Review: Israel's formative years

Remembering Abraham is a very cursory look at the world surrounding the Hebrew bible. Using large strokes, Professor Ronald Hendel describes the importance of Abraham, Moses, and Solomon - leaders whose significance cannot be understated, who are always in discussion. The six loosely connected essays that compose this book don't do a great deal of biblical analysis; they rely more on other scholarly works in order to make points. Unfortunately I think that that makes this book only a good recommender of other texts necessary to understand the Jewish religion and the ancient Hebrew people.

Hendel goes into the idea that the Hebrews were originally a spread out group, much like the city-states of Greece where there was some cultural overlap but every neighbourhood was basically autonomous. It wasn't until outsiders threatened their peace and security that the tribes joined together and started creating a unified political centre.

Interestingly Hendel also goes makes the case that the Hebrews were the first to be interested in historical identity - the first people who looked to the past in order to understand who they are today. According to Arnaldo Momigliano's study The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography, 'The Greeks liked history, but never made it the foundation of their lives. The educated Greek turned to rhetorical schools, to mystery cults, or to philosophy for guidance. History was never an essential part of the life of a Greek. . . . To the biblical Hebrew, history and religion were one.' Which is why there are so many lineage passages in the Hebrew bible (which is also to prove that certain characters in the bible aren't outsiders, Babylonians or Philistines or Egyptians). Abraham himself has the word father 'ab' in part of his name (that is in the ancient Hebrew language).

Tribal genealogy was apex, for as Momigliano goes on: 'If the common man does not know his origins, he is like a mad ape. He who does not know his great and right family connections is like an outsized dragon. He who does not know the circumstances and the course of actions of his noble father and grandfather is like a man who, having prepared sorrow for his children, throws them into this world.' And this is an example that the more interesting material within this book comes from external sources.

The only eye-opening research that I found fascinating within this text was the subchapter 'Moses: Mediator of Memory', where Hendel goes into the concept that 'Moses presents the figure of mediator, someone betwixt-and-between, "with one foot inside and the other outside Egypt." . . . he is the multifaceted man, he is able to unite together all of the stories of Exodus, Sinai, and wanderings into a coherent collective memory.' As in Moses was born a Jew but was raised by Egyptians from birth; he should have been born a slave but was raised in royalty; he had two masters, two kings: Pharaoh and Yahweh. I've never thought of Moses in this light before, but it is kind of staring you in the face when reading the Hebrew bible.

Overall Remembering Abraham was a quiet book that made few ripples. As mentioned before, it's worth a look to see what other texts are out there in order to further study in Judaic studies.

Review: The protean figure of god

Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God details what you’d think it would. Looking at how the concept of god has changed from ‘western’ polytheism to Judaism to Christianity to Islam, Wright investigates the way perception of deity (or deities) have influenced the world. In sometimes entertaining and colloquial prose, this tome adds some interesting characters to the religious debate.

As Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have received praise for their fervent atheism, Wright takes a more agnostic stance. Although he himself may not believe, the book itself looks at the arguments for the case of god in a scientific way, without meddling with the author’s own feelings and inclinations.

Wright brings to light a few personalities that I had hitherto not heard of. Philo, a Greek Jew, tried to piece together the majesty of the Grecian gods with that of the Jewish one; he revealed to the forum-going populace how these religions weren’t all that different from one another. (Judaism originally had several gods, which should not be a surprise to anyone; just at some point, as the ancient state of Israel was being formed, someone had a fantastic idea to either unite them into one or get rid of the excess and have one God with a capital G.) Wright explains how Paul, the epistle writer of New Testament fame, was really like a CEO or ambassador, trying to reign in all the different sects of Christianity springing up so that there was some centralisation.

Unfortunately the Islam section doesn’t seem as well researched as the other sections. It’s quite cursory in comparison, making more sweeping brushstrokes than specific and pointed ones. The focus is on Mohammad’s rise to fame, ability to create armies, and his legacy – it doesn’t discuss any real major theories or texts about Islam instead. There isn’t a thorough discussion on Sunni versus Shi’ite Muslims. Thus, it felt more like a history lesson than a true analysis. There was also more contemporary discussion on the effect of Islam (ie: a chapter devoted to the jihad) than that of the time Islam was born, which was a shame since the Islam part should have been the most fascinating and enlightening section of the book (or at least the section of the book that most ‘western’ readers are going to read this for). It was interesting to note though that the Qu’ran is much more poetic than the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament, poetic mainly in the sense that it has rhymes and rhythms.

Some of the major weaknesses with Wright’s argument, which also happens to be that of the many of Hitchens’s God Is Not Great, is that a) he doesn’t really discuss any ‘eastern’ religions and b) he really is preaching more to the choir, those that are religiously curious. I feel that Hitchens would be ineffective in a dialogue with a ‘true believer’; I don’t think that would be the case with Wright. But I do think that, although Wright argues the evolution of god relatively methodically and scientifically, there are some hurdles that faith won’t overcome – which is in essence what faith is. One cannot fault him for that, but one wishes that there was some give and take.

On the other hand, I thought the greatest strength of this book was the revelation on how economics and economic theory really played a role in shaping the concept of god. God is shaped into what his believers need him to be: the concept that if we were horses god would also look like a horse. Wright goes into game theory and how religion was also (and of course still is) a business, be it an economic or a political one. He also details the importance and controversy of translations and interpretations. Each religion has its issues when it comes to figuring out what its sacred texts really mean, and Wright does an absolutely wonderful and thorough job looking at how words have multiple or layered meanings, as well as how Allah, Yahweh, and Jehovah are even all linguistically related.

Although this is unfortunately a cursory look at Wright’s book itself, The Evolution of God was a very good read, well argued most of the time and fascinating or refreshing every chapter. Weaknesses aside, it was good to be reminded of the powers of religion and how similar the major monotheistic religions really are, as well as their intense and bloodied histories.