Customer Reviews

Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible

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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.

Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible

This is a wonderful book, thoughtful and insightful, yet light and easy to read. It examines the inconsistencies, paradoxes and illogicalities of the Old Testament, as well as pointing out the beauty and the grace of its writing. I enjoyed it so much, I bought two copies, one to give as a gift to a friend.

My only quibble is with the wording of the title. It should read "...Every Single Word of the Old Testament," rather than ..."every Single Word of the Bible," since the author takes refuge in his Jewish roots and confines his analysis to the first 39 books of the Bible. That's a pity, because I think his approach would have much to offer us in our understanding of the rest of "The Good Book."

This is a hilarious, insightful, and fascinating journey thought The Book all of us should have read and most of us haven't. With great wit, Plotz explodes our assumptions about the Bible, helps us see our our favorite stories fresh, and takes us to parts of the Bible we've been afraid to enter alone. Good Book is a great book that will enhance your understanding of religion, art, and most of all, life.

Even as an evangelical Christian, I found this book very entertaining and thought-provoking. I rarely agreed with his perpective, but he's a great writer and allowed me to see things FROM that perspective. I laughed several times, thought of a few arguments I might bring up if I ever met Plotz, thought of a few more quibbles with minor points here or there, but NEVER got bored.

I also got the impression I'd enjoy an afternoon talking over these things with Plotz and, while neither of us would probably convince the other, neither of us would go away angry.

I wish he'd tackle the New Testament just because I'm curious to see what he'd say.

I have the same background as the author -- late 30s and never actually read the bible. It sounds like it would be an irreverent book, maybe even borderline disrespectful. I didn't find it to be either, although it's a bit sarcastic at points and rather funny. The author essentially writes down his thoughts every chapter or so, but he is adept at continuing an overall impression of a book or series of chapters because he comments on what he's already read with an uncanny memory for past readings. In addition to his own thoughts, he supplements his commentary with other information, such as what current beliefs are, or what the common Jewish or Christian interpretation of a passage might be. This supplementation offers a nice balance from his less-experienced view, although for someone who never studied the full bible, he really pulls it off.

In any case, I really enjoyed this book. It covers a lot of ground, but it doesn't ever linger in any one spot too long. As there's always a good "stopping point" not far off in one's reading, it makes it easy to put down and pick up again quickly later. It also helps that there are enough inconsistencies pointed out in the bible that you don't necessarily need to keep track of where you left off, although I did find a couple of spots where biblical characters were introduced rather hastily and that made it hard to keep track of them even in a shorter reading session. I wouldn't call it so much as the author's interpretation, although that may be what it is, he definitely comes at this as a blank slate and with an open mind. If anything, this book has actually stimulated a desire inside of me to actually read the bible, even with his wonderful "interpretation".

First off, make no mistake: This is Slate's Blogging the Bible series, expanded. But having read both, there are passages lifted directly from the Slate series. This didn't bother me so much as the recycled material was pretty minimal, and generally the "greatest hits" in any case.

The main thing to remember is that this is not Bible scholarship. If you're looking for a serious examination of the Bible, they're out there. (I'd suggest the Oxford Annotated Study Bible). What this book does do is give a high-level overview of the material, a lay comment, and then moves on. the chapter is noted in case you want to read it yourself, and draw your own conclusion. And when you take it like that, it's a light romp through a pretty dense subject that will, for most people who have never actually read the Bible, increase their literacy of it.

There is a 1 hour discussion with the author, regarding this book, at Bloggingheads TV (check on Google) posted on March 3. You can also read some of his journal, called 'blogging the bible' available at Slate online magazine.

Check it out, if you - like me - are interested in understanding more about the author's perspective before you buy the details of his journey. He is an extra-ordinary author, but you will want to understand that he is coming to the Bible as a cultural re-discovery for a secularized audience.

One reviewer criticized this book and suggested that readers find some other book about the Bible that can tell us what the Bible "really" is about. Who can we say can tell us what the Bible really says? If we can read we can let it tell us what it says. Plotz tells us what it said to him, and I found that that's what it said to me too. I read about a vengeful, spiteful god that goes about for centuries smiting people who have done him (or anyone else) no wrong. Plagues and diseases and suffering are inflicted collectively on communities of one or two persons who had slighted god. Plotz was puzzled about the manifest discrepancies and contradictions and has no answer. Well, they are manifest discrepancies so any explanation has to be exegetic and subjective. That means that the different interpretations can only deepen the contradictions, not explain them. The importance of Plotz's book is that we should just read the Bible as it is, with an open mind and with our understanding of whatever translation we choose. We don't have to agree with Plotz. We can choose to interpret all the divine killings as something divinely just and majestic and be filled with awe that it must represent the act of a loving and just god. I read the Bible often and in many translations; it is Plotz's commentary that made me sit back and tell myself that perhaps we don't have to take the book too seriously. Nothing much in it seemed to have been proved, and we find wonderful characters like Aaron, the brother of Moses who we can love to despise.

For over 30 years I accepted that the Bible was the "Good Book", and that it contained "divine guidance" for the conduct of our lives. Then, as I began to actually READ the contents, I began to realise that this was far from the truth. It contained sexually-explicit stuff which was altogether better than an X-rated novel. and it was obviously NOT written by a "God". If you read the Bible from cover-to-cover, you can't help but realise that this stuff was written by a series of men, who didn't have the knowledge or understanding of the modern world. Yes, it IS a "book of FAITH", but what sort of faith are we talking about here? In actuality, there is very LITTLE to morally guide us - unless you want us to be cruel, vindictive, abhorrent, and altogether nasty. Even the allegedly GOOD parts are actually "conditional love".

I recommend the book to you all - EVERYONE should actually READ their Bible, and know what it actually contains. David Plotz has done a good job of starting you on the path to REAL understanding.

I've read some of this book as and excerpt on slate and have often quoted the passages, other then being an enjoyable book to read it also contains a lot of great information on biblical references for people who have not read the whole Bible for themselves and don't realize just whats in the rest of the book.

I highly recommend this book for people who have not read the whole Bible or just as a reminder of what's in it. Often passages are used to justify an argument ignoring the rest of the Bible or what it contains.

I'm glad David Plotz had the chance to write the story as a book so others can read this work as complete story.

John