God: A Biography

I spent an hour sitting and reading God: A Biography today while drinking a tasty little raspberry mocha underneath a bunch of flags. Jack Miles has quite the knack for summarizing parts of The Bible. The book is more speculation on the character of God, but to develop God's character you have to travel through each book, so it requires a bit of summary. It's an interesting mix. He does make for an interesting character, he's talked about as the creator, destroyer, friend of the family, law giver, liberator, liege. It just builds and builds on how God himself changes or is portrayed throught the Hebrew Bible. I'm in the conqueror section right now. Lots of stories I'd forgotten about or rarely think of and only vaguely remember. Sometimes I forget just how violent The Bible is. Interesting though! As is this book. Damn fine summaries indeed. Some people are just good at that I suppose. Kind of disturbing story here, but you see how he manages to cram a couple chapters into about one or two pages of his own book? I like that.

"During the book of Judges, what was once a disciplined, unified,invading army has degenerated into guerrilla bands or, at best, militias. Though the successive chieftains who control the militias rule nominally over all Israel, they come from different tribes, and the actions reported of them are invariably localized. None of the chieftains speaks for the Lord. thus, in Judges 18, near the end of the book, the tribe of Dan is quite clearly only in search of territorial aggrandizement when it leaves the area allotted to it and attacks Laish in the far north, "a people tranquil and unsuspecting, and they put them to the sword and burned down the town. There was none to come to the rescue, for it was distant from Sidon and they had no dealings with anyone" (Judg. 18:27). The Danites single out Laish for conquest on purely strategic grounds.

By far the worst incident of brutality reported in the Book of Judges comes in chapter 19 and pits the Israelites against one another. In this incident, a Levite (a religious functionary) from the tribe and territory of Ephraim, traveling through the adjacent territority of the tribe of Benjamin with his concubine, is received as a guest in the house of an Ephraimite living in the area. That night, the Benjaminites, repeating the offense of Sodom, demanded sexual access to the visitor: "Bring out the man who has come into your house,so that we can be intimate with him." As on that previous occasion, the host offers the aggressors his daughter and his own concubine. The Benjaminites refuse the offer. The visitor then gives them his concubine, and the Benjaminites spend the night abusing her--raping her, in fact, to death:

...and they raped her and abused her all night long until morning; and they let her go when dawn broke.

Toward morning the woman came back; and as it was growing light, she collapsed at the entrance of the man's house where her husband was. When her husband arose in the morning, he opened the doors of the house and went out to continue his journey, and there was the woman, his concubine, lying at the entrance of the house, with her hands on the threshold. 'Get up,' he said to her, 'let us go.' But there was no
reply (19:25-28)

It is a brilliant move by the narrator to place the single most brutal line in the incident in the mouth of the woman's owner rather than in that of her attackers. But if the Levite is without pity, he is not beyond rage. His response to the murder is to cut his concubine's corpse into pieces and send one piece to each of the tribes of Israel except Benjamin. The tribes then muster and march against Benjamin, killing all the tribe's men, women, children, and animals and burning down all its towns. The only Benjaminite survivors are a remnant of the soldiers. Afterward, the other Israelites realize with regreat that their vow--a part of their repiral against Benjamin--not to permit any of their daughters to marry Benjaminites means that this tribe must now die out unless they compe up with a solution. And they do: They notice that one Israelite town, Jabesh, has not mustered for the common action against Benjamin, and they send an army to kill all its inhabitants, including women and boys, sparing only virgin girls. These virgins they bring to the shrine at Shiloh, and the Benjaminite survivors are told that during the merrymaking at an upcoming religious feast, they may capture and rape the girls with impunity, thus preserving their tribe as one of the twelve." -God: A Biography by Jack Miles

Side story: I was sitting at a little round table outside the coffee shop in the MU and the guy at the table in front of mine was drinking coffee and seemed to be having conversations with himself. He looked rather like a crazy old professor might, with a bright brownish-yellow courderoy jacket over a white sweater and dark brown pants. He had wild, stringy gray hair and he would smile at intervals just like you might when having a conversation with a real person. Occasionally he would silently toast someone or something with a large grin. He made a few sweeping arm gestures as well, as though he were presenting someone with a surprise or announcing to everyone that this was his kingdom. Behold! After about fifteen minutes, he moved to a different table and mumbled quietly to himself for a few more before leaving.

Side note: There's a fellow who sits outside the Nuclear reactor building and plays a guitar when it's sunny outside. Whenever I see him, I imagine him singing merry songs about radiation. Sometime I shall have to take a closer listen and find out what he really sings about out there.