A Most Peculiar Book

The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible

Kristin Swenson

Oxford University Press 2021

Hb, 261pp, £18.99, ISBN 9780190651732

Censoring God

The History of the Lost Books (and other Excluded Scriptures) Jim Willis

Visible Ink 2021

Pb, 328pp, £16.99, ISBN 9781578597321

These two books complement each other, but are nowhere near equal in quality. A Most Peculiar Book is about the contradictions and oddities in the Bible. It starts with the complexity of just what we mean by “the Bible” – is it the Protestant volume of 66 books (plus, occasionally, the Apocrypha, sandwiched uncomfortably between the Old and New Testaments); is it the Catholic Bible which includes the Apocrypha as an integral part of the OT; or is it the slightly different Orthodox Bible? Censoring God is about books that didn’t make it into the Bible: not just the Apocrypha but apocryphal gospels, different versions of the Genesis Creation story and much more.

The Bible, says Swenson, is “a cacophonous gathering of disparate voices”. Anyone who believes it’s the straightforward word of God will hate her book. She describes the Bible as it is: a bunch of accounts that have been rewritten and edited over many centuries, often by people with an agenda. Many of the stories – including those about Jesus – may not be factually true; biblical writers weren’t “on-theground journalists”, she says. “Perhaps what the stories can tell us, when loosed from their literalist bonds, is more interesting, even more important, than whether or not they are ‘true’ in terms of historical reporting” – as good a definition of the word “myth” as you’ll find.

Many of the assumptions we’ve been conditioned to make about the Bible simply aren’t accurate. For example, there are two separate and slightly different lists of the Ten Commandments, and it’s difficult getting either of them to add up to 10. We all know that David killed Goliath – but that’s only one account; elsewhere we read that it was actually someone called Elhanan, one of David’s fighters – but in a third version we read that Elhanan killed Goliath’s brother, not Goliath.

A fascinating section of Swenson’s book is where she looks at what we all “know” the Bible teaches on sex, marriage, homosexuality and abortion – and what it actually says, which is very often nothing like what Christian moralists tell us.

Censoring God would have been a whole lot better had Willis concentrated on factual information, rather than constantly reverting to essentially a conspiracy theory. Yes, different people at different times did decide which texts would or would not be included in the Bible – but not, as he keeps suggesting: “A committee once stood between us and the truth.”

Why do some texts not get into the Bible? “The reasons are more probably tied up in the idea of secret wisdom that was deemed too dangerous to include.” This and similar unsubstantiated assumptions litter his book. He indulges in meaningless speculation: “What if Moses wasn’t quite human at all? What if he was… an alien entity…?” He uses “what if” six times in that one paragraph, finishing “Each one of these approaches will work.” And it will – in the realms of fantasy.

There are many reasons why books were included or excluded, or edited, often many times. One he ignores was simply popularity – and so how often frequently read scrolls would be copied, and so more likely to be included when compilations were made.

Both books have at times an irritating voice. Swenson, as a professor of Religious Studies, should know better than to be so chatty – especially in a book published by OUP; sometimes this gets in the way of the serious points she’s making. Willis has a discursive style which often wanders away from his immediate subject; he desperately needed an editor to keep him to the point.

Jay Vickers

Swenson ★★★★

Willis ★★