Quaker Pagan Reflections

I'm up to Acts in my blitzkrieg tour of the Bible. (Clearly, there's a whole lot of prophets I've missed and will need to go back for--this Biblical literacy notion is not for sissies. ) I don't believe I've ever read Acts before. Though I was not raised Christian, still, I've dipped into the Bible once or twice over the years. I've done my time in Deuteronomy, having had it quoted at me by the soapbox preachers at my colleges; I've waded before through the Sea of Reeds (or the Red Sea--both are fine by me) with the Israelites heading out of Egypt--first in a children's Bible I read as a girl, and later in the King James I borrowed from the public library. (And with Charleton Heston, of course. How many of us owe our limited Bible literacy to the Omega Man ?) I've skimmed the occasional psalm, and made it most of the way through the gospels thanks to an adorable little palm-sized book another campus Christian group was handing out for free....

They probably should never let Pagans own Bibles, much less read them. (Too late now.) I'm up to Job . Though this post is going to be more inspired by an excerpt from Archibald MacLeish's play J.B . , based on Job, than by the Biblical text itself. Bear with me. Job is probably the central book of the Bible for Pagans, whether we've read it or not. However monotheists might come to terms with it, Job cannot satisfy the polytheistic Pagan mind. Job, of course, is the story of the long suffering and faithful man whose trust in God is put to the test by God--and thereby, indirectly, the omnipotent, omniscient God himself is tested. And (theoretically) vindicated. Theodicy: "The vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil," says my Oxford American Dictionary, though "suffering" is probably a better word, to my mind, than "evil". The intellectual problem, as Archibald MacLeish had his version of Satan put it,...

Part I: A freaky little book Part II: A Convergent Conversation / Small Gods Part III: The Human Face of God / And the LORD saw what He had made… Part IV: A few things missing Part V: An Evolving Covenant / The Initiatory Challenge Postscript: The Expulsion from Eden Afterward: Why does it matter? I’m writing this from New England Yearly Meeting Sessions 2008. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind for the last two or three days, so I’ve been away from the blog for a while. I’ve written six impassioned posts after an in-depth reading of Genesis and a perusal of several commentaries. I’ve gotten dozens of lively and intelligent comments. But I’m coming back to it now with a much broader question than any I’ve asked so far: What does it matter? Having learned what I’ve learned about J and P and E , and about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, what has that told me (if anything) about G*d, or about Quakers, or about my own spiritual life? The Bible was written by writers, and I’ve long felt that m...

Part I: A freaky little book Part II: A Convergent Conversation / Small Gods Part III: The Human Face of God / And the LORD saw what He had made… Part IV: A few things missing Part V: An Evolving Covenant / The Initiatory Challenge Postscript: The Expulsion from Eden Afterward: Why does it matter? Some readers questioned my describing the punishments of Adam and Eve as "relatively light." Marshall Massey and Tiffany both point out that compared to the easy life in Eden, a subsistence farmer watching his wife die in childbirth has a pretty rough time of it. And yes, I can't disagree, but I was comparing the punishment in Genesis to more modern conceptions of damnation. Take, for instance, this description by Jonathan Edwards: We can conceive but little of the matter; we cannot conceive what that sinking of the soul in such a case is. But to help your conception, imagine yourself to be cast into a fiery oven, or of a great furnace, where your pain would ...

Part I: A freaky little book Part II: A Convergent Conversation / Small Gods Part III: The Human Face of God / And the LORD saw what He had made… Part IV: A few things missing Part V: An Evolving Covenant / The Initiatory Challenge Postscript: The Expulsion from Eden Afterward: Why does it matter? This will be the last in the series of posts about Genesis, and I'm a slow enough reader that you shouldn't expect my posts on Exodus until Christmas at the earliest. Reading the Bible with this level of detail is going to wind up being a five or six year project. Worth it...but slow. The Evolving Covenant The last big surprise for me in Genesis is that the "covenant” between YHWH and his chosen people is established at least four separate times, and each time it’s a little different, with more conditions added. The first time God approaches Abram, he's almost like Doctor Who picking up a new companion. He just sidles up to him and says, Hey, come al...

Part I: A freaky little book Part II: A Convergent Conversation / Small Gods Part III: The Human Face of God / And the LORD saw what He had made… Part IV: A few things missing Part V: An Evolving Covenant / The Initiatory Challenge Postscript: The Expulsion from Eden Afterward: Why does it matter? Here are a few things that are flatly missing from Genesis: There is no definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. Most of the patriarchs either had two wives or a wife and a concubine, and YHWH clearly had no problem with this. There is no individual salvation. When YHWH tells Abraham that he’s passed all the tests and won the big payoff, what he promises is “I will therefore bestow my blessing upon you and make your offspring as numerous as the stars in heaven and the sands on the seashore; and your descendants shall take over the gates of their enemies. All the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your descendants—all because you obeyed ...

Part I: A freaky little book Part II: A Convergent Conversation / Small Gods Part III: The Human Face of God / And the LORD saw what He had made… Part IV: A few things missing Part V: An Evolving Covenant / The Initiatory Challenge Postscript: The Expulsion from Eden Afterward: Why does it matter? This series of posts began as entries in my journal, and I had some concerns that publishing them could seriously offend people. I’m glad to see that the comments so far have been positive. More than that—I’m glad to see that I’m not being taken as just sarcastic and cynical. The Human Face of God People talk about the God of the Old Testament being grand and majestic and cosmic, in contrast to the New Testament where Jesus takes on human form so that we can relate to him. And, yeah, the chapters prior to the Flood have God doing things like creating Heaven and Earth and establishing day and night. But those creation stories really seem like an afterthought. Gods se...

Part I: A freaky little book Part II: A Convergent Conversation / Small Gods Part III: The Human Face of God / And the LORD saw what He had made… Part IV: A few things missing Part V: An Evolving Covenant / The Initiatory Challenge Postscript: The Expulsion from Eden Afterward: Why does it matter? Fair warning: I am a starry-eyed neophyte in the area of Old Testament theology. I’m reading the Hebrew Scriptures for the first time, and while I’m gobbling down several commentaries along with it, my observations here are anything but scholarly. Fair warning #2: I'm going to be a bit irreverent at times. So many of the stories and anecdotes in Genesis are as familiar to me as Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood, and when they’re told out of context, they have that same kind of storybook quality as the Grimm’s Fairy Tales, but when the stories are read within the whole book of Genesis, but without all of the pious Christian preconceptions that I grew up wi...

Part I: A freaky little book Part II: A Convergent Conversation / Small Gods Part III: The Human Face of God / And the LORD saw what He had made… Part IV: A few things missing Part V: An Evolving Covenant / The Initiatory Challenge Postscript: The Expulsion from Eden Afterward: Why does it matter? I have begun a serious re-reading of the Bible. It’s been a while. I stopped being Christian rather precipitously about 25 years ago, and even back then, I was focused almost entirely on the Gospels. This time around I’m starting with Genesis. Cat favors the King James translation. She’s an English teacher, so the archaisms of the language don’t bother her and she likes the way the KJV can really make the poetry sing. Back when I was Christian, I read Good News For Modern Man in high school and then took a liking to the Jerusalem Bible when I was in college, and eventually took a year of ancient Greek, hoping to read the Gospels in the original. I don’t rememb...