When I was in a seminary, all the books I was referring were written by scholars who have assumed authority in interpreting the scripture. And that is where I was looking if I needed any help. But all that has changed as I was reading "The Good Book," by David Poltz. I ask, Is there a right way to read the Bible? The author, who is the editor of Slate, was thumbing through the Hebrew Bible when he came across the gruesome story of Dinah (in which a young woman is raped, betrothed to the rapist and then widowed thanks to her brothers' murderous rage). Plotz, a mostly unobservant Jew, was aghast--both at the bloody, morally ambiguous plotline and at his own ignorance of its existence. He realized that his biblical education had been woefully insufficient. "Needless to say," he writes, "this isn't a story they taught me at Temple Sinai's Hebrew school in 1980." So he challenged himself to sit down and read the Hebrew Bible from beginning (Genesis) to end (Chronicles). He read a verse or two a day and blogged about it.
Amusing, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, "The Good Book" succeeds because its tone straddles the line between irreverent and awestruck. Plotz as a lay reader is wandering in a strange land full of eccentric people and incomprehensible rules. From Samson and Delilah, he takes away these lessons: "1. Women are deceptive and heartless." And
"2. Men are too stupid and sex-crazed to realize this."
The story of Abraham and Isaac brings him--as it does everybody with a beating heart--to his knees: "As a father, I find this nearly impossible to read. Abraham does not try to distance himself from Isaac, to separate himself from the child he must kill. Isaac remains 'my son,' 'my son'."
Questions of authority will inevitably come up, especially among Jewish and Christian conservatives. Who is this Plotz?, readers may wonder. What right has he to interpret the Bible for the rest of us? Plotz, to his credit, does not claim any credentials; he flat-out confesses his ignorance. Still, my teachers at the seminary might caution against Plotz's offhand approach: a young man, a computer, a Bible and a big cup of coffee with no regard for traditional interpretation method with no theological background. But I am reminded here of the Protestant Reformation, which took "right" interpretations out of the hands of church authorities and gave the Bible to the people--in the languages they spoke at home. It was a revolution.
The Bible has of late been so mired in conversations about who's got it right and who's got it wrong that regular people who don't have a stake in the culture wars may have forgotten what a revelation it is to read. It's fun. It's inexplicable. It's dramatic. It's bloody and violent.
Though I don't agree on some of the author's interpretation, reading the "The Good Book" made me in complet agreement with Plotz, "The worst thing to do with a Bible," he says, "is to leave it on the shelf, thinking that someone else may have a better or smarter idea about it. The best thing? Read it. After reading, ask questions, argue and talk."
"The Good Book" is all about you and the bible.
