cover image How God Became God: What Scholars Are Really Saying About God and the Bible

How God Became God: What Scholars Are Really Saying About God and the Bible

Richard Smoley. Penguin/TarcherPerigee, $19 trade paper (320p) ISBN 978-0-399-18555-7

With a folksy approach to examining the nature of the Bible and God, Smoley (Inner Christianity) treads in pedestrian fashion over ground already well covered by others. Smoley trudges through an overview of biblical history—covering the time of the Judges, the exile and its aftermath, Jesus and his context, and the birth of the church, among other topics—before he finally comes to his own points in the book’s closing pages. Along the way, he commits a few gaffes in the service of his attempt to uncover ideas he believes still have little circulation; for example, Smoley treats the divergence of biblical events and archaeological records as startling news. He concludes that the New Testament Gospels contain “much material about Jesus that is not factually true,” but fails to mention that scholars have long held the Gospels to be proclamations, not biographies. Smoley undertakes this overview in order to back up his theory that Jesus is an incarnation of Yahweh, the Great Angel—a figure who appears in the canonical books of Genesis and Daniel as mediator between God and humankind. Readers seeking a clear understanding of the findings of biblical scholarship will be better rewarded elsewhere, but those looking for esoteric theories about the nature of God and Jesus will benefit from Smoley’s book. (June)