Discussion
Two Books on God* Mο‘ο²οΉ Dο―ο΅ο§ο¬ο‘ο³ These two important and original books on the Hebrew Bible are in several ways complementary. Jack Miles's paradoxical and ambitious biography of God is somewhat in the spirit of Stephen Hawkings' Brief History of Time. He shows the events of the Bible from God's subjective point of view: how God grows in self-awareness, how his qualities diversify and his personality unifies, as he meets successive challenges from the humans he has made; gradually, God attains his maximum power, then it fades; before the end his voice is silent, there are no more spectacular miracles, and he does not walk with us or talk to us any more.
Richard Friedman makes the end of public miracles and the disappearance of God the central question of his philosophical study. Miles gives an idiosyncratic reflection on interpreting the Bible. Friedman goes on to place the retreat of God in a comparative context-the Bible, the Talmud and Christianity-and finally confronts the 'death of God' in our times.
GOD: A Biography, is not like any book on the Bible I have ever heard of before. It is a bit like mythology, since we are invited to read it in the spirit which we have been reading Norse Sagas or Babylonian or Tlingit Indian or Murngin creation myths. Joseph and Moses and other Bible persons have had the biographical treatment, but the audacity of this project is to apply it to the God of Israel. The intention is to follow a now unfashionable psychological style of criticism. Bradley's (1904) Shakespearean criticism displayed the development of the character: the emphasis was not on how the character of Hamlet is revealed by the skilful playwright, or on how the playwright is a product of his time, but on the changes in personality as the play unfolds. It is as if the personality exists independently of the fiction. As Hamlet interacts with his mother and stepfather and friends, he responds to their actions, and with each challenge he changes, shrinks or grows. With the development of the plot his personality acquires a new twist. His self-awareness deepens. Who he was and who he becomes is the essence of the unfolding drama.
So the God of Genesis starts out with very little known about his expectations for himself or his creation. He is like a child whose full personality will only be developed as he responds to events. Gradually through the Pentateuch an obsessive interest in sex and procreation (continually promising fertility) shifts to an interest in justice; a new warrior role brings forth an interest in warfare and bloody victories; compassion is a late development, traces showing here and there in the earlier stages, but only coming to the fore with Isaiah. Dramatic tension is enhanced by his recurrent doubts as he keeps regretting what he has done. Having once created humans, he blots them out in a flood, threatens to destroy them again; then to punish them he lets them be conquered and exiled. His punishment is so brutal that he regrets that too. In maturity he has overcome