About this item
What sort of person is God? What is his life story? Is it possible to approach him not as an object of religious reverence, but as the protagonist of the world's greatest book--as a character who possesses all the depths, contradictions, and abiguities of a Hamlet? This is the task that Jack Miles--a former Jesuit trained in religious studies and Near Eastern languages--accomplishes with such brilliance and originality in God: A Biography. Using the Hebrew Bible as his text, Miles shows us a God who evolves through his relationship with man, the image who in time becomes his rival. Here is the Creator who nearly destroys his chief creation; the bloodthirsty warrior and the protector of the downtrodden; the lawless law-giver; the scourge and the penitent. Profoundly learned, stylishly written, the resulting work illuminates God and man alike and returns us to the Bible with a sense of discovery and wonder.
About the Author
Dear Fellow Reader:Let's keep reading, shall we? I myself would rather read than write. I'd also rather think than read, and I'd rather dream than think. But this world is not made for dreamers, and so sometimes when I find myself thinking about something, I write about it if no one else has written the book I want to read. Mine is a crazy-quilt background. I'm an ex-Jesuit, an ex-atheist, an ex-journalist, an ex-professor, and currently I'm--well, for the further particulars, you can check me out at www.JackMiles.com. I write about religion, literature, and politics in ever-changing combinations, sometimes veering a bit into music or visual art. Arthur Koestler wrote about the great early astronomer Johannes Kepler that the man never wrote a page that was not alive and kicking. Pages are alive and kicking when their author is after something. It can be something grand: Kepler was after the orbits of the planets. It can be something small: a dog can be after a flea with great intensity. If that's the kind of reading you go for, well, I hope we meet someday! You're my kind of reader.Jack Miles
