Alenka of Bohemia's Reviews > God: An Anatomy

I think it needs to be said that I am a Christian who came to believe in God pretty much on her own. With that out of the way one must say that this book stands for excellent scholarship and readable writing style. I would say it may only offend those who indeed take every word in the Bible as holy and precise, with one meaning only, rather than regard the Book as a testament of the existence of God AS WELL AS a reflection of the times when it was written. Which I would argue we should. The author is a person who has never believed in any God but has always been fascinated by religion, which definitely gives her a unique position in which to present her research and interpretation. She clearly rejects most of the interpretations of the Bible and many translators on the basis that the words written in the Bible should be taken literally. She demonstrates that the way people imagined God in the ancient times was inevitably influenced by other common beliefs, sometimes drawing on even more ancient mythology. Her chief argument is that while today God tends to be viewed as an incorporeal being, He was understood in very corporeal way in the olden days. She makes a wonderful case for this! I learned a great deal about mentality of the people and society in the times during which the Bible was written and as such would heartily recommend this to anyone interested in the subject.

And yet, and yet... I dare say that the author´s insistence of taking every single word and line in the Bible literally cannot possibly be the correct approach, epecially when it comes to poems and songs. People have always relied on imagination, allegory and other means of creativity to make their point and there is no reason to believe that the ancient poets and writers did not do the same. While she clearly has a point that there are many passages in the Bible that have been "sanitized" in later centuries, she also completely refuses to entertain an idea that many of those passages CANNOT be taken literary.

This is a truly fascinating book which clears some of our blindspots. Ironically it has a few of its own.