The Old Testament explained and interpreted

Review of The Book of All Books by Roberto Calasso

Over the years, I have tried to read the Bible – as mythology and history, not for reasons of faith – and have always given up after the first few chapters. It is terse, providing minimal detail and only cryptic indications of meaning, and simply dull. That’s why Roberto Calasso’s book was so valuable to me. He retells many of the stories of the Old Testament, adding commentary and some analysis. For the first time, I think I get a lot of it, but it’s really only a beginning.

Calasso begins with the first kings of Israel. A prophet, Simon, claimed that Yahweh (that is, God) told him that Saul was to be the first king. Unfortunately, Saul proved to be obstinate and resistant to the will of Yahweh, frequently disobeying him. As a result, Yahweh informed Simon that another would take his place, the young shepherd, David (who slew Goliath). Though Saul resisted turning over power, eventually he committed suicide on the battlefield. David, a more obedient servant king, took over, but again there were tensions with Yahweh, who denied his permission for many of his plans, including the construction of a palace and temple. Both Saul and David faced incessant war, consuming their energies and warping their characters. Finally, David’s son Soloman took over. His reign was one of relative peace and the building of a society and city. He was wise and benevolent, if a bit of a sensualist indulging in sexual excess. In the following generations, the quality of the leaders degenerated and required replacement after Yahweh put his chosen people through many trials and suffering.

This brief story sets out the major themes of the book. Yahweh was a jealous God demanding strict obeisance of the many very explicit laws that he laid down. Penalties were extremely harsh. His chosen ones were flawed, suffered greatly under their responsibilities, and their failures accumulated. Much of what they accomplished came with a price in blood – the annihilation of enemies, but also sacrifice, at first of family members, later of symbolic blooding in animal sacrifice and circumcision. Then there was the prophet, a figure that popped up at crucial moments; while wielding power and noisome prescriptions, they were neither priests nor royalty, hence vulnerable, even in danger of mob lynching.

With this framework, Calasso goes through the major stories in the Old Testament, not necessarily in the order they appear. Moses receives an extended treatment: for 40 years, he was Egyptian; then he was a shepherd for another 40; finally, he served as a prophet for his last 40 years. The Jews had been slaves in Egypt for 400 years and, contrary to the film versions, they had achieved a secure place as workers in a highly organized society – many did not want to leave Egypt, had lost most of their traditions including circumcision, and were distrustful of Moses, even threatening his life at several junctures. He laid down many laws directly from Yahweh, represented a severe version of Yahweh’s will, and led his people to survive in the desert during his years as their prophet. Among other things, he instructed them to purge Canaan of the people who had lived there since their enslavement, killing everyone explicitly to enjoy the fruits of their labor. In Calasso’s version, it is a brutal and chilling story. Calasso next goes back to Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham and his sons, Noah, and many others.

The book can be difficult. In many sections, Calasso goes into great detail about certain issues, to the point that I was not always sure where he was going or why. For example, there’s an entire chapter on Freud’s interpretation, Moses and Monotheism, which I found obscure and ultimately irrelevant. According to Calasso, in wanting to explain anti-Semitism in the crisis of the late 1930s, Freud plumbed his theories about the Oedipus complex, that is, that sons want to kill the primordial father and felt guilt about it. Going further, Freud reasoned that only in Judaism was this impulse expressed clearly, which brought the issues into the unwilling consciousness of other peoples; therefore, they hated the Jews for it. The only thing I have to say about that is, what?!?! I mean, it’s just weird, as in way out.

Many of Calasso’s asides are extremely interesting. He provides a great deal of information about the term holocaust. In the Old Testament, it referred to ritual sacrifice in the temple, the most sacred bond between Yahweh and his chosen people. Calasso finds the modern use of the term to refer to Hitler’s genocidal atrocities in World War II as a terrible transmogrification of its original meaning.

Calasso has given me enough grounding to try reading the Bible again. I know the outline and chronology of the stories, what many of the themes are, and what a number of scholars thought about it. A good start.