This title is puzzling, and in my humble opinion, not the best editorial choice. Very ambiguous. Generally, I notice how recent academic publications of bible scholarship are inclined to take some suspicious, clickbaity titles like “How the Bible Became a Book”, “Who Wrote the Bible”, or, a recent one – “Who Really Wrote the Bible”. To my surprise though, all the said titles turned out to be great reads, and I intend to write about them as well soon. Now back to Jacob L. Wright’s book. This book attempts to explain its title in the first pages, thus going a step further, and that’s what actually got me hooked: by explaining why different compilations came into existence, preservation, distribution and eventually, codification as authoritative, one can answer another pressing question: why did all of it survive and thrive, till our very times. How a small and powerless ethnic group, managed to create a spiritual behemoth that is the Abrahamic religions, is a question that always blew my mind.
Now, for most believers and religious readers, that question has a seemingly simple answer in the form of divine intervention. But not so fast. Divine intervention is not synonymous with magic. The ascension of the bible was not magical. It took mundane, traceable and documentable paths. Sure, that process encompasses many anomalies and coincidences that would surely qualify – in their entirety – as divine intervention. But the book attempts at looking at that empirically, through academic lenses.
Each chapter of the book opens with a discussion of a biblical character – some of which, to my delight, are among the more peripheral ones – Nehemiah, Micah, Hagai, alongside more known figures like King David, Miriam, Deborah and more. It showcases the way in which each of the biblical texts at hand is unique for its time, in two major ways: Accepting defeat, and democratizing scripture.
Owning defeat, analyzing it, detailing the sins that justify it – that goes against the contemporary trend of writing almost exclusively about victories, glorious kings, divine beings and bigger-than-life heroes. By exploring the painful experiences of destruction that came about the Judean society by the hands of the Babylonians, the more “conventional” biblical literature that deals with kings and divine action got tied together with the more relevant, though painful, literary works that explore this defeat. It is in this context that books like Lamentations, for example, become way more interesting and consequential than I ever saw it to be, alongside easier reads like Kings or Jeremiah.
Democratizing scripture is a tougher case to make. Its primary reasons, Wright agues, were the de-facto unification between Judah and Israel from Hezekaiah’s times and on, and the need to preserve identity that lacks central government. To be fair, it isn’t a hard case to make in itself: the bible calls its reader to identify with a whole host of marginal elements in society such as women, slaves, proselytes, widows, etc. Some of its greatest heroes – like the patriarchs, for example, are glorified for things the common man can easily identify with, such as bearing offsprings, acquiring land for burial, and even finding a wife, and keeping her happy in the marriage. These aren’t the materials of the epic literature we find among the more established civilizations such as the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, etc. As a result, the argument goes, the preservation of this literature was not the interest of a small ruling class that seeks glory and legitimacy, but of an entire nation. Abraham and Sarah’s success in bearing a child, Isaac’s successful unification with Rebecca, Jacob’s family intrigues and their resolutions – were all pivotal moments, leading to the birth of the readers’ nation, whose existence is not, as a result, depended on its success, or even existence, as a mighty kingdom.
That second part of the book, though, I found less exiting to read, as the analysis of the texts was too detailed, and felt more like a Rabbi’s Torah portion speech. But I must admit that even though the individual texts analysis was not always convincing, the big picture does form an interesting attempt at answering the question we opened with.
How did The Bible take over the world – in the form of Judaism, Christianity and Islam? I came across a simpler answer in the work of an Israeli scholar whose books, unfortunately, are not available in English at the time of writing. Yigal Bin-Nun argues that The Bible (and by extension – the Jews and Christians of the first centuries), was admired because it was the greatest literary work of its time, in both quality and quantity. Thus, the religions that enjoyed the prestige that emanates from it – became so prominent, despite its admittedly modest origin in the provincial hills of Judea.
The reason I bring this argument is that it sheds light on a question Neither Bin-Nun nor Wright could answer: what made the Judeans such great writers? How come a provincial, largely rural society of no major political importance, could compile and preserve such a variety of texts in a world that was by and large illiterate? To answer this question, I am now reading the books of William M. Schniedewind, “Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes”, and “How the Bible Became a Book”. I hope to write a review about them soon, so stay tuned!