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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting And Provocative But Not Compelling, Dec 20 2003
If you are a christian your first reaction upon looking at this book might be to shudder and shy away. Yet another attempt to deconstruct God and reinterpret Him for our day and age you might say. Yes, there is a certain amount of that, but it is important for christians to be able to engage with this kind of exegesis too. Even a very flawed interpretation can yield new insights, and Miles' work certainly provides new depth and context in many ways. He definitely brings linguistic and socio-cultural historiographic strengths to the work, and he conducts an important exercise in breaking down the different images of God as seen through the eyes of the different authors of the Hebrew Bible.His political history is a little weak, and I think he would agree with that statement based on his disclaimers at the front of the book. The other frustrating thing about his work is that it is incomplete -- the literary biography of God has to be coupled with the literary biography of the Jewish people -- they are an extremely important "character" in the Bible, and the character of God that Miles describes is really the character of God as seen through the eyes of the Jewish people. In other words, this really should have been more of a three part discussion -- (1) the character of God, (2) the character of the Jewish people, and (3) how their character shaped their view of God and their relationship to Him. It's not so much that the narrator or narrative is fallible, as that the story of God is incomplete and incompletely understood. Given these constraints, Miles narrative is one of extremes. At some levels, it provides an extreme close-up view -- delving into the religious practices of the Israelites' neighbors, or discussing the multiple meanings of a given Hebrew word and its various alternatives. At other times, it provides broad brush strokes and makes gross assertions (ie God's stance towards sex) that aren't as substantiated as they could be. These are all qualities of an interesting and provocative study -- the reader will definitely be stimulated, but also show why Miles is not compelling in the end, and oddly, at least from my perspective, a little superficial. A book like Miles' God is a challenge to christians and non-christians alike, and worth the investment of time to read it, but if you are engaging in a study of God, it would be well worth it to return to the primary source again afterwards.
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