Customer Reviews

You Shall Be As Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Erich Fromm is not only an interesting thinker but a fine writer, and in this book, one of many that he has written and all of which I have read, he outlines what he calls a radical humanist interpretation of the Old Testament and its history and traditions. In this interpretation, the concept of God evolved from that of a jealous, vengeful spirit to that of a constitutional monarch, and ultimately to a nameless God who is bound by the same morals and principles that govern humankind. Fromm is convincing in his arguments, and even for those readers who will remain unconvinced after the reading of the book, all will no doubt take away an appreciation of the depth of his scholarship.

All of the three major Western religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, owe their origins to the Old Testament, whether this is acknowledged or not, and all have to this day a powerful influence on the lives of millions of people. And yes, as Fromm states in the book, the world's populations do hold a materialistic philosophy that is coupled with ever-increasing globalization and technology, but the acquisition of material goods and the indulgence of their pleasures coexists with a commitment to spirtual values and religion. This superposition of religious and materialistic philosophy shows no sign of abatement.

The radical humanism of Fromm is a philosophy that is delightfully optimistic, and emphasizes the capacity of humans to develop their intellectual powers, to become fully independent, to understand reality as it is, and a renunciation of the initiation of force, the latter of which, Fromm argues, results in intellectual disintegration and emotional dependence. Eschewing a static allegiance to doctrines and concepts that therefore become divorced from experience, Fromm encourages the thinking of concepts as dynamic objects, and cautious that "they have their own lives", and can be aliented from the experiences by which they were invented (discovered). Forgetting the roots of a conceptual structure in experience will transform it to ideology, argues Fromm, and this ideology will usurp the underlying reality of human experience. History will become a history of ideologies, rather than a history of concrete, real individuals who produce ideas. Conceptual structures according to Fromm can never adequately express the experience from which they refer to, and the symbols used allow communication of experiences. But, this also allows an alienation of their use, since such structures are incomplete, and a rush to fill in the gaps, to pad the system, results in one that appears complete, but in reality is still fragmented. It then tends to a state of stagnation and sterility, making it inert and useless. Such is the history of religious concepts in particular, asserts Fromm.

Fromm's interpretation of the Old Testament is essentially as follows: Stage 1: A dictatorial God as absolute ruler, jealous of the human potential to be God's rival. The use of force and brutality characterizes such a God, who expels Adam and Eve from Paradise and limits human lifetime to 120 years. Stage 2: God establishes a covenant with Noah and his descendants, promising to never again flood the Earth. For Fromm, the concept of the covenant is one of the most decisive steps in the evolution of Judaism, in that it leads to a conception of complete freedom for humankind, in particular freedom from God. God and human beings become partners in a treaty, this transforming God from an absolute ruler into a constitutional monarch. God then has less freedom to be brutal, to disrepect human life and other living creatures. Abraham's numerical challenge to God at Sodom and Gommorrah is offered in evidence. Abraham's confidence in the principle of universal justice is a departure from the concept of human beings as meek supplicants, fearful of God's reprisals. Stage 3: The rejection of idols and the subsequent concept of God as a nameless God. One must talk to God, not about him, the latter results in idolatry. The philosophy of Moses Maimonides is offered as evidence of this. The "negative theology" of Maimonides allows only the employment of attributes of actions of God. Both God and humans in this stage become subjected to the same universal principles of truth and justice, and their relationships is no longer confrontational . Conceptions of God then evolve to the more abstract, with God working through history ("horizontally"), and not into it ("vertically").

Fromm's viewpoints on sin and repentance are also very interesting. He points out that in the story of Adam's fall, no mention is made of Adam having committed a sin. Fromm also gives interesting arguments that support his notion that the Old Testament scriptures do not state that humans are intrinsically evil. Humans can choose good with the same potential as their choice for evil, is his reading of these scriptures. The Biblical view, at least from the standpoint of the Old Testament, argues Fromm, is that humans can choose between life and death, good versus evil, and their does not exist any compulsion to choose one rather than the other. God points out the alternatives and asks us to choose life and the good.

Erich Fromm has been away from us for 22 years now, but his writings are to this day still studied diligently by many individuals and they still have a lot to say about human beings, their beliefs, and their relationship to reality. With the complexity of life and knowledge increasing at an accelerating rate, humans now can make copies of themselves, can create thinking machines from mere sand, can travel in space, and can live their lives in ways that the ancient writers of the Old Testament never envisioned. Fromm translates Deuteronomy 30:19: "....I have set before you life and death, choose life....". I think if Fromm were alive, being the optimist he is, he would be proud of what humans now stand for, despite some areas of conflict in the world.

Humans have indeed chosen life, and have become as gods.......

This book shows how the Old Testament contained some key humanistic ideas that did transform our culture. This is the most historical of the books written by Erich Fromm. The commentary made the Old Testament feel both alive and strangely modern for me. The book quotes the Old Testament extensively in a kind of psychological, sociological, and liberal biblical study. This makes the book fairly rare and unique. I would recommend it to anyone who likes reading Erich Fromm and who wants to see a different side of him.

Fromm, a radical humanist (and a nonbeliever in God) still writes in the great Jewish tradition of optimism and of belief in human potential. Fromm had an excellent traditional Jewish upbringing, and although more traditional thinkers will disagree with his conclusions, they are at least well grounded in Old Testament texts.

The book is a bit dated in that one of its intellectual underpinnings is the belief that human beings can perfect themselves through self-understanding, specifically through psychoanalysis. The twenty-first century has not been charitable to that conclusion.

Fromm is a modernist, a humanist and an optimist and interprets Jewish tradition from this perspective. In this book he offers a radically humanist interpretation of the Old Testament: God evolving from an absolute monarch to a constitutional monarch - bound by the same morals and principles that govern humankind. This view is optimistic because it emphasizes our capacity to develop intellectually and become fully independent and free because of our ability to comprehend reality. This interpretation of Judaism could only have developed in the 20th century. It is an interpretation that has great attraction for me and without which I could not have written my own book "The Optimistic Jew: a Positive Vision for the Jewish People in the 21st Century".