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Miles analyzes the view of God in the Hebrew Bible from a literary point of view.  Miles develops some very rewarding insights arising from the sequential reading and analysis of the biblical portrayal(s) of God.  He includes good historical tidbits that help remind us of the cultural context each writing arises from.

He analyzes each book in sequence, to see what personality of God unfolds at each stage.  The study follows the order of the books of the Tanakh, the Jewish canon, which follows a more chronological order than the Christian Old Testament.  This is important for portraying the historical development of concepts.

This is helpful since most readers are unclear if even aware of the historical depth and these writings cover and their historical sequence.  There are differences in culture and politics at each stage of the history these documents cover.  The author provides some important insights into the concepts of the Hebrews, and later Jews (the term comes into use after the return from Babylon), about God, his character and their relationship to him.

With this historical literary survey, Miles finds the developing and differing concepts of God over the ages.  He analyzes the composite picture that results in this developing picture of God as a character in the collection as a whole.

The author relates the literary comments to historical-critical and theological studies, and points out important differences in the perspectives and conclusions of each of those disciplines.  Miles does not look at possible ways the text was constructed.  Rather, he focuses on the story as we now have it.

See related reviews and articles on this site:
Divine Concepts Compete
The Exclusively Inclusive Gospel
Names of God and Words for God:  Thoughts on Beliefs and Usages

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OBJ

Reading notes first written on 25 July 2005
First review posted on Amazon 31 July 2005
Rewritten and posted on OJTR 11 December 2007
Last edited 19 November 2008

Orville Boyd Jenkins, EdD, PhD
Copyright © 2007 Orville Boyd Jenkins
Permission granted for free download and transmission for personal or educational use.  Other rights reserved.

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