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Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
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A few years ago Canongate publishers released individual books of the Bible prefaced with comments from such luminaries as the Dalai Lama, U2’s Bono and P D James, aimed at the secular marketplace. Revelations is the collection.
They’re the better-known books—Genesis, Job, the Gospels, Revelation—and emphasise personal interpretation. While there is an intriguing mix of contributors, churchgoers may find them confronting, as there is overall a typically postmodern tendency from the mostly non-Christian authors, toward “rescuing” the Bible from religion.
Richard Holloway in his introduction sets this tone by suggesting we should read the Bible as myth, not logos, while A N Wilson suggests that focusing on whether people actually walked on water or rose from the dead, or virgins conceived simply distracts us from the text’s more important messages. Singer Nick Cave, recommended to read Mark because of its brevity, comments on its urgency, and on Christ’s isolation and intensity, but predictably rejects the Christ of the church as “bloodless” and “placid.” Francisco Goldman, on the other hand, in his exploration of Matthew in the context of political upheaval in the Americas, suggests that religion gives courage and dignity in the face of social crisis. Thomas Cahill shows that the beautiful language of Luke’s Gospel reinforces Luke’s certainty that the life of Jesus fulfils the Old Testament, including Mary’s virginity, while Peter Ackroyd suggests that arguing over whether the Bible is a literary or sacred text makes an unnecessary distinction.
There is also a tendency to focus on the Bible’s more troubling teachings (to 21st-century Westerners anyway), and on the fierceness and obscurity of the Old Testament God. Job gets a thorough examination, with Louis de Bernières (author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin) raising English conservative blood pressures by suggesting that God comes across as a mad and bloodthirsty megalomaniac. Joanna Trollope puzzles over the violence of Esther, commenting that it is “like something from the Tales of the Arabian Nights.”
But, says Charles Frazier (author of Cold Mountain), if you think the Old Testament God is unjustly contemptuous of humans, just take a look at the world around us and try to argue that humanity is fine.
Other interesting responses include Bono (one of the few believers in the traditional sense), comparing King David to Elvis, and the Psalms to blues songs. The psalms, he says, introduced him to feeling God, and he describes the power of faith as “mystical but not mythical.”
Meir Shalev, who is one of the handful with a Jewish perspective, makes a fascinating psychological assessment of David as capable of inspiring love, but never being able to give it (at least to his fellow human beings). He suggests that the Bible’s scrutiny of this leader’s love-life would make even today’s media think twice.
Probably the most left-of-centre is novelist Will Self. It is less exegesis and more Generation X short story, describing his intelligent but paranoid, drug-dependent and ultimately suicidal friend who latched onto Revelation’s fierce apocalyptic imagery. Self himself admits that after numerous readings he simply doesn’t understand the book and can only view it with “superstitious awe.”
The centrality of Jesus as God, which ties together the numerous threads of the Bible and lessens feelings of bewilderment, is missing in many of these responses.
But even if you don’t agree with all of these interpretations—and it is unlikely those who profess Christian faith would—they are nevertheless a wonderful stimulus for thinking in new ways about what you believe, and for re-familiarising yourself with the greatest of books.
Revelations: Personal Responses to the Books of the Bible, introduced by Richard Holloway, Canongate, 2005.
Extract from Signs of the Times, October 2005 .
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