[In the following review of The Book of God: A Response to the Bible, Shankman asserts that although Josipovici's writing is uneven at times, he is ultimately successful with his arguments regarding Biblical interpretations.]

Gabriel Josipovici, in his book, The Book of God: A Response to the Bible, wants us to learn how to read experientially, to truly read, for as he says in his Preface, The Book of God “is a book in the end as much about the nature of reading as about the Bible” (xiv). The reader of the Bible, if Josipovici is any example, should be brought “more fully to life” compelled to “want to let others share in the experience” (309). Such is Josipovici's mission to the reader:

Our task is to wrestle with this book as Jacob wrestled with the ‘man,’ in pitch blackness, and not for the mere sake of the contest or in order to wrest the book's secret from it, but in order that we may hear it utter its blessing upon us. But that, we must not forget, is what we would expect of our encounter with any great book.

(28)

Josipovici takes up the task of book/word/God-wrestling (existential encounter) with some enthusiasm and erudition. His general love of literature, his knowledge of languages and, yes, his astute ability to read perceptively, allow him to offer many insights, related specifically to the parts and pieces of the Bible as they contribute to the overall whole, and to go beyond a literary/experiential reading, into a sensitive analysis of how the two biblical religions, Judaism and Christianity, can be understood.

No doubt Josipovici's own cultural religious conditioning dictates his personal response to the Bible; yet he is one of the few readers who is aware of how tradition, shaped by faulty translation amongst other things, impedes a fresh reading so that, all too often, our eyes, shaped by our ethnocentricity (our religion and our culture), read text literally, assume the point of view of the narration, or generally read what we think we already know. For example, Josipovici betrays his own submission to the power of Paul's persuasive rhetoric by calling him Saint Paul. Yet he resists reading Paul literally and makes it very clear, in the chapter “Epistle to the Hebrews and the Meaning of History,” that Pauline Christianity is based on an altering of history due to an altering of language and that Paul had taken up the cross to proselytize and will shape language and events to suit his intent. And though it is Paul's purpose to convince his reader to value the new covenant over the old, that the Kingdom of God is not of this world, it is Josipovici's purpose to allow the reader to see just how Paul uses language and what, therefore, this implies.

From the start, Christianity was a religion not of a people but of individuals, not of a locality but of all places and times. It was natural therefore, that despite its attempt to retain much of the vocabulary of the Hebrew culture from which it sprang, it would be forced to drain that vocabulary of its original meaning.

(274)

Josipovici's observation rings true—that it's difficult to find even the terms with which to talk about narrative and character in the Hebrew Bible “for the very terms we use today are an inheritance from St. Paul” (253). Both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible have to be read in their own context and Josipovici addresses the reading problem of a traditional Christian reader, “are we reading the O.T. in a N.T. way, the Jewish scriptures in a Christian way … ?” (281). Josipovici maintains that we have avoided reading scripture the way it asks to be read.

Throughout The Book of God, Josipovici is intent on showing his readers how to read, how to deal with the various problems the text presents. Always he is aware of how translations shade meaning and advises the reader to compare translations, “to sharpen our awareness of the way the Bible works” (53). He also notes that the ordering of the books of the Hebrew Bible ends in Chronicles II, whereas, Christian ordering has the Hebrew Bible end in Malachi, and that we are influenced to respond one way or another by the way books are ordered: “Even before we start to read we are faced with interpretation. The appearance of a book, the order and arrangement of its parts, the glosses appended to it, are themselves already interpretation” (49). Many factors contribute to the reader's conditioning. The challenge remains for us, as it did for Job, when he saw God with his own eyes, to not follow the ways of “report” (Job, 42). That Josipovici draws our attention to how we are programmed adds dimension to his argument for the Bible's overall unity. For the conditioned reader can only have the experience that tradition says she should have. To see with fresh eyes, or rather, to attempt to see yourself seeing yourself seeing, as Josipovici does, is indeed a perceptual break-through.

In a chapter called “The Need to Utter,” Josipovici draws our attention to God's utterance (speech), how he outers himself (outside). “It is as though God himself had a need to utter. Not just to outer himself by creating the world and its creations (through speech in the first place, of course), but by talking to them once they had been created (165).” Throughout the Bible questions, pleas, exhortations abound. That utterance is so important can be seen also in those moments of sublime silence, where the calm after the storm, the spirit after the voice, indicates both as part of the same creative life-giving phenomenon. As Josipovici says, “The primary function of language, the Hebrew Bible shows, is not to convey information but to enable us to outer ourselves and thus, come fully alive.” (165)

Josipovici is sensitive to the way Hebrew suggests the Bible can be read. Through close analysis of passages and of words, he points out that God identifies himself with the verb haya, to be, and that God is an activity rather than an essence, as our Aristotelian noun-based language suggests. That is God will be what he will be, that God is process and this too determines the way Israelites move through history and generation and how we as readers respond to text. That is, Josipovici says, “the stories will be our ways of discovering and understanding God” (74). As such, the reader takes on the rhythms, reverberations and echoes of a multi-textured language (even in translation) “becoming,” as Josipovici so aptly notes, “part of the story” (152).

Josipovici would agree with Blake's “without contraries is no progression” for without disjunction there is no conjunction (unity). In the Hebrew Bible, unity is synonymous with progression. The movement of life that goes on going on from generation to generation is itself unity. For with conjunctions come disjunctions which are all those anomalies that don't fit logical analysis and which are “the very fabric of this book,” “the unity of disjunction, at the same time as it is an assertion of conjunction” or unity in division at the same time as it asserts unity. Like Berith Milah (circumcision), the cut that unites the Bible's unity (Berith) is best realized through the cut (Milah), the act of reading, where the reader becomes creator in covenant with text, putting it all together, understanding the parts as they contribute to the whole. And this process is itself the total field of meaning.

Josipovici succeeds in convincing this reader that the Bible is a unified book and not a “rag-bag” of isolated stories and fragments. Josipovici makes many connections, not the least of which is how the self-centredness of Samson and the chaos of his world is juxtaposed against the emerging order or unity of David's world, or how the seven days of creation is structurally paralleled by the building of the Tabernacle, or how, in parables, “authority resides in the mode of telling.” This latter connection puts the onus on the reader/listener to see/hear the truth of what is being told. And this is precisely the position we are in as we read the Bible and even as we read Josipovici's The Book of God.

However, Josipovici's “mode of telling” provides an ironic curse to balance the blessings of his many fine perceptions. Despite some very clearly written passages and good word sensitivity, he all too often gets caught up in awkward syntax, wordy phrases and redundancy which impede the very involvement in active reading he would want his readers to experience. But even more bothersome than this, is Josipovici's rhetoric of persuasion. His “we must agree” and “everyone knows” assumes the same response to scripture that he has himself. Thus, the implied bondage of Josipovici's rhetoric goes against the very freedom he would want his readers to have. At times, too, Josipovici becomes a talker instead of a writer and sounds as if he were speaking to a small seminar of students. As such, his chattiness disturbs the sense of what he is talking about.

Despite uneven writing, The Book of God acclaims a reader's “Hineni” (Here I am) to the Bible's call “Where are you?,” and the reader definitely moves forward with Josipovici to experience the meaningful. No doubt Josipovici wants his readers to accept his authority. Certainly his structuring of the contents (15 marvellous chapters), an extensive bibliography and detailed notes all contribute to an overall trust in Josipovici's own special ability to read with intelligent sensitivity.

As his title suggests, The Book of God reflects Josipovici's own encounter, his own spiritual experience. His reading is a labor of love. His reading becomes his writing, becomes his word, his utterance, his outering (verbal expression) and his othering (encounter). As Jacob encounters the angel, Josipovici encounters the word. Both are struck and both, through the struggle, have taken on the responsibility of others. Jacob becomes Israel, Josipovici becomes one with the reader (us). And we too become God-wrestlers. “From the moment that Jacob was left alone … we have lived inside him. As he wrestles in the dark, so do we; as he asks his desperate questions and calls for the blessing, so do we” (308). Quite obviously Josipovici has heard the Bible's blessing and brings us into the range of his hearing and we too are struck, limp, sharing “in the experience,” left alone to prevail.