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A review by piccoline
You Shall Be as Gods by Erich Fromm
5.0
One of those "where have you been all my life?" books. Deep but readable, perceptive, challenging. Fromm wrote on a wide variety of topics, and somehow I hadn't heard much about this book until I saw it in a used bookstore for cheap.
It's marvelous. He uses a careful reading of large chunks of the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) to propose less alienated and more fruitful ways for us to orient our lives. All of this is supported by wonderful commentary and anecdotes primarily from Talmudic scholarship, along with some key references to Christian theology. For me, reading it as a Christian, it made new and fresh many aspects of the Hebrew Bible that had become inert from repetition. He provides helpful fresh interpretations of the Hebrew at times that throw wide the curtains on rooms that had been dark.
Fromm finishes the book with a fascinating taxonomy of the psalms and a powerful new angle on Jesus' last words (from Mark) on the cross: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" The despair in those words has presented a tough theological puzzle down through the centuries. (If he is God, how can he feel such despair? If he is man, then what is his uniqueness? Etc.) Fromm does not insist on his interpretation, but he notes an important fact about how the rabbinical literature of the time functioned: when one wished to quote a text as a rabbi, one did so by stating the first line of the scripture in question. (Obviously there weren't chapter/verse numbers written in back then.) So, in his reading, Jesus was not succumbing to despair but was rather quoting, in full, a psalm which begins with those despairing words and works through to faith and hope for the future by the end. (Fromm classifies this sort of psalm as "dynamic", for moving from one stance/mood to another.)
The book is filled with powerful, thought-provoking, fresh views like this one. It also powerfully expresses the dangers of what Fromm calls "idolatry" in all its forms, whether it be idolatry of a certain alienated idea of God, or of money, or technology, or economic system, or utopian visions. (If you're into the Frankfurt School, you'll see here some resonance/influence with Adorno's emphasis on the proscription on idolatry.) Powerful challenging stuff, even all these years later.
Highly recommended.
It's marvelous. He uses a careful reading of large chunks of the Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) to propose less alienated and more fruitful ways for us to orient our lives. All of this is supported by wonderful commentary and anecdotes primarily from Talmudic scholarship, along with some key references to Christian theology. For me, reading it as a Christian, it made new and fresh many aspects of the Hebrew Bible that had become inert from repetition. He provides helpful fresh interpretations of the Hebrew at times that throw wide the curtains on rooms that had been dark.
Fromm finishes the book with a fascinating taxonomy of the psalms and a powerful new angle on Jesus' last words (from Mark) on the cross: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" The despair in those words has presented a tough theological puzzle down through the centuries. (If he is God, how can he feel such despair? If he is man, then what is his uniqueness? Etc.) Fromm does not insist on his interpretation, but he notes an important fact about how the rabbinical literature of the time functioned: when one wished to quote a text as a rabbi, one did so by stating the first line of the scripture in question. (Obviously there weren't chapter/verse numbers written in back then.) So, in his reading, Jesus was not succumbing to despair but was rather quoting, in full, a psalm which begins with those despairing words and works through to faith and hope for the future by the end. (Fromm classifies this sort of psalm as "dynamic", for moving from one stance/mood to another.)
The book is filled with powerful, thought-provoking, fresh views like this one. It also powerfully expresses the dangers of what Fromm calls "idolatry" in all its forms, whether it be idolatry of a certain alienated idea of God, or of money, or technology, or economic system, or utopian visions. (If you're into the Frankfurt School, you'll see here some resonance/influence with Adorno's emphasis on the proscription on idolatry.) Powerful challenging stuff, even all these years later.
Highly recommended.