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69 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You mean THAT'S in the BIBLE?, January 16, 1998
In a society obsessed with religion, it is hard to imagine that, for most people, the Bible is virtually an unknown book. True, many American households have one gathering dust on the bookshelf, yet if the spine is cracked at all, it's generally for the purpose of finding out great-grandma's maiden name. The fact that the Bible is seldom read in its entirety in our day makes Jonathan Kirsch's new book, THE HARLOT BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD (Ballantine Books, 1997; 378 pages), that much more of value, for in pointing out some of its "forbidden tales," the author might just send his reader back to the source. In HARLOT, Kirsch has picked out seven tales from the Hebrew Scriptures which set center-stage humankind in all its sinful glory. The accounts include rape, murder, genocide, and wholesale slaughter, all drawn from Holy Writ, and include such famous names as Lot, Moses, and even King David. Readers used to getting their Bible stories from Sunday services or Grolier adaptations will no doubt be shocked by what the Word of God includes. Yet Kirsch is not writing with the now popular Bible-bashing attitude of, say, a Lloyd Graham (DECEPTIONS AND MYTHS OF THE BIBLE). While he does accept modern-day theories as to the authorship of the biblical canon, his purpose is not to poke fun; rather, he extracts from each of the tales he recounts something of value, whether it be historical or practical. This makes the book good reading for both believers and unbelievers seeking to get a handle on some of the cultural mysteries of biblical times. Kirsch's format is instrumental in doing this. For each of the seven tales, he recounts the narrative in novelistic style, and provides detailed examinations of the various factors involved. This is particularly effective in his chapter entitled "Tamar and Judah," where he explains the concept of brother-in-law marriage, the status of women in patriarchal times, and the true "sin" of Onan (it's not masturbation). Extensive documentation from ancient and modern times is considered, though Kirsch never strays far from the biblical source. It's an approach that should please both scholars and casual readers alike.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Stories Not Told in Sunday School, August 23, 2005
This review is from: Harlot by the Side of the Road (Paperback)
I'm an atheist who also happens to have a strong interest in religious history and theology. I find the Old Testament captivating because both God and humanity are depicted with a variety of traits, both positive and negative. The complexity of its characters makes for stories far richer and true to life than a simple morality play.
With "The Harlot By The Side Of The Road" Kirsch has plucked some of the most provocative biblical tales to demonstrate this point.I was already familiar with the seduction of Lot by his daughters. But other Bible stories, such as that of Tamar and Judah, were new and interesting to me. Thus I found Kirsch's book to be a very useful guide to discovering these hidden scriptures.
I must admit, however, that I usually preferred the succinct text of the Bible to Kirsch's imagination fuelled re-tellings. I highly recommend that readers carefully read the scripture itself before jumping into Kirsch's version. For example, Kirsch often attributes thoughts and feelings to the characters not clearly indicated by the biblical text. This is perhaps Kirsch's attempt at the Jewish tradition of Midrashic writing. But certain readers may end up being confused about what the Bible actually says.
Another significant portion of the book includes examination and interpretation of the stories presented. Kirsch presents his own point of view while also discussing the research of other religious scholars. This section of the book is interesting enough. But actually my favorite parts were towards the end. The final chapter - "God's Novel Has Suspense" - is where Kirsch espouses his ideas about why the Old Testament still holds purpose and power for us today. The appendix provides a fascinating look into who wrote the various sections of the Herbew Bible and how these writings were collected and translated. He even makes a fairly strong case that the writer "J", who wrote much of Genesis was, in fact, a woman and thus many of the most important stories of the Bible are actually told from a female prespective. Good stuff!
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sound, accessible and tons of fun, August 17, 2004
Lot's daughters drug and rape their own father. Jacob's sons sacrilegiously slaughter Hamor's recently-circumcised clan. YHWH's night attack on Moses is thwarted by a perplexing smearing of blood. A Levite abandons his concubine to gang rape and uses her death to foment genocide. All of these tales are in the Bible. Yet their content is peculiar, distasteful and difficult to reconcile with modern preferences for a God who is undemanding and unthreatening.
"The Harlot by the Side of the Road" is no mere unmasking of the sensational parts of the bible. Author Jonathan Kirsch retells each tale in a modern novelistic style, interspersed with the biblical accounts themselves, allowing us to read the original and its retelling side by side. Kirsch then uses these tales as springboards to explore ancient social mores as well as the development of the Bible itself. Kirsch helps the reader to recognize and set aside the strong moral and xenophobic tone of post-Exilic editors, allowing a peek into the looser social practices that held sway prior to Israel's return from captivity.
The book's subtitle, "Forbidden Tales of the Bible" is a bit of an overstatement. While it's hard to find a home for these tales in a typical liturgical setting, the tales are hardly forbidden. What ought to be forbidden (at least taken with a grain of salt) are the head-spinning interpretations of some serious biblical scholars. Kirsch skims the conclusions of a number of scholarly schools--including Freudian, rabbinical, radical feminist and traditional--before finally settling on something more reasonable. Tamar's seduction of father-in-law (and patriarch) Judah, for instance, is difficult only if you insist that biblical morality never changed. But learning that the anti-prostitution Mosaic moral code postdated Judah's time by hundreds of years helps us to see Judah's behavior as less of an aberration.
"The Harlot by the Side of the Road" provides no illicit thrills. But it may scandalize those who reject the idea that the Bible went through hundreds of years of telling and editing. Truth be told, Kirsch is on sound scholarly ground. The ideas in this book are old news in any middle-of-the-road biblical history course, including those taught in seminaries.
For those who want a window into the violent and alien world of ancient Israel, and who are open to the idea that the Bible is a book with human fingerprints all over it, this book is strongly recommended.
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