Hebrew Bible: Conclusion

I have finished reading the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Achievement Unlocked!

I am very fond of the Hebrew Bible. It certainly puts the Qur'an to shame (admittedly, that is not difficult). I would read a lot of it again. Maybe in a decade or so I will splash out on a different translation. I am a fan of the Hebrew Bible.

I enjoyed it on two levels:

Firstly, I enjoyed it as a grimdark fantasy saga about a bumbling deity who loses control of his creation and desperately tries to make his favourite people worship him. For sheer brutality and variety, the Hebrew Bible puts our modern epics to shame. The stories feature battles, assassinations, talking animals, gang rape, political subterfuge, ghosts, infanticide, an army of the undead, human sacrifice, genocide, cannibalism, giant monsters, slavery, fiery serpents, torture, wizards, house parties, and much more.

However, the stories are not set in a very consistent universe. Even the first two chapters contradict each other; they were written in different centuries. There is a lot of repetition (God gets angry a lot), and a lot of filler (lists of names, rules, measurements, etc), which detracts from the enjoyment and can make the reading experience quite tiresome.

Secondly, I enjoyed it as an anthology of ancient books trying to make sense of the world. It gives a monotheist twist to the popular illogic 'We don't know X, therefore magic.' Other mythologies attribute life's vicissitudes to the conflicting interests of rival gods; the biblical authors had no such luxury. Everything was attributed to the mood swings of Israel's one god; they made him responsible for famine, disease, fertility, drought, bountiful harvests, military victory and defeat, chronic diarrhoea, wild animals going on killing sprees, etc. The Hebrew God is responsible for both good and evil; the Hebrew Satan is one of God's servants.

The books of the Hebrew Bible express a wide range of emotions - sorrow and fear and rage and love and grief and hate and joy and lust and hope (so much hope) - each commingled with the awe and reverence felt when contemplating the mere fact of our existence in a universe whose complexity and majesty exceeds our possible comprehension. The Hebrew Bible is sometimes appallingly barbaric, and sometimes shockingly beautiful.

It is perhaps premature to reach this conclusion (I have not yet finished the New Testament), but I'm going to say that the Hebrew Bible is the least moral but most inspiring of the 'Holy Trilogy' (Hebrew Bible; New Testament; Qur'an). The Hebrew Bible has had a massive influence on our culture; I would recommend reading it. If you can't be bothered with the full thing (which is very understandable), two of the books are literary masterpieces which you should read for their own sake: 'The Book of Job' and 'Ecclesiastes'. At least read one of these!

('Ecclesiastes' is the shorter of the two.)