A marvelous exploration of the deceptively difficult BibleI have always thought that the Bible is a great and beautiful book because it openly and honestly invites you to challenge it—and I say that as one who does not believe in God. As Aviya Kushner puts it, “The struggle with God, and the Bible’s willingness to depict it, is what keeps bringing me back to my stacks of Bibles. . . It is a story that is part of every man and woman who has ever felt the need to claw against destiny, to insist on a different future than what God appears to be offering.” All humans, including agnostics, identify with that fight.You don’t have to be religious to understand the power and the glory of the struggle to understand the most influential book in Western culture. Kushner presents her own personal journey into that struggle, and at the center of the storm is her desire to understand the words and nuances of the ancient Hebrew in which the book is written. Her journey makes for a wonderful book.In telling her story, she relates the vast difficulties inherent in any translation of any work. More, she demonstrates how translating the Bible into English—a powerful, beautiful, and expressive language in its own right—can alter the meaning and shades of meaning of the original Hebrew. In a wonderful insight, she states that English has a quality of definitiveness not found in ancient Hebrew, and this definitiveness can make the scriptures sound more final or “harsh” than was intended.Kushner also presents to us the wonderful debates over the centuries—especially by educated Rabbis—on the meaning of verses, individual words, and even the roots of words in the Old Testament. Those debates continue today even in individual families, and Kushner shows how such give-and-take of ideas and questions informed and shaped her own religious feelings as she grew up. “I don’t understand that [commandment regarding coveting thy neighbor’s house],” her father told her baldly. “Frankly I can’t understand why [it] is included.” This is exactly the sort of challenge that, in Kushner’s world, is welcomed by God. And the last chapter, “Memory,” is a wonderful investigation of how such an active engagement with the Word can make it possible for a people—any people—to survive even the worst of evils.A personal thought: Although the intent of the book is not to undermine the beliefs of those who assert that the Bible must be taken as the literal truth, Ms. Kushner indirectly, but convincingly, demonstrates the untenable quality of such claims. Consider, as one small example, that there are two versions of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament. They differ. And Jews, Catholics, and Protestants have different ideas of what commandments should be included and in what order they should be listed. As a matter of fact, the phrase “The Ten Commandments” is nowhere to be found in the Hebrew text. To note and discuss such problematic passages is not to dismiss the commandments (or more accurately, the “sayings”). Rather, to discuss and question such things is to make the Bible a living document. Belief in a literal bible, the cornerstone of American fundamentalism, ironically undermines the power of the book. Insistence on literalism make the Bible a dead book, not a living, breathing one. These are not Kushner’s words; they are mine. But it is a conclusion difficult to avoid after reading her marvelous text.14
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