The Face of the Deep

I will refrain from extensive summary, because I feel that if you are curious about plot development in the Bible there’s only a hair’s width membrane separating you from as much information and commentary about it as you could read in a lifetime. Our cultural awareness of these stories nudges the saturation threshold.

I will, however, speak to the character of the narrative. It is hard to say this without a pejorative connotation, but the thousand or so pages I have read have been very redundant. Not boring, really, just thematically repetitive to the point of monotony. A consequence is that I am again at a lack for examples of ambiguity significant enough to threaten the ideological integrity of the Bible’s meaning. There is some confusion over important but relatively modest points of religious protocol, but the message seems to be simple: devote the whole of your life to enacting God’s will or He will crush you.

As soon as God has liberated the Hebrews from Egyptian servitude, they begin to stray, and the cycle of offense and reparation that fuels almost every subsequent story arc is established. The sequence goes as follows: God has promised the Hebrews an eternal place of residence in the land of Canaan if they adhere to the laws of the covenant absolutely. Either a chorus of dissatisfied Hebrews or one of their leaders will anger God, and he will remove the security of his protection from them, sometimes after executing thousands of His followers. This results in oppression at the hands of foreign armies. A Hebrew judge, king or priest will then make atonement for past transgression and God will retrieve them from their disenfranchisement.

The most significant gift of divine favor is military invincibility. The Jews carve a bloody swath across Canaan and terrify the surrounding nations, though their superiority is constantly undermined by religious delinquency.

“What a barbarous faith!” you might exclaim. Well, maybe. Except that I don’t think any of it really happened. If you consider it on its allegorical merits, it makes sense.

During my freshman year of college, I was up very late one night channel surfing in the common room of my dorm. I hesitated when I turned to a sermon on public access being delivered by a normal-looking guy in a button-down white shirt, the uniform of the contemporary evangelical. I was surprised that what he said was fairly sophisticated: “Satan works by convincing you that you are not capable of greatness.” I turned the channel because the fact that I was relating to a televangelist in the middle of the night was making me uncomfortable.

I think that something very similar is at play in Old Testament metaphor. When you obey your sacred impulse, you are indomitable. When you betray it, you crumble. If you reject this premise, I understand, but it is one I find resonant.

It is an insight nurtured by reading the books of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, two texts purportedly authored by King Solomon. The first regards the cultivation of wisdom, which Solomon holds as life’s truest virtue. Wisdom is Godly, and it is primordial, existing even in the ethereal pandemonium from which the Lord fashioned the universe. It would be folly to attempt to summarize, but everything stems from one couplet:


The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Proverbs 1:7


This is Bible of a different stripe. It is visceral, void of narrative. And its messages sit with the weight of legitimacy in your mind. Disregard wealth, avoid the petty, do not envy, pursue joy and you will encounter God. Fools do not have joy and will find ruination through their error.

Ecclesiastes is staggering. If I could select one book out of the Bible for the curious to read, it would be this one. It is the kind of thing your grandfather might try to tell you on his deathbed if you had a particularly wise and eloquent grandfather. The basic imperative is to enjoy the texture of life, to fill your person with happiness, celebration and contentment, because everything is transient and human achievement is irrelevant.


For who knows what is good for a man during his lifetime, during the few years of his futile life? He will spend them like a shadow. For who can tell a man what will be after him under the sun?

Ecclesiastes 6:12


Sabbaths, bans on winking (it’s in there), commandments not to wear clothing of mixed fibers – these may not curry much significance with the non-Jew. But the agony of spiritual ignorance probably does. The Bible tells us that unhappiness is a snare, even a lie. It tells us that we can be godly, and when we are, we are ourselves. It tells us that if we do not cleave to our sense of transcendent beauty and justice, the armies of our soul will wither before onslaughts of doubt. We will be un-great.

But it is hard to see the metaphorical forest for all the literal trees sometimes. Especially when considering the popular mismanagement of the Bible’s most positive virtues.

Last week, I was driving from Los Angeles to San Diego at one in the morning, surfing the radio for something to keep me awake. I found a Christian program run by a DJ that spoke with that obnoxiously overpleasant tone so popular with pastors.

“We all have so many questions about the Bible. What other kinds of fruit did Eve eat? Did Jonah like fish? These stories are keyholes through which we can view the world of the Bible. And when we read them, we can sometimes even see ourselves with that wonderful cast of characters.”

Did Jonah like fish? DID JONAH LIKE FISH?

I still defend the Bible as a crucial document in our spiritual history, and one from which we still derive precious insight. But it is hard – well, impossible – for me to see its narratives as anything but very instructive, very beautiful fictions. At their unadulterated core lies a mode of faith whose character is distinct, is legitimate. That identity should not be held hostage by the trappings of literalism, whether they be condemnations of homosexuality, endorsements of slavery or musings over the dietary preferences of illustrative characters.