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119 of 125 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A standout..., November 25, 2002
This review is from: In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis (Paperback)
Karen Armstrong's "In the Beginning" came to me at the tail end of a two year study of Christianity. I looked at its dustjacket (a reproduction of Adam from the Sistine Chapel) with indifference, and decided to read it only because it was brief. To say I was pleasantly surprised is an understatement. For one thing, Armstrong is a lyrical writer -- as a copyeditor, I truly marveled at her sentences for both their clarity and poetry. For another, in this book she does something many clerics and scholars have failed to do: successfully apply meaning to the garbled message of Genesis. She states her case pretty early on: there is no way to get a coherant understanding of God from reading Genesis. He is utterly contradictory -- creative and all-powerful in one story; vengeful and capricious in the next. This paradox has befuddled many of reader. I, for one, had come to think of Genesis as typical of the flawed meaninglessness of the Bible. But Armstrong has me reconsidering my conclusion. It seems clear, she says, that all the characters in Genesis have to endure afflictions and unfairness. Whether they are favored in God's eyes or not, their lives are difficult. A relationship with God doesn't spare them difficulties -- instead the meaning in their lives is derived in part by making it through their difficulties with their faith intact. I really enjoyed this book. Just when I had grown tired of a subject, a new author has revived familiar terrain with a fresh perspective. I look forward to reading Armstrong's other books.
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50 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
nice work, not up to her usual standard, July 7, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis (Paperback)
This book is a brief running commentary on Genesis (the entire NRSV text of Genesis is included). The main point is that Genesis does not aim so much to explain how the world and the Israelite race began, which is not a very important question from a practical point of view. It aims more to describe why we dont experience God as a tangible first-hand reality. (This _is_ an important practical question: why should a God we never directly experience be relevant to important life decisions?). The main story of Genesis, according to Armstrong, is one of a God who progressively distances himself from the human race. He walks and talks with Adam, Noah and Abraham, but Jacob only wrestles with him as a stranger in the night, and Joseph never experiences him directly, not even in his famous dreams. Armstrong is careful to point out that no adequate explanation is given for this distancing in Genesis, forcing readers to grapple with the issue on their own. One possible resolution that Armstrong seems to suggest---walking and talking with God may just be unnecessary overhead, he will take care of one as long as one plays by his rules (=Joseph). She does not seem to approve of the standard Catholic explanation of original sin. Armstrong quickly takes care of fundamentalists by pointing out that there are two different and contradictory creation stories in Genesis, so that the editors who put Genesis together were obviously not fundamentalists. (They believed that both accounts were equally inspired, in which case the inspiration obviously did not refer to the literal truth of the accounts, but to deeper meanings). She also points out briefly that the historical details of Genesis are usually wrong--it is full of anachronisms. Armstrong does not try however to reconstruct the true history of the events that Genesis describes. She spends most of the book speculating on the psychology of the protagonists (including God) as revealed in the Genesis story. In doing this, she is scathingly critical of nearly everyone. Noah is castigated as a drunkard and child abuser, Abraham as a bad father (because he rejected Ishmael and traumatized Isaac for life by nearly killing him), Isaac as an all-round loser, and Joseph as an arrogant ___. Jacob receives an especially bad press, mainly because of his bad treatment of his senior wife Leah and his cold indifference to his daughter's rape. God is not spared! Armstrong points out, with ruthless logic, that his behavior in Genesis can be judged as incompetent, unfair and even evil. Bottom-line: while Armstrong's scholarship and logic are as always superb, it is important to remember that she is presenting an openly subjective and speculative analysis, with which the reader is free to agree or disagree. However, no reader can come away from this book without a better understanding of Genesis. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read the Bible, whether as a devout believer (Jew or Christian or Muslim) or as a curious agnostic.
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65 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Genesis with no mention of the Nephilim!? Bah!, February 4, 2001
This review is from: In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis (Paperback)
"In the Beginning" takes a modern look at the teachings of the book that starts it all, Genesis. I suspect that the read should be enjoyable to the believers and unbelievers alike. ( believers, excluding fundamentalists who are offended when anyone suggests anything less than orthodox about Yahweh ) In the earlier portions of Armstrong's work, she hits the nail right on the head about why people misinterpret this book. (and all of scripture for that matter) They treat scripture as a "holy encyclopedia" as she put it. They think that every word in Genesis is literal, and that evolutionary biology is gravely mistaken. Karen reminds us that, "The true meaning of scripture can never be wholly comprised in a literal reading of the text, since that text points beyond itself to a reality which cannot adequately be expressed in words and concepts. " (pp. 5) And that, "Our authors are not interested in historical accuracy." (pp. 7) We might regard a 'myth' as an untruth, but in the premodern world it was regarded as a psychological form charting the inner world. Her commentary's main focus is on the nature of religion, and God himself. She looks at it then and now, and brings up the difference in portrayal as given in the book of Genesis and modern Christian theology. She purports to show God as arbitrary, big emphasis on this, and unpredictable. Not only this but that the Genesis authors are inconsistent when writing about God, we can't fully understand the divine. She compares what "faith" was in that day, how a true religious life was lived, and the emphasis of all the great religions, kindness to others. You should try this work if you would like to open up to an alternate perspective on the God of the Israelites, and his intervention in human antiquity.
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