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adamrshields's review against another edition
3.0
Short review: I honestly thought I had read this. So I started to re-read to see if I should recommend it to someone and realized I had not read it. Decent book, but too academic to be popular. I think it is a decent book but I wish it was a bit more focused.
My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/pelikan/
My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/pelikan/
blackoxford's review against another edition
5.0
Not Spake But Speaketh
Most Christians are biblically illiterate fools. Either captivated by the confident cadence of some self-aggrandising televangelist or desperate for acceptance within a comforting community of believers, they smugly think that they are being let in on the secrets of eternal life, or a prosperous life, or a life of better relationships, or that most sought after of all lives, a happy one. That the scriptural snake-oil they are being peddled has been poisoned just doesn’t occur to them.
Then there are a few Christians like Jaroslav Pelikan who emerge from the American evangelical heartland and dedicate themselves to understanding what the collection of myths, rumours, commands, and history called the Bible really has to say and how what it says has become a static, often oppressive, religious doctrine. For him, as for me, it is a book that doesn’t provide answers but provokes questions. Frankly I am mystified that someone like Pelikan maintains his beliefs while knowing what he knows about what fellow-Christians have done to and with their sacred documents. Nevertheless what he knows is worth sharing as widely as possible.
Whose Bible Is It? isn’t written primarily for Christians, but for Jews, and for that relatively small band of Christians who recognise that they are also Jews in everything but name. It is consequently an excellent introduction to profound biblical scholarship. Pelikan was a believer who understood the inevitably cultural matrix of his beliefs. He makes it clear that this culture is both inescapable and even more valuable than any particular beliefs it holds at any moment. For Pelikan, religion is clearly about a search rather than about a destination. Sharing in that search is an eye-opening joy.
For example, there is a wide-spread conceit among Christians (Mormons excepted) that divine revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. Such a claim is obviously arbitrary and fatuous. Pelikan rejects it while quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, thus linking biblical with American culture:
In other words, Pelikan considers the Bible as inspirational rather than definitive. In this view its very ambiguity, imprecisions , and even contradictions become not matters of scorn but objects of interpretation. And of interpretation there is no end, which is perhaps the Bible’s greatest Emersonian feature (and not shared with the Book of Mormon). Both Jewish and Christian scriptures are inherently fluid. They float on a substrate of barely perceptible but mobile ‘truths,’ that poke through from time to time. Like water on a moving lava bed perhaps, the surface boils away momentarily to reveal something previously invisible. When this happens, it’s always a surprise; so one has to be prepared.
A good example is Pelikan’s exegesis of perhaps one of the most cosmic and well-known verses in the Christian Bible, the opening to John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word” (Logos in the Greek of John). Clearly meant to mirror the opening of the Book of Genesis in which YHWH speaks the universe into existence, John’s gospel nevertheless often appears overtly anti-Semitic and has been used to justify the hatred of Jews throughout the Christian epoch. But Pelikan sheds some very needed light on the translation out of Greek:
So the presumption that ‘the Word’ refers to Jesus as co-eternal with God is at least questionable. And the alternative translation is not only plausible but sets an entirely different cultural tone to everything that follows. Suddenly the gospel becomes Jewish and implies what is much more likely than has been traditional, namely Jews talking to Jews and criticising each other.
Another example is in the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Hebrews in which the Jewish Scriptures are quoted from the Psalms: “And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.” If this sounds somewhat inscrutable (like much of the Bible), one shouldn’t fret. It is the result of bad translation which after becoming official has embedded itself in the world as ‘biblical truth.’ Pelikan explains how:
Pelikan provides dozens of similar examples that would make any fundamentalist scream with a rage of unrequited expectations. But his general point is that an intelligent understanding of biblical material is simply not possible through listening to some crackpot preacher in a revival tent or on national television, or for that matter in almost any pulpit around the world. Christians are by and large simply unequipped for the task of spreading the word they consider sacred:
Just determining what constitutes the Word at all is a monumental task which is really never finished. Its meaning changes continuously every time it is spoken. It can therefore never be used to command, or judge, or justify but only to inspire. Inspire toward what end? Pelikan is not hesitant to say with the prophet Micah:
Most Christians are biblically illiterate fools. Either captivated by the confident cadence of some self-aggrandising televangelist or desperate for acceptance within a comforting community of believers, they smugly think that they are being let in on the secrets of eternal life, or a prosperous life, or a life of better relationships, or that most sought after of all lives, a happy one. That the scriptural snake-oil they are being peddled has been poisoned just doesn’t occur to them.
Then there are a few Christians like Jaroslav Pelikan who emerge from the American evangelical heartland and dedicate themselves to understanding what the collection of myths, rumours, commands, and history called the Bible really has to say and how what it says has become a static, often oppressive, religious doctrine. For him, as for me, it is a book that doesn’t provide answers but provokes questions. Frankly I am mystified that someone like Pelikan maintains his beliefs while knowing what he knows about what fellow-Christians have done to and with their sacred documents. Nevertheless what he knows is worth sharing as widely as possible.
Whose Bible Is It? isn’t written primarily for Christians, but for Jews, and for that relatively small band of Christians who recognise that they are also Jews in everything but name. It is consequently an excellent introduction to profound biblical scholarship. Pelikan was a believer who understood the inevitably cultural matrix of his beliefs. He makes it clear that this culture is both inescapable and even more valuable than any particular beliefs it holds at any moment. For Pelikan, religion is clearly about a search rather than about a destination. Sharing in that search is an eye-opening joy.
For example, there is a wide-spread conceit among Christians (Mormons excepted) that divine revelation ended with the death of the last apostle. Such a claim is obviously arbitrary and fatuous. Pelikan rejects it while quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, thus linking biblical with American culture:
For “not spake but speaketh” aptly describes the ongoing revelation of the word of God that has come over and over again and that still continues to come now, not in some kind of high-flying independence from but, to the contrary, in a devout and persevering engagement with the pages of the Sacred Book.”
In other words, Pelikan considers the Bible as inspirational rather than definitive. In this view its very ambiguity, imprecisions , and even contradictions become not matters of scorn but objects of interpretation. And of interpretation there is no end, which is perhaps the Bible’s greatest Emersonian feature (and not shared with the Book of Mormon). Both Jewish and Christian scriptures are inherently fluid. They float on a substrate of barely perceptible but mobile ‘truths,’ that poke through from time to time. Like water on a moving lava bed perhaps, the surface boils away momentarily to reveal something previously invisible. When this happens, it’s always a surprise; so one has to be prepared.
A good example is Pelikan’s exegesis of perhaps one of the most cosmic and well-known verses in the Christian Bible, the opening to John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word” (Logos in the Greek of John). Clearly meant to mirror the opening of the Book of Genesis in which YHWH speaks the universe into existence, John’s gospel nevertheless often appears overtly anti-Semitic and has been used to justify the hatred of Jews throughout the Christian epoch. But Pelikan sheds some very needed light on the translation out of Greek:
In addition to Word or Reason or Mind, ho Logos in John can mean Wisdom (Sophia), and this is what Sophia says about herself in the Septuagint version of the eighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs: “The Lord made me the beginning of his ways for his works. He established me before time was in the beginning before he made the earth. When he prepared the heaven, I was present with him. I was by him, suiting myself to him, I was that in which he took delight; and daily I rejoiced in his presence continually.”
So the presumption that ‘the Word’ refers to Jesus as co-eternal with God is at least questionable. And the alternative translation is not only plausible but sets an entirely different cultural tone to everything that follows. Suddenly the gospel becomes Jewish and implies what is much more likely than has been traditional, namely Jews talking to Jews and criticising each other.
Another example is in the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Hebrews in which the Jewish Scriptures are quoted from the Psalms: “And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire.” If this sounds somewhat inscrutable (like much of the Bible), one shouldn’t fret. It is the result of bad translation which after becoming official has embedded itself in the world as ‘biblical truth.’ Pelikan explains how:
Because the Greek word for a “messenger” of any kind was angelos and the word for “wind” could also mean “spirit,” the sentence in the Psalms “He makes the winds His messengers” comes out in the Greek translation as “He makes His angels spirits.” It is quoted that way in the New Testament as part of a discussion of the angels, as well as in Christian liturgies to this day, even though that is not what the Hebrew original is saying.
Pelikan provides dozens of similar examples that would make any fundamentalist scream with a rage of unrequited expectations. But his general point is that an intelligent understanding of biblical material is simply not possible through listening to some crackpot preacher in a revival tent or on national television, or for that matter in almost any pulpit around the world. Christians are by and large simply unequipped for the task of spreading the word they consider sacred:
…knowledge of the Hebrew original virtually disappeared from the church for a thousand years or more… even the earliest Latin translations of the books of the Tanakh [the Jewish Bible] (which we have now only in fragments) were based on it, being therefore translations-of-a-translation, in which the human mistakes or idiosyncracies of the seventy (or whoever they were) were compounded rather than corrected, as the words of the Bible made their tortuous way across the several major linguistic boundaries from Hebrew to Greek to Latin.
Just determining what constitutes the Word at all is a monumental task which is really never finished. Its meaning changes continuously every time it is spoken. It can therefore never be used to command, or judge, or justify but only to inspire. Inspire toward what end? Pelikan is not hesitant to say with the prophet Micah:
He has told you, O man, what is good, And what the LORD requires of you: Only to do justice And to love goodness, And to walk modestly with your God. That “only” has rightly been called “the biggest little word in the Bible.”Jesus said the same, as did his near contemporary Rabbi Akiva, and as did Marcus Aurelius, and after him Augustine. Really what else is there to say of any import? On the other hand, is there any limit to the number of interpretations possible, and required, for even this brief passage in daily life? Revelation occurs in these interpretations, or not at all.
sarahbringhurstfamilia's review against another edition
5.0
I loved this book. Pelikan's approach is brilliant. He sets the Jewish and Christian views of the Bible side by side through all their long history (and with an appropriate nod to Islam and how it interacts with the other major monotheistic faiths). Pelikan's knowledge of the subjects in question is obviously encyclopedic, but this is a very accessible book. He gives the reader an opportunity to look at the Bible from various historical and religious points of view, and see how different views and interpretations of it have shaped history and thought. This book is obviously a labor of love by a scholar whose passion for the Bible is intellectual (and faultlessly methodical), but also literary, and also deeply spiritual.
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