Christian Old Testament, provides continuity in the story of the relationship between God and Israel. This secular scholarly work neither confirms nor denies any spiritual perspective, but illuminates the foundation of Christianity and Islam, as well as Judaism.