Bible Books

The Book of God: A Response to the Bible

Gabriel Josipovici (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. press, 1988) 350 pp., $29.95

Gabriel Josipovici apologizes for not having read exhaustively in the field of biblical studies (he is a professor of English at the University of Sussex in England), but let there be no doubt that he has indeed read extensively in the field and that he has made excellent use of the secondary literature. He has written this book for the intelligent layperson, but specialists will also benefit immensely from it. In fact, this reviewer can think of no other book that will give the reader a more profound understanding and deeper appreciation of the Bible—both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament—as a whole. It is not an introduction to the Bible, and yet the book runs the gamut of biblical literature. For example, there are only one or two pages on Job, but Josipovici’s insights on Job are fresh and provocative: The Job story not only probes the meaning of suffering, but the meaning of meaning itself. “The book of Job is about the impossibility of man’s ever understanding the causal links (the story), and yet his need to trust that God does indeed uphold the world, and that there is a story there of which we are a part” (p. 290).