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God
First published 1995 · 464 pages
A daring, close-reading exploration that reimagines the deity of the Old Testament as a deeply conflicted, evolving literary protagonist.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like embarking on a meticulous, intellectually thrilling excavation of a classic text. The pace is steady and deliberate, moving verse by verse to construct an epic drama of internal conflict. Instead of a purely reverential atmosphere, the mood is rigorously analytical yet deeply imaginative, inviting the reader to sit with the profound contradictions of a deity torn between destruction and creation, ruthlessness and tenderness. The prose is precisely chiseled, guiding you through a complex psychological landscape where power gradually yields to wisdom. It is a deeply contemplative experience, perfect for readers who delight in literary criticism and want to see a foundational cultural text transformed into a dazzling, character-driven search for self-knowledge.
- Mood
- contemplative
- epic
- intellectually rigorous
- Tone
- analytical
- daring
- insightful
- scholarly
- imaginative
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- search for self-knowledge · internal conflict · the burden of power · literary complexity of the divine · transition from power to wisdom
- The writing
- Careful and precisely chiseled, blending scholarly learning with dazzling originality.
- The arc
- The reader journeys from observing raw, contradictory divine power to witnessing a profound, perilous passage toward wisdom and self-knowledge.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love deep literary criticism and are eager to explore sacred texts through the lens of character development and epic drama.
Content notes
- religious criticism
- discussions of divine violence
About the book
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.
Description from Open Library.
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