Harlot by the Side of the Road

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Summary: The Hebrew Bible is one racy book, and God is no saint.
Review: Kirsch is a wonderful writer and a talented scholar, two elements that make this a breezy read about a weighty topic. Skeptics and believers alike can take away important lessons from this book. First, the Hebrew Bible is filled with bodice-ripping, blood-and-thunder stories, the likes of which even Hollywood seldom delivers. Second, the Hebrew tribal god was no choir boy. This might blast your faith in the "loving God" preached from many pulpits, but in a lot of ways, it's a richer mythology than the sacharine, milquetoast version of deity. Through seven shocking tales of rape, incest, and murder in the Hebrew Bible, Kirchner explores such topics as oral traditions, biblical criticism, history and culture, feminism, and spirtuality. Although written from a Jewish perspective, Kirsch is mindful of Islamic and, especially, Christian readers who also consider the Hebrew Bible as scripture. I highly recommend this book, and look forward to reading Kirsch's newer book on Moses.

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Summary: Interesting but sloppy scholarship
Review: Kirsch's retellings of these bible stories are interesting, although they sometimes flatly contradict the actual text of the Bible. It is always fun to read what people think of these stories, but Kirsch's scholarship is sloppy: (1) He surveys only liberal biblical schoalrship, referring to it as "the consensus of biblical scholarship," and ignoring a whole string of other views (2) He makes anachrnoistic mistakes (3) He apparently was not much familiar with the bible to begin with if he did not know these stories existed. When he does approach them, he does so with a skewed view, and without a history of studying the bible in its entirety for its own sake. (4) Intent on revealing some supposedly supressed tale beneath the text, he ignores the plain meaning of the text. If you are not familiar with the Bible, please read it in its entirety first, and don't swallow everything you read here.

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Summary: Honesty is the best policy
Review: Looking at the Bible with an open mind can be so refreshing and Kirsch uses a brutal honesty that reveals the Bible for what it is: a book of mythology, mixed with a little history and morality, that is very flawed. Anyone who wishes to claim that the Bible is the perfect word of God probably hasn't read it very carefully or is in serious denial. Kirsch has done excellent research for this book and certainly qualifies as an authority on the subject.

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Summary: Sound, accessible and tons of fun
Review: Lot's daughters drug and rape their own father. Jacob's sons sacrilegiously slaughter Hamor's recently-circumcised clan. YHWH's night attack on Moses is thwarted by a perplexing smearing of blood. A Levite abandons his concubine to gang rape and uses her death to foment genocide. All of these tales are in the Bible. Yet their content is peculiar, distasteful and difficult to reconcile with modern preferences for a God who is undemanding and unthreatening.

"The Harlot by the Side of the Road" is no mere unmasking of the sensational parts of the bible. Author Jonathan Kirsch retells each tale in a modern novelistic style, interspersed with the biblical accounts themselves, allowing us to read the original and its retelling side by side. Kirsch then uses these tales as springboards to explore ancient social mores as well as the development of the Bible itself. Kirsch helps the reader to recognize and set aside the strong moral and xenophobic tone of post-Exilic editors, allowing a peek into the looser social practices that held sway prior to Israel's return from captivity.

The book's subtitle, "Forbidden Tales of the Bible" is a bit of an overstatement. While it's hard to find a home for these tales in a typical liturgical setting, the tales are hardly forbidden. What ought to be forbidden (at least taken with a grain of salt) are the head-spinning interpretations of some serious biblical scholars. Kirsch skims the conclusions of a number of scholarly schools--including Freudian, rabbinical, radical feminist and traditional--before finally settling on something more reasonable. Tamar's seduction of father-in-law (and patriarch) Judah, for instance, is difficult only if you insist that biblical morality never changed. But learning that the anti-prostitution Mosaic moral code postdated Judah's time by hundreds of years helps us to see Judah's behavior as less of an aberration.

"The Harlot by the Side of the Road" provides no illicit thrills. But it may scandalize those who reject the idea that the Bible went through hundreds of years of telling and editing. Truth be told, Kirsch is on sound scholarly ground. The ideas in this book are old news in any middle-of-the-road biblical history course, including those taught in seminaries.

For those who want a window into the violent and alien world of ancient Israel, and who are open to the idea that the Bible is a book with human fingerprints all over it, this book is strongly recommended.

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Summary: Contradictions of Holy Writ
Review: Put this with Kirsch's other book Moses: A Life, and you have an interesting combination that points to the power of editors to reshape not only history, but three world religions. It reveals the politics that have been played since day one. It's a good read, the both of them, and it makes being a skeptic easier.

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Summary: An eye-opening journey through faith and doubt.
Review: Respectful yet challenging, "The Harlot by the Side of the Road" is a a riviting read and a crash course in the history of the Hewbrew Bible. Kirsh tackles head-on the Bible stories most scholars sweep under the rug, and instead singles them out for spotlight attention. He examines how and why such incongruous, even irreligious seeming stories could be part of the bible by analyzing what message they were meant to convey, and in what cultural context they would have originally been understood. Fascinating stuff! I've given copies to a number of friends, some religious, some not, and all have agreed it's not only enlightening, but a page-turner as well!

Rating:
Summary: An eye-opening journey through faith and doubt.
Review: Respectful yet challenging, "The Harlot by the Side of the Road" is a a riviting read and a crash course in the history of the Hewbrew Bible. Kirsh tackles head-on the Bible stories most scholars sweep under the rug, and instead singles them out for spotlight attention. He examines how and why such incongruous, even irreligious seeming stories could be part of the bible by analyzing what message they were meant to convey, and in what cultural context they would have originally been understood. Fascinating stuff! I've given copies to a number of friends, some religious, some not, and all have agreed it's not only enlightening, but a page-turner as well!

Rating:
Summary: An eye-opening journey through faith and doubt.
Review: Respectful yet challenging, "The Harlot by the Side of the Road" is a a riviting read and a crash course in the history of the Hewbrew Bible. Kirsh tackles head-on the Bible stories most scholars sweep under the rug, and instead singles them out for spotlight attention. He examines how and why such incongruous, even irreligious seeming stories could be part of the bible by analyzing what message they were meant to convey, and in what cultural context they would have originally been understood. Fascinating stuff! I've given copies to a number of friends, some religious, some not, and all have agreed it's not only enlightening, but a page-turner as well!

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Summary: Classic example of the "Liberal" approach
Review: The author retells various Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) grasping hold of every possible ambiguity and innuendo to inject sex into the story, even if it is not overtly present. The text is a classic example of a male pandering to the liberal feminist perspective. The women in the stories are transformed into heroines (yes, even Lot's two daughters are heroines) and the male characters are generally vilified, along with the scheming misogynist Rabbis who perpetuate the "traditional" readings and the nefarious scribes who emended the texts to suit their personal agendas. Kirsch questions everyone's motives but his own, injecting salacious interpretations all the way.

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Summary: fasinating biblical commentary
Review: This book did a wonderful job of adding to my understanding of what is actually being said in the bible. His technique is to tell an expanded version of each story alongside a traditional translation then comment on the passages. The comments will talk about what in the language justifies his version, how the story has been interpreted at various times and what meaning can be taken from the story. The commentary is the most interesting part since it expands on nuances and background information that I can not get from the straight text. I wish that he had talked about more than the sensationalist stories.