Book review: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism

by John Shelby Spong

★★★★★

I’m sure there are hundreds of reviews by now of this book on Amazon and elsewhere, so I won’t repeat what everyone else is saying. I just want to call it to your attention.

If you’re new to Bishop Spong’s books and his liberal Christian bent, then pick this up. Published way  back in 1991, it wasn’t Spong’s first book, but it’s where you want to start. In fact, this should be your starting point to understand liberal Christianity in general.

Current Biblical scholarship will shake your faith. There’s no way around it. If you open the door to studying the Bible critically, you’ll never be able to go back. Your faith will either be shattered or transformed … depending upon who shakes it.

Choose Spong. He won’t pull punches, and he’ll probably leave you with more questions than you started with, but it’s a journey that must be taken. Choose Spong, because after Spong finishes dismantling fundamentalism, he is able to rebuild your appreciation for the Bible and your faith in God (more so in his later books than in this one) … even if you never again think of God the same way.

Matthew 5:22-23, the raising of Jairus' daughter

Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, "My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live."

//Jesus agrees. Word comes shortly that it's too late--the girl has died--yet when Jesus arrives and examines the girl, he finds her still alive. He went in and said to them, "Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep."

Luke concurs. Jairus tells Jesus his daughter is deathly sick, and then she appears to die before Jesus gets there, but Jesus asserts that she merely sleeps, and wakes her up.

Matthew's version varies a little. Jairus comes to Jesus already claiming that his daughter has died; Jairus isn't asking for a healing or resuscitation, but a resurrection. Matthew 9:18, While he was saying this, a ruler came and knelt before him and said, "My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live."

Jesus does just that. But what's the true story? Is she dead or just sleeping? Jesus is careful to allow no one in the room but his closest disciples as he revives the young girl, so who knows what magic he performed. But this we do know: the story of Jairus’ daughter carefully mimics an Old Testament passage.

It’s taken from II Kings 4:31-37, where a Shunnamite woman’s only son died. Jairus entreats Jesus in the same manner the woman entreats Elisha, falling at his feet and begging several times. Matthew changes the Jairus story slightly to align with the Old Testament source, by saying the daughter of Jairus is already dead.

A logical conclusion, then, is that Jesus did indeed perform a resuscitation of sorts, with his closest, most trustworthy disciples attending, and that these disciples allowed the story to grow legendary … while never stating that she actually died. In time the story took on the flavor of a common Old Testament resurrection.

Book review: Banned Questions about the Bible

by Christian Piatt

★★★★★

Hey, I think this new Banned Questions Series by Christian Piatt and acquaintances is gonna work! I’ll also be reviewing the next one in the series, Banned Questions about Jesus, though I haven’t yet broken its cover.

Piatt’s MO is to collect a number of uncomfortable questions, typically issues that we would feel awkward about discussing with our pastor, and then pose the questions to contributors. These contributors appear to represent several stops along the sliding scale of Christian beliefs, but so far as I can tell, each is quite learned in Biblical studies or contemporary religion. Some are more conservative than others, but all are thoughtful.

Can we be Christians if we don’t believe the Bible is perfect? Does the Bible condone slavery? Did God really write the Bible? Why bother reading the Old Testament? Why does God appear to change his mind?

Some of the Bible’s commands just don’t make sense to us today. Should we really be concerned about the Old Testament’s dislike of same-sex partnerships when it also says eating shrimp is an abomination, and so is wearing mixed fabric? We don’t get our cotton-blend panties in a bunch whenever we go to Red Lobster. Today’s times are different, and we are in the process of outgrowing our prejudices. Leviticus 19:20 says that it’s OK to doink a slave girl as long as she hasn’t been freed and you feel pretty crappy about it afterwards (alright, I think probably this contributor was paraphrasing), but I doubt anyone today agrees that this law is representative of a moral society. The point is, the Bible begs for thoughtful interpretation, not mindless following.

As such, don’t expect all questions to be answered to your satisfaction. Religion just doesn’t work that way, does it? Particularly disappointing to me was a chapter on why there are no miracles today. I also noticed that those polled quite often agreed on an answer. Perhaps the answers were culled, or perhaps the questions weren’t hard enough, but in the real world of Biblical advice and scholarship, unison is a rare luxury. So, Piatt, don’t be afraid to share answers that are contradictory! Make us think, man!

Loved the book, and looking forward to the next one.

Matthew 11:2-3, When did John the Baptist learn Jesus was the Messiah?

When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?"

//In trying to figure out how and when John learned of Jesus' Messiahship, we have on record two primary events: Jesus' baptism, and John's imprisonment. Let's start with the latter. Today's verse, in Matthew, indicates that John, sitting in prison, had not yet heard of the Messiah's arrival. However, John 1:29 reads differently:

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"

But two chapters later in John 3:24 makes it clear that "This was before John was put in prison." So John's Gospel insists the Baptist knew about Jesus before prison, while Matthew says he learned about him only after being imprisoned. But wait. It gets even more complicated. Reading now about Jesus' baptism:

Matthew 3:13-14, Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?"

Doesn't this seem to indicate that the Baptizer knew about Jesus before baptizing him? That's Matthew's version. If we read the story in John's Gospel, we get a different story:

John 1:31-33, "I myself did not know [Jesus], but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel." Then John gave this testimony: "I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.'"

Clearly, in this version, the Baptist didn't know about Jesus until after he had baptized him.

Oh, what a tangled web. If we must choose between Matthew and John, John's story at least makes chronological sense.

Book review: The Rise and Fall of the Bible

by Timothy Beal

★★★★★

Beal is a professor of religion at Case Western Reserve University, and an accomplished author. His writing style is fluid, intelligent and entertaining. I confess, though, that I’m not totally sure what the focus of this book is! The subtitle is The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book, which is pretty open-ended, and Beal takes advantage of his generic subtitle to meander around a bit, working in a number of interesting tidbits and topics. Makes for a great, if a bit undirected, read.

Beal is a Christian with a deep respect for the Bible, albeit one who has “drifted quite a distance from the familiar biblical waters of the conservative evangelical tradition in which [he] was raised.” Bottom line, he doesn’t consider the Bible inerrant by any stretch, and finds beauty and inspiration in its multitude of voices. 

Beal begins by bemoaning America’s Biblical illiteracy. Less than half of all adult Americans can name the first book of the Bible, or the four Gospels. More than half of graduating high school seniors guess that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife. The Bible has risen to the status of a cultural icon, but it’s no longer read. Instead, value-added products such as magazines and graphics novels is a thriving industry. Anything to avoid reading the Bible’s actual text.

If we did read the Bible regularly, we probably wouldn’t be convinced of its univocality (meaning, the assumption of its internal consistency.) Most of us have the idea that the Bible provides answers to life’s questions, and when we come to a crossroads, we’re taught to ask, “What does the Bible say?” Fact is, the Bible will often say lots of things on our topic, drowning us in a confusing array of contradictory advice. The Bible is not a book of answers, but a library of questions. Not a wellspring of truth but a pool of imagination, rich in ambiguity, contradiction, and argument.

The Bible is dead; long live the Bible.

Joel 3:10, Beat your plowshares into swords

Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears.

//Here's an absolutely fascinating comparison of two opposing opinions about what the final days will be like.

In the day of the Lord's arrival, says Joel, God's mountain will be holy. "The mountains shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the LORD, and shall water the valley of Shittim." All will be well in the Kingdom to come. And how will God's righteous reign be ushered in?

By force. By beating plowshares into swords, and pruninghooks into spears. God calls the nations together to war, so that he may cleanse the earth of wrongdoers.

Isaiah shares Joel's dream of a Kingdom to come. In the last days, according to Isaiah chapter 2, "The mountain of the LORD'S house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it." Again, as in Joel's dream for the future, God calls upon the nations, and asks them to... 

Isaiah 2:4, Beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks. In this version of God's holy reign, "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

Hmmm. Which would you choose?

Book review: Revelation: The Way it Happened

by Lee Harmon

★★★★

“A very interesting book …”

The following is an unsolicited review of my book posted on Amazon by Henry Slofstra. Thanks, Henry!

I found this to be a very interesting book, given my predilection for imaginative Christian literature, such as Dante or Milton, over scholarly work. The book straddles the two genres, and this neither fish nor fowl approach has likely undone some readers and reviewers. In my own view, the book is at its best when Harmon is in story-telling mode, imaginatively reconstructing events in the Mediterranean world during the slice of time in which the last book of the Bible was written. The protaganists are a Jewish Christian father and his son, but the perspective sometimes shifts to that of the writer, John, whoever he may have been. Harmon subscribes to the Preterist view, which means that the events depicted in Revelation correspond with first century Roman and Jewish history, and less so, with a predictive vision of the end of days as given to John by God. You don't need to accept the Preterist view in order to enjoy the book; but there's no question that the times in which the book was written were epical. Given one reviewer's view that the book may shake one's faith, I'd add only that some faiths could do with a bit of shaking.

The format of the book is unconventional in how different modes of discourse are handled. It's not bad, and perhaps an improvement. The usual approach is to place background asides in box insets, and corroborating material in footnotes. Harmon has used the approach of setting these asides inline in a different font, and I found that this approach did avoid the kind of annoying page flipping found in other secondary histories.

At least this is a book that works for me, at an imaginative level, given that I'm not a reader interested in questions of scholarship addressed in the extensive bibliography cited by Harmon. I look forward to more from this writer.

Book review: The Bible for Dummies

by Jeffrey Geoghegan, PhD & Michael Homan, PhD

★★★

I’m reading another book now that highlights the sad state of America’s Bible illiteracy. Even as we continue to sell more Bibles and religious titles every year, the Bible is actually being read less and less. I doubt if anyone who regularly reads my blog falls into this category, but a number of my friends do, and I’d like to find an easy introduction to the stories in the Bible. What better choice than a Dummies book, right?

I’m a huge fan of the Dummies series! Since they introduced their trademark fun and attractive layouts for computer-related topics years ago, I’ve accumulated quite a collection. I even included a Dummies book in the “suggested reading” appendix of my book about Revelation! Scholarly suicide, you think? Fact is, I find most of them well-researched and generally unbiased.

Turns out this one was a bit of a disappointment. The reading is a bit dry, there’s too much discussion of general topics rather than Bible stories, too much emphasis on introducing every book in the Bible instead of just the basics, and too much of a religious bent. The authors feel obligated to explain the stories, adding meaning, which is not only unnecessary but I often found myself disagreeing with their interpretations. So this one didn’t do it for me, and I’m still looking.

Anybody have any suggestions?

Isaiah 13:6, The day is at hand

Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand;

//Well, we all survived Camping's prediction that the world was coming to an end. How many doomsday dates have come and gone, now? I have no idea, but entire religions have been founded on this promise, that the time has arrived for the Lord's appearing. And it will be frightening indeed.

We've all read Revelation's promise that the time is ripe. Revelation promises over and over that it's just around the corner, and it will be bloody.

Paul, too, believed the world teetered on the edge. The day would come while some who heard his words yet lived, and it would be awesome.

John the Baptist taught this. Jesus taught this. 

Matthew 4:17, From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

It seems to be a long-standing tradition, dating back to the earliest prophets.

Zephaniah 1:7, Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord GOD: for the day of the LORD is at hand

Joel 1:15, Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand

Any day now, guys.

Book review: How We Believe

by Michael Shermer

★★★★★

Michael Shermer is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, the director of the Skeptics Society, and host of the Skeptics Lecture Series. I don’t need to tell you what sort of direction this book is going to take. But even knowing what to expect, this was a fun book, well worth the read!

Shermer, noting that 96% of Americans believe in God and 73% believe that angels regularly visit earth, asks this question: Why? Why do even 40% of scientists proclaim a belief in God? Why do more people believe in paranormal phenomena now than 100 years ago? Why do we believe at all, and why must we seek meaning in higher places? What is our fascination with ghosts and séances? Is belief in God genetically programmed? Some kind of “God module” in our brains?

Mankind is a pattern-seeking animal, whether this talent is used to see the Virgin Mary in patterns of light and shadow or to see meaning within the randomness of coincidental events. Mankind is also a storytelling animal. We love our  stories, and our stories do more than describe our reality, they help create our realities. So, as we move from pattern-seeking to storytelling, we naturally journey on to mythmaking. Origin myths abound in various cultures. But the journey of humanity doesn’t end there. From mythmaking we jump ahead to morality, from morality to religion, from religion to God. Perhaps we are wired to believe; perhaps there’s a certain inevitability in the way the human experience has evolved.

Shermer presents a number of studies and interviews as he leads us on this journey. One of the most fascinating studies in Shermer’s book compared answers to two questions: “Why do you believe in God,” and “Why do you think other people believe in God?” The answers don’t jibe. Other people believe in God because they were raised that way, or because it brings them comfort to believe, or because people have a need to believe. But what do people answer as to why they believe? Well, because they’ve thought it through, of course; the universe is too orderly, or the experiences they’ve had could only come from God.

Shermer’s approach is scientific, yet controversial. The conclusions are his own; but I guarantee the book will make you think, and I guarantee you’ll enjoy the read.

Matthew 10:2, who were the Twelve Apostles?

Now the names of the twelve apostles are these;

//I won't bore you with the rest of the verse. You probably won't recognize some of the names anyway. Ever hear of Lebbaeus?

The four gospels, the book of Acts, and Paul all agree there were twelve. In fact, they insist. Twelve men, to govern the twelve tribes of Israel when the Messiah returns. But who are these twelve men?

Different writers give different lists, and this has led to endless research, tracking down just exactly who is whom. Here's the full collection, borrowed from the Skeptic's Annotated Bible, if you'd like to try your hand at this exercise.

	APOSTLES of JESUS	MAT	MAR	LUK	JOH	ACT	GAL
1	ANDREW	X	X	X		X
2	BARTHOLOMEW	X	X	X		X
3	JAMES ALPHAEUS	X	X	X		X
4	JAMES, BROTHER of JESUS						X
5	JAMES ZEBEDEE	X	X	X	X	X
6	JOHN ZEBEDEE	X	X	X	X	X
7	JUDAS, BROTHER of JAMES			X		X
8	JUDAS ISCARIOT, SON of SIMON	X	X	X	X
9	JUDAS, NOT ISCARIOT			X	X
10	LABBAEUS THADDEUS	X	X
11	LEVI ALPHAEUS, the PUBLICAN		X	X
12	MATTHEW, the PUBLICAN	X	X	X		X
13	NATHANAEL of CANA				X
14	NICODEMUS?				?
15	PHILIP	X	X	X	X	X
16	SIMON PETER	X	X	X	X	X	X
17	SIMON the CANAANITE	X	X
18	SIMON ZELOTES			X		X
19	THOMAS DIDYMUS	X	X	X	X	X