Monday, June 29, 2009

"Good Book" by David Plotz


Time spent reading: Many random hours during camp and the subsequent days.

Total time: Easily 5+ hours

322 pages

Harper Collins Books

Published in 2009

I know this might seem a fairly "duh" statement, but David Plotz is a writer; he writes for Slate magazine and columns for a number of other publications. Whenever I saw this I knew that he would have a unique writing style (a la AJ Jacobs), and could make anything sound good, even the Hebrew Bible. And that's what he set out to do. Plotz begins with "I have always been a proud Jew, but never a very observant one." Good Book is an exceptionally funny AND informational story of one man's journey to recover his past and read the Hebrew Bible (Hebrew Bible is the Old Testament in a slightly different order), or as he puts it " The bizarre, hilarious, disturbing, marvelous, and inspiring things I learned when I ready every single word of the bible."

All I have to say is, "wow".

Having never read the Bible, Plotz reads and annotates every passage, even, and especially, the ones most people tend to ignore. While Plotz has grown up in a Jewish family, which still practices the basic aspects of Judaism, he was never truly schooled in the Torah or the entire Hebrew scriptures. So he decided to begin a couple of years ago, and now we have a book to read. Plotz mentions several times that he is no bible scholar, which gives some level of untainted credibility to the words he writes; he does not set off to revolutionize current opinions and analyses on the ancient texts, but rather give a near outsiders commentary.

With that being said, Good Book can be read in a number of ways:

1) Read a book or chapter in the bible, and then read Plotz's commentary. His chapters are mostly divided by books with smaller subdivisions of chapters (i.e. Chapter 5 is Deuteronomy, and the first section is "Chapter 1").

2) Read the book straight through without digging into the scripture. (This is how I read it and never had problems understanding.)

3) Randomly pick up the book when you want a differing perspective on the traditional story. (Which I will do having read the book now.)

Plotz's chapters are brilliant mixtures of worldwide thought, synopses, personal commentary, and anecdotes. (We discover that all three of his children are named after great biblical personages, which also leads to some heartwarming tales of a father priding himself over his childrens' namesakes.) But Plotz doesn't succumb like a typical bible reader. He fights his way through the books, investigation claims, traveling to Israel, and questioning G-d more and more as he goes. Does the questioning make Plotz feel as if he's going against G-d? Not at all. In fact he writes, "as I read the book, I realized the Bible's greatest heroes are not those who are most faithful, but those who are most contentious and doubtful" citing Moses, Job, Abraham, and Gideon. This is not a story of one man trying to find his faith in the unseen, but rather reading the flawed writings of men over the course of generations, and how those have affected the world today.

It would be exceptionally difficult to write an all-out review on this since we know the subject and why it was written, so I will quote a few marvelous things said. While many chapters have multiple pages or entries and elaborate thought by Plotz, some are simple reminders of what the stories are. So with that being said, here are some of my favorite entries (for various reasons you will note):

Genesis Chapter 34
"Dinah. Enough said."

Leviticus Chapter 18
"Hey-all you folks who say Leviticus is boring? You're nuts. It's riveting!"

Deuteronomy Chapter 26
"This is a very boring chapter."

I love how Plotz doesn't hide his boredom while attempting this feat.

Isaiah Chapter 56
"God promises eternal glory to 'the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths.' Eunuchs? Where do the eunuchs come from?"

Jeremiah Chapters 18-20
"Come on Jeremiah! You must be kidding! You show up at the capital city, tell people they're going to be disemboweled corpses in couple of years and that there's nothing they can do to prevent it. And then you're surprised that they don't like you?"


While most of these seem funny, there is a wave of incredibly deep and thoughtful ideas:
Ezekiel Chapter 16
"It's the first story to correctly understand that the psychological relationship between God and His people is not parent and child, but spouses."

Jonah
"Jonah really is the perfect Bible story. God is demanding yet merciful, wise yet tricky... The hero is deeply flawed, mostly learns his lesson, and behaves with both the grace and selfishness that are in all of us. There is no unnecessary violence. And it's extremely funny."

Psalm 53
"OK, these are getting kind of dull. Reading one psalm is a joy, reading two is a pleasure, reading three is a chore, and reading a dozen or more at once is like sitting next to a desperate insurance salesman on a transatlantic flight."


Overall, the book is fantastic. It is almost like a Cliffs Notes of the Bible, but with extra commentary from a Jewish perspective. I loved it. Equal moments of heartbreak, joy, laughter, cynicism, and introspection played their ways through the text. Some people will understand the book, and others might be outraged. But if you're tired of scholarly viewpoints for the Good Book, look to this Good Book for a different perspective.

Happy reading.

1 comment:

  1. This might claim my "next read" spot after I finish Harry Potter. I hope God will forgive me for picking wizardry over the OT. =)

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