The Book of God: A Response to the Bible
by
by
The Medium Is Not The Message
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” From its opening sentence in the book editorialised as Genesis, the Bible is flooded with ambiguity, especially in the original Hebrew.* What is it that God has done? Organised a pre-existing chaos or brought into existence the fundamental stuff of the world? And how was it done? Through a divine thought separate from divinity itself? By the utterance of pre-linguistic word? Or perhaps through a command given to nothing to become something?
That opening sentence and its successors all demand interpretation. And according to Josipovici, not to mention history, the Bible is likely unique in the plethora of interpretations that are possible - many highly interesting, provocative and instructive, but none definitive.
The Bible’s ambiguity is not incidental. Uncertainty and fecundity of meaning are its central characteristics. The Bible itself in both its Jewish and Christian versions is the product of numerous re-interpretations of itself by story-tellers, writers, editors, and redactors. It is in effect a reflection of religious thinking about itself, a self-referential and therefore self-contained entity whose unity can only be discerned within itself.
As Josipovici shows, the fragmentary additions, emendations, and substantial alterations to the sacred texts over time have resulted in a rather unexpected unified whole whose parts cannot be understood without an appreciation of this whole. Certainly the narrative subject of this whole is a story of Creation, the Fall into sin, and Redemption. But there is also an abiding meta-narrative of the unintelligibility of divine intention at any moment. The God of the Bible is nothing if not surprising in the apparent range and intensity of his emotions, his frequent contradictory actions, and his essential inscrutability.
This is the point, something the characters of the Bible couldn’t know about, neither the narrators, nor the prophets, perhaps not even Jesus. But the reader cannot but be aware that the God of the Bible is inherently unknowable. This is the message of the whole not its parts, although its parts contribute to the overall meaning. When asked his name by Moses, God answers with a non-answer: Being. Nowhere in the Bible is God described or reasons given for his attitudes which are often vengeful, erratic, and simply cruel. Such descriptive presumptions as are made are recorded as blasphemy. God is hidden, mysterious, beyond any rationale of existence or action. In short God is entirely outside of any language used to recount God, divine actions, or human imperatives implied by these actions. God’s word may be the cause of everything but no one except God is privy to the divine vocabulary or grammar.
In a sense, as most religious authorities are keen to insist upon, revelation of divinity stopped at some point in history - for Jews after the completion of the Writings, for Christians after the death of the Apostles. Revelation perhaps did end when the Bible itself could no longer be pinned down to a specific meaning. What follows then is a virtual infinity of interpretations reflecting the depth and scope of Biblical concerns. God and his revelations, unlike most ancient myth and the conceits of modern science, explain nothing. They prove all explanations inadequate and presumptuous.
In other words, the Bible provides a spiritual and cultural agenda. It is not a “how to” for a life of good but a challenge to identify the good and act accordingly. It is also a warning that the most important aspect of this challenge is the self-serving rationalisations which blind us to the good. We are trapped in our own self-interests and in the very language that we use to determine the good. The Bible’s enduring brilliance is its repetitive insistence that it should not be used for precisely these justifications. As the great 20th century theologian, Karl Barth, noted: God’s word is not Man’s word. And ultimately that is what the Bible is: Man’s word trying to reach beyond itself. When it is taken as more, it fails entirely.
* One of the many facts ignored by biblical literalists (as well as the casual reader) is the relative grammatical paucity of Hebrew. Tense for example is suggested by context, and often even then only incompletely. In addition, the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament contains only word roots - consonants without their accompanying vowels - which may have vastly disparate meanings depending on the vowels attached. Add to that the inherent difficulties (sometimes impossibilities) involved in any translation from one language to another and the silliness of literalists becomes obvious. Paradoxically, the Septuagint translation of the original Masoretic text is in Greek, arguably the most precise and grammatically nuanced language ever developed - perhaps making the translation appear far more definitive than it actually is.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” From its opening sentence in the book editorialised as Genesis, the Bible is flooded with ambiguity, especially in the original Hebrew.* What is it that God has done? Organised a pre-existing chaos or brought into existence the fundamental stuff of the world? And how was it done? Through a divine thought separate from divinity itself? By the utterance of pre-linguistic word? Or perhaps through a command given to nothing to become something?
That opening sentence and its successors all demand interpretation. And according to Josipovici, not to mention history, the Bible is likely unique in the plethora of interpretations that are possible - many highly interesting, provocative and instructive, but none definitive.
The Bible’s ambiguity is not incidental. Uncertainty and fecundity of meaning are its central characteristics. The Bible itself in both its Jewish and Christian versions is the product of numerous re-interpretations of itself by story-tellers, writers, editors, and redactors. It is in effect a reflection of religious thinking about itself, a self-referential and therefore self-contained entity whose unity can only be discerned within itself.
As Josipovici shows, the fragmentary additions, emendations, and substantial alterations to the sacred texts over time have resulted in a rather unexpected unified whole whose parts cannot be understood without an appreciation of this whole. Certainly the narrative subject of this whole is a story of Creation, the Fall into sin, and Redemption. But there is also an abiding meta-narrative of the unintelligibility of divine intention at any moment. The God of the Bible is nothing if not surprising in the apparent range and intensity of his emotions, his frequent contradictory actions, and his essential inscrutability.
This is the point, something the characters of the Bible couldn’t know about, neither the narrators, nor the prophets, perhaps not even Jesus. But the reader cannot but be aware that the God of the Bible is inherently unknowable. This is the message of the whole not its parts, although its parts contribute to the overall meaning. When asked his name by Moses, God answers with a non-answer: Being. Nowhere in the Bible is God described or reasons given for his attitudes which are often vengeful, erratic, and simply cruel. Such descriptive presumptions as are made are recorded as blasphemy. God is hidden, mysterious, beyond any rationale of existence or action. In short God is entirely outside of any language used to recount God, divine actions, or human imperatives implied by these actions. God’s word may be the cause of everything but no one except God is privy to the divine vocabulary or grammar.
In a sense, as most religious authorities are keen to insist upon, revelation of divinity stopped at some point in history - for Jews after the completion of the Writings, for Christians after the death of the Apostles. Revelation perhaps did end when the Bible itself could no longer be pinned down to a specific meaning. What follows then is a virtual infinity of interpretations reflecting the depth and scope of Biblical concerns. God and his revelations, unlike most ancient myth and the conceits of modern science, explain nothing. They prove all explanations inadequate and presumptuous.
In other words, the Bible provides a spiritual and cultural agenda. It is not a “how to” for a life of good but a challenge to identify the good and act accordingly. It is also a warning that the most important aspect of this challenge is the self-serving rationalisations which blind us to the good. We are trapped in our own self-interests and in the very language that we use to determine the good. The Bible’s enduring brilliance is its repetitive insistence that it should not be used for precisely these justifications. As the great 20th century theologian, Karl Barth, noted: God’s word is not Man’s word. And ultimately that is what the Bible is: Man’s word trying to reach beyond itself. When it is taken as more, it fails entirely.
* One of the many facts ignored by biblical literalists (as well as the casual reader) is the relative grammatical paucity of Hebrew. Tense for example is suggested by context, and often even then only incompletely. In addition, the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament contains only word roots - consonants without their accompanying vowels - which may have vastly disparate meanings depending on the vowels attached. Add to that the inherent difficulties (sometimes impossibilities) involved in any translation from one language to another and the silliness of literalists becomes obvious. Paradoxically, the Septuagint translation of the original Masoretic text is in Greek, arguably the most precise and grammatically nuanced language ever developed - perhaps making the translation appear far more definitive than it actually is.
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ June 24, 2021
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