Bible

Having created the world, journeyed through the wilderness, come up with a bewildering array of laws, counted everybody, killed an awful lot of people for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, laid out detailed plans for buildings, fended off attacks from heathens and finally stumbled across a remotely human character, perhaps it is time for a bit of a breather. At the start of Exodus we were more than happy to buy into this nice, slow, Disney-style story about some kid who was abandoned by his parents and who was conveniently raised in a palace by a princess of some sort. But it wasn’t long before we were thrust into raining frogs, rivers of blood, deaths of firstborns etc. - all of the apocalyptic standards. Our thrust through the desert might have been pretty placid too, had our intrepid protagonist not spent all his time up on mountains writing down what God wants, which afforded an opportunity for his friends not so chummy with the man upstairs the opportunity to turn their backs on God and start worshipping cows.

And so it was as a man exhausted, demoralised and drenched in the blood of the wicked that I began to read the book of Samuel. No luck here. So rather than launch into another diatribe where I point out or what a brilliant black comedy some parts of this book make, I thought that it might be nice for my less religious readers (no pun intended) to provide a bit of a thematic catch up. But before that, a quick entertaining tale from the beginning of the Book of Samuel:

Eli, who has already had some bad luck by having both of his sons die from no known cause (God) on the same day, is startled by some news. He falls backwards off his chair and breaks his neck. Whether this is funny or terrifying depends on how you feel about God. If you’d read Genesis, Exodus and Judges you’d rightly be very afraid.

I’ve spent the last few months, when my editor has had space for me, reviewing the Bible, which is, broadly, the authorised biography of God. Unlike the sorts of plodding, tedious authorised biographies that one might read if one had any interest in dreary politicians or self indulgent royals, this book doesn’t seem to contain much of the ‘reputation management’ characteristic of the official story. This biography is ‘warts and all’. Clearly God feels that it is more important to understand him than to love him, or perhaps he simply felt as these early stages of biography were being drafted, that it was more important to fear him. God puts other celebrated autocrats in the shade as far as arbitrary, terrible justice goes, and clearly that’s important to him. Particular recurring themes are ethnic purity, the importance of obedience and the invincibility of God and those he has chosen. Moving forward we have seen something of a softening of these things. God’s chosen leaders have become fallible, or rather, their failings are no longer punished by an instant smiting. In terms of the theme of the Bible as a whole, this softening continues more or less at pace to the end of the narrative, though a casual reader will find the level of severity increase in a marked fashion at the end with Revelations and the letters of Paul, these read rather like the letters of Pat Robertson appended to a biography of John Paul II.

So I should go on. I am in blood stepped in so far etc. But following God through the first 2,500 years of his activity is exhausting. Hopefully there will be some bloodless, lawless distractions for Samuel and David. Seems unlikely.