Presented as a series of personal reflections on problems which exist in the modern (especially Christian) usage of the Bible, the work stresses a Bible which is a multi-volumed book, with different books held as Scripture by different groups, and which needs to be interpreted in a critical way, i.e. on a variety of levels.

Carroll argues that the usage of theological categories in the interpretation of the Bible distorts the intent of the Bible. The tendency to abstract descriptions of God provides an example of this. God sends forth lying spirits, creates evil, and hides himself in times of disaster. But to affirm the variety in the Bible, the diversity of its origins and the ‘Oriental potentate’ image of God in the ancient world brings us no closer to understanding why these statements are collected in what is now a single book. This problem is no better resolved by assuming contradictions than it is by theological abstractions.

Carroll reserves his strongest diatribe for biblical Christianity. More than any other group, those who affirm this view are ‘infantile’ and ‘brain dead’ (at the same time?). The criticism seems to revolve around two foci: things have changed in two millennia and so literal readings of past documents will distort when applied to the present situation; and the NT was not authoritative until the fourth century when the church said so. The first point is true, although this says nothing about what is the best way to read a text from the past. Some past documents can be read and applied with a degree of literalness, otherwise precedence and constitutional law would not exist in Western jurisprudence. The second point assumes that documented evidence from the past has no value as a witness to its own past, for that is exactly what the council claimed they were doing in the fourth century. This chasm lies not only between biblical Christianity and Carroll, but also between different groups of biblical scholars. The debate asks whether or not ancient documents, particularly those in the OT, can be used as historical sources.

The chapter on Christian persecution of Jewish people throughout the last two millennia is a sad one but it is important to read. Carroll is eager to find the origins of this in a ‘literal reading’ of the NT. He exploits that source for every reference he can find to what could be interpreted as anti-Semitism. Despite his denial of any necessity to detail this in the Gospel of John (p. 93), he spends the next five pages doing just that. To see how Christians have interpreted the Bible as a weapon against Judaism is valuable as a lesson of history; to argue that this is what was originally intended is not the same thing, however. It is preferable to see in the NT a perspective which affirms one religious belief as preferable to another, rather than an anti-Semitism which denies one race its equal status as human.

In his final chapter Carroll decries all those who manipulate the Bible for their own advantage. Unfortunately, evangelical Christianity is rife with examples. His further denunciations of the Bible as ‘tamed’ by the middle class ring true in this age as in any other. His description of the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as a ‘wandering prophet … who calls people to follow him, to give up everything and to take up their crosses and face death with him’ (p. 132) may not encompass the whole of what I would want to see in a Christology, but it does focus on a central part of the message which should not be compromised, but too often is. In commenting on the impossibility of the Bible to deliver a meaningful message to modern culture, Carroll writes (p. 118), ‘Where concubines and slave-girls are an integral part of the biblical social world, and witches and sorcerers ply their trade, it is difficult to imagine a direct connection between the Bible and contemporary life’. In fact, these elements are relevant to today. They invite discussion of the political issues of feminist, minority and third-world oppression as well as questions of the occult, all of which dominate modern society as much, if not more, than they did in the ages of the Bible’s original writing. Readers who wish to learn more of Carroll’s thoughts will find this work useful.

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