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Christianity Today, April, 2009 |

Blogging the Bible

A Harvard-educated reformed Jew grapples with the Old Testament.

Interview by Sarah Pulliam | posted 3/04/2009 10:28AM

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I'm the son of a scientist. I'm never met theological explanation for the existence of God that passed my muster as a scientist. I've never seen anything that would present me proof in the kind of material that a God could exist. A moral structure can be created independent of whether a God exists and created the world and whether Jesus was reborn.

Why did you stop reading before the New Testament?

I considered reading it. The Old Testament is the part of the Bible that my people subscribe to, which has shaped my religion. I was willing to be very irreverent about it. For me to do that with the New Testament would have been perceived as insulting.

The New Testament does bring a kind of orderliness to the Old Testament, which it lacks on its own. I do see why for a Christian, it is like stopping before the hero enters the story. When you have the New Testament to clean a lot of this up and bring order and morality to a lot of it, it makes it much, much easier.

The joy and the richness of the Book come from fighting with it, and we should look at people like Abraham, Gideon, Job, and Jonah. Their questioning, difficulty, contentiousness, and argumentation are the moments that should inspire.

What were the most surprising stories?

Well, I mean pound for pound, verse for verse, Judges is the most appalling book but on the other hand the whole point of Judges is kind of to be appalling. If there is any book of the Bible that is just a pure, visceral pleasure to read, it's Judges, because it is so crazy, and all kinds of insane stuff happened. But it's intended to be shocking.

The book that delighted me was Leviticus. I am thinking in particular of Chapter 19 there is a section that I quote at length which is, This whole time for frame which echoed I am the Lord your God is just amazing, amazing!

The story of Ruth is an incredibly beautiful, poignant story. For a Christian, that would be a wonderful story just because the way it connects the genealogically of Ruth being the ancestor of Jesus and of David. David is the most complex person in the Bible because his moral failings are so acute, and yet his achievements are so immense.

You write, "The Bible's gatekeepers have attempted to dupe us into adapting a Bible with a straightforward morality and delightful heroes." Who are these gatekeepers, and isn't it your responsibility to read it on your own?

I went to a pretty good Hebrew school as a kid and to a really good Christian Episcopalian high school. Reading the Bible wasn't ever presented as anything but a source for morality.

I've heard a lot of sermons, and even at evangelical churches, I feel like there's never any kind of attempt to critique the Bible. It's like it's always an attempt to find a really good way to spin it. The world is messy. People do immoral things. In Joshua, we see the slaughter of innocent people. Why isn't that the subject of discussion rather than the celebration of the conquest of the land?

The moral complexity is what makes it so fascinating. It's what made me, somebody who has no real religious commitment, want to read it for a year. The reductionism is just an insult to what's actually there.

You call your book irreverent. Can anyone who is deeply religious read it without being offended?

I'm not a scholar, I'm not a Christian, but I bring a fresh, unjaded eye to the book that Christians love. Anyone who can make you look differently at something you love—that's of great value.

Related Elsewhere:

Good Book is available at ChristianBook.com and other book retailers.

Christianity Today also interviewed David Plotz after he started blogging.

Plotz also wrote in Slate about what he learned from reading the Bible. Slate also has a video of Plotz. He will chat live on the Washington Post's website today from 2-3 p.m.

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April 2009, Vol. 53, No. 4

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Brian Piltin

Posted: March 07, 2009 10:12 AM

The God of the OT and the God of the NT are the same God. You will certainly find the God of the OT disturbing if you don't completely understand the utterly evil nature of the people that God was dealing with in. You would almost think Him cruel to use the Israelites to bring about the destruction of the surrounding civilizations, but God's hands were in essence "tied behind His back" in the sense that the surrounding civilizations were evil and void of any desire to live by God's commands. God used the Israelites to "preserve" a portion of humanity so that the entire world was not in a sense lost in Godless behavior. You can liken it to having a severe infection and needing to amputate the offending limb. Obviously these people would have been spared along with the Israelites if there was any other way. One mistake we make in reading the OT is believing that humans are not deserving of death, which as Christians, we have accepted as truth. Trust in God that He knows what He is doing.

TAChaney

Posted: March 06, 2009 3:38 PM

This is why what the NT says about Jesus is so important. If it were not for him and his work on the cross, we would face the terrible and frightening wrath of a God of holiness. Jonjackson asks, “Where is Jesus, whose sacrifice is an atonement for the whole world?” S/he seems to reflect the theology of universalism that all people are saved by the work of Christ and yet this is not what we have seen here. SOME will experience God’s wrath. SOME will experience Jesus’ own anger. This is not TAChaney, but Scripture that makes these points. Jonjackson goes on to ask, “Where is the God who desires that all be save [sic]? Where is grace in this schema?” God does indeed desire that all be saved, but all are not automatically saved by the work of Christ, they must accept him by faith. Grace appears right here in that God desires men to be saved (to receive the opposite of the destiny they deserve) due to his love for man, and provides Christ so that man CAN be saved, but he does not force it.

TAChaney

Posted: March 06, 2009 3:36 PM

Wrath will come “when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction” (2 Thess. 1:7-9). Jesus does not seem to be the cream-puff that some take him to be. Jesus, like his father, sometimes gets angry (wrathful). Those under God’s wrath are called his enemies (Rom. 5:10; Col. 1:21; James 4:4). “The face of the Lord is against those who do evil” (1 Pet. 3:12). “God is opposed to the proud” (1 Pet. 5:5). There will be a “day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men” (2 Pet. 3:7). For such men there is “a certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries” (Heb. 10:27). Jude speaks of the “punishment of eternal fire” (Jude 7).

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