Specify Books In Favor Of God: A Biography (God in Three Classic Scriptures)
| Original Title: | God: A Biography |
| ISBN: | 0679743685 (ISBN13: 9780679743682) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | God in Three Classic Scriptures |
| Literary Awards: | Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography (1996) |
Jack Miles
Paperback | Pages: 464 pages Rating: 3.92 | 2260 Users | 180 Reviews
Define Based On Books God: A Biography (God in Three Classic Scriptures)
| Title | : | God: A Biography (God in Three Classic Scriptures) |
| Author | : | Jack Miles |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 464 pages |
| Published | : | March 19th 1996 by Vintage (first published 1995) |
| Categories | : | Religion. Nonfiction. Biography. History. Theology |
Interpretation As Books God: A Biography (God in Three Classic Scriptures)
Miles shows us God in the guise of a great literary character, the hero of the Old Testament. In a close, careful, and inspired reading of that testament - book by book, verse by verse - God is seen from his first appearance as Creator to his last as Ancient of Days. The God whom Miles reveals to us is a warrior whose greatest battle is with himself. We see God torn by conflicting urges. To his own sorrow, he is by turns destructive and creative, vain and modest, subtle and naive, ruthless and tender, lawful and lawless, powerful yet powerless, omniscient and blind. As we watch him change amazingly, we are drawn into the epic drama of his search for self-knowledge, the search that prompted him to create mankind as his mirror. In that mirror he seeks to examine his own reflection, but he also finds there a rival. We then witness God's own perilous passage from power to wisdom. For generations our culture's approach to the Bible has been more a reverential act than a pursuit of knowledge about the Bible's protagonist; and so, through the centuries the complexity of God's being and "life" has been diluted in our consciousness. In this book we find - in precisely chiseled relief - the infinitely complex God who made infinitely complex man in his image. Here, we come closer to the essence of that literary masterpiece that has shaped our culture no less than our religious life. In God: A Biography, Jack Miles addresses his great subject with imagination, insight, learning, daring, and dazzling originality, giving us at the same time an illumination of the Old Testament as a work of consummate art and a journey to the secret heart of God.Rating Based On Books God: A Biography (God in Three Classic Scriptures)
Ratings: 3.92 From 2260 Users | 180 ReviewsCrit Based On Books God: A Biography (God in Three Classic Scriptures)
The first time I encountered Jack Miles was in a video of him interviewing Slavoj Zizek about theology and Zizek's book God in Pain. Yet at the time, I didnt quite know who Jack Miles was, and the sort of mythic status he had taken on by then in some intellectual/literary circles. It was only later that I more consciously encountered Jack Miles when his name came up in a PBS program I watched with Bill Moyers interviewing Margaret Atwood on religion. Atwood confessed her love for Miles work andHere we have an unique perspective of someone who doesn't appear to be a man of faith, within the book Miles considers God purely as a literary character that evolves in the unfolding of the canon as ordered in the Tanakh. If Miles is even close to correct in his reading of the Hebrew bible, the God that Jews and Christians worship has very little in common with the extremely ambiguous, amoral and multi-personalitied deity that he thinks the ancient writers conveyed. Towards the end of the book,
God, written as a literary character. I have some ideas on how to review this. Bear with me for a few days.
Okay, another religion book that I am finding too heavy to wade through. Made it a couple of chapters...not a read if you want something light.
Read bits forIntriguing information, but the author's prose is particularly dry and repetitive at times which makes the book hard to get to at times.Otherwise, the analysis of God as a literary character is an analysis not often considered by individuals. Thus, Jack Miles' insights are unique and interesting to think about and may help us understand the motivations and character progression of God within the Old Testament/Tanakh.
Jack Miles takes the approach to consider both the Christian and Hebrew Old Testament(s) as literature and to consider God as literary character. His treatment of the Bible clearly got to some of his reviewers. But from my reading many of his critics did not bother to read the book. His careful scholarship here is pretty interesting. This is not a light book - and indeed one reviewer said it was "dry" - well the subject is dense - but Miles takes a complex subject and applies first rate
I've owned this book for years, but only just gathered the courage to dive in. I guess the Pulitzer should have tipped me off to the quality of the author, but it's been a very pleasant surprise.What I like most is that Miles introduces God as history's most compelling novel character, whose personality shifts and changes in each new chapter. For example, we see both wrathful God and whiny God. Miles argues that insight from reading about God from this perspective casts light on the central
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