Necessary counterpoint
THE BIBLE:
A Biography
By Karen Armstrong
320 pp. Atlantic Monthly $21.95
Reviewed by Peter W. Webster
For many people the Bible is a dry, dusty tome filled with peculiar stories and a rigid morality. For others, the Bible is the literal word of God given to humans once, unchanging and unchangeable. Karen Armstrong presents the Bible as a living, changing collection of documents of such significance that they have molded, in many ways, Western culture and civilization.
She begins with the oral traditions of the early Hebrew tribes (ca. 1200 BCE). By 1000 BCE these twelve tribes had divided into two kingdoms, and their oral traditions had become recorded on two sets of scrolls. Over time, the scrolls of the two kingdoms were edited and consolidated into what was to be called the Torah, or the Law of Moses. The Torah would be housed in the Temple built in Jerusalem between 970 and 930 BCE. Other scrolls were added: the prophets (neviim) and the writings (kethuvim).
About the first century BCE Rome invaded and conquered Judah, and renamed it Palestine. This event gave rise to a number of apocalyptic movements, including the Essenes. In this context Armstrong introduces an itinerant preacher named Jesus whose message paralleled those of the other Jewish ascetics of the time. This Jesus was executed by the Romans, but his followers perpetuated his message and said that they had had “visions” of Jesus, who had been “resurrected” from the dead.
The first “Christians,” as they would be named by the Roman authorities over a century later, never saw themselves as outside the Jewish tradition, worshipping in the Temple until it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. The followers of the “resurrected” Jesus began to see him in a more cosmic light, naming him the “logos,” or eternal Word, and combed the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings for evidence of that Word. The rabbis of the time deplored this practice. The division of the communities began.
Armstrong then discusses the divergent ways the two communities read the scriptures. Between the destruction of the Temple, a cataclysmic event for both groups, and the leveling of Jerusalem in 135 CE, rabbis were smuggled out of Jerusalem and met in Havneh. Here some, contemplating on the Torah, reached mystical heights. The group as a whole decided the official contents of their scriptures. In addition, a new form of worship, without the Temple, was established.
The Christian community was concurrently developing its own scripture. Paul had written his letters between 20 and 30 years after the death of Jesus. The Gospels, written not for history or biography, but for proclamation of Jesus’ life death and resurrection, all date, except for Mark, after the destruction of the Temple, as do all of the non-Pauline letters and the Apocalypse, or Revelation of John. It is here that Armstrong’s bias becomes evident. She writes “The gospels are hateful,” and in the next sentence qualifies that she means toward the Pharisees. Certainly, as she points out, the language used to describe Pharisees is negative and polemical. But perhaps this is not evidence of hate, but of “identity” formation—the proto-Christian community felt itself being pushed out of the group that defined its founder.
With the contents of the Jewish and Christian Bibles established, Armstrong then, in parallel, examines the writings of leaders of both traditions over the next sixteen centuries. Important developments in the sixteenth century—Martin Luther’s translation of the Hebrew Scriptures combined with Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press—put the Bible into the hands of a great many people in a language they could understand. In Eastern Europe at roughly the same time, a biblically based mystical sect, the Hasidim, inspired by Rabbi Baal Shem Tov, came into existence. All of these, according to Armstrong, brought revolutionary changes in the reading and understanding of scripture.
By far the most profound changes came with the industrial and scientific revolutions of the modern era. The concreteness of description of the material, the “matter” of the universe, has had two consequences. One has been to reject the Bible as myth, totally unrelated to the human circumstance. The other has been to treat the Bible in that same material way, claiming that every word is to be taken literally. While not specifically addressing the consequences of scientific realism, Armstrong warns of the dangers of “biblical literalism.”
I once read that a professor of religion at a Jesuit university was asked by a student, “Is any of this Bible stuff true?” The professor answered, “Oh yes. It’s all true. And some of it really happened.” This points out a distinction that needs to be reclaimed. In fact, Armstrong’s book makes this case.
“God wrote it, I believe it, that settles it,” is a common sentiment among evangelical Christians, and perhaps many others. For them the Bible is rigid, inerrant, and not to be questioned. This is an assumption common not only to evangelicals, but also to those who have rejected religion and scripture. The conflation of reality and truth is most likely the result of a world view that interprets all things, including ideas, as measurable, material objects. In a sense, the truth is in the object. The early Rabbis, the Church Fathers, Kabbalists, the Reformers, the Hasidim, and even the early American Puritans probably would have found this idea shocking
Take, for example, Genesis 1, which some would insist should be taught in public schools as an alternative to evolution. For nearly 2,400 years it has been understood as being about God, who had developed from the only deity of a small society to Yahweh, the supreme and only God of the universe, who could bring the cosmos into being by merely saying a few words. Reading the Bible this way is Armstrong’s intention. Today many readers get lost in the details of the account and miss the truth of the story.
Armstrong’s book is an extremely useful resource for those who want to know more about the Bible. This is not an “easy” read. Her scholarship is impressive. There are places, however, where so much material is packed into so few pages that getting lost is almost inevitable. Above all, this book presents a much needed counterpoint to current assumptions about the Bible, and deepens an appreciation of a book which has greatly influenced Western culture.
Peter Webster, though born in Canada, has spent most of his life in the Boston area. He received a B.A. from Lawrence University in Appleton, WI, and an M. Div. from Harvard Divinity School. Ordained as a Unitarian Univeralist minister, he has served congregations in Wilton, NH, Woburn MA, and Wilmington, NC. He currently resides in Jamaica Plain, MA.
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