Another Jab at the Traditional God?

by David Klinghoffer, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 3/7/2007

"People who are very, very rigid, they'll just dismiss it. They'll say it's wacko."

Jerome M. Segal was musing to RBL about how traditional religious folk may respond to his thesis in Joseph's Bones: Understanding the Struggle Between God and Mankind in the Bible (Riverhead, Mar.). Segal argues that if you read the first six books of the Bible as an "existential novel," without preconceptions, what emerges is a story of a rather tempestuous, even bullying deity being given moral instruction by mortals, notably the biblical characters Abraham, Joseph, and Moses.

A senior research scholar at the University of Maryland's Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, Segal is Jewish and even participates in an informal (and very liberal) prayer group in the Washington D.C. suburbs. He agrees that his reading is far from the traditional Jewish understanding of scripture.

However, he said he just wants to grasp the text on what seems to be its own terms: "The Bible doesn't make any claim about God's being all-just or about morality coming from God." We're meant, instead, to see the figure of Joseph (whose bones the Israelites reverently carried with them out of Egypt for burial in the Holy Land) as a sort of ying-yang counterpart to God, representing love and forgiveness, whereas God himself is "this cauldron of emotions and knows it about himself."

Not exactly an awesome or admirable Almighty. Yet it's a kinder assessment than that of some other recent authors.

It's open season on God, with the #1 and #2 bestselling titles on PW's religion hardcover bestseller list being Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion and Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation. Dawkins and Harris argue not only against God's existence but against any notion that the deity can be defined as a God of justice, goodness, or love. "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction," writes Dawkins.

In a season of blasphemy, maybe one more poke at the Almighty doesn't count as big news. Segal was aware of no major push to get him speaking gigs, and he noted that Riverhead even forgot to send a copy for review to PW.