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For the Love of God
Price: $22.95
First
Paperback Edition
Subtitle: The Bible as an Open
Book
Author:
Alicia Suskin Ostriker
Subject: Literary
Studies,
Jewish Studies
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-4503-5
Pages: 184 pages
Publication Date: March 2009
Praise for For the Love of God
"The perfect antidote
to fundamentalist readings of the Bible, For the Love of God
artfully conveys the multiple meanings that can be gleaned from
biblical texts."—Judith Plaskow,
author of Standing Again at Sinai:
Judaism from a Feminist Perspective
"No one who reads this amazing, brilliantly written book will
ever read the Bible the same way again."—Elaine Pagels,
professor of religion, Princeton University
"Against popular misconceptions of the Bible as a 'book' that is the
dependable repository of supposedly biblical values, Alicia Ostriker
vividly unfolds the strong and at times startling differences of
outlook of different biblical texts. She writes with the
sensitivity of a poet, unafraid to argue with Scripture yet keenly
responsive to what there is to discover in it."—Robert Alter, editor
of The Five Books of Moses: A
Translation with Commentary
"Through prose that is deeply poetic and
critically compelling, in For the
Love of God, Alicia Suskin Ostriker takes quite seriously the
Talmudic assertion that ‘there is always another interpretation.’
Offering provocative and insightful re-interpretations of six
fundamental biblical texts Ostriker posits that the Bible is a
‘treasure of plural possibilities’ that offers a mirror both of the
self and of the splintered, violent world in which we live."—Shofar, 2009
"You want this book because it’s the
elegant, profound version of The Old Testament for Dummies. And you
want it
especially because Ostriker herself is extraordinary."—Poetry Flash, 2010
Description:
Quoting King
Solomon's famous prayer to God at the Temple in Jerusalem, "Behold, the
heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I
have builded," Alicia Suskin Ostriker posits a God who cannot be
contained by dogma and doctrine. Troubled by the way the Bible
has become identified in our culture with a monolithic
authoritarianism, Ostriker focuses instead on the extraordinary
variability of Biblical writing.
For the Love
of God is a provocative and inspiring re-interpretation of six
essential Biblical texts: The Song of Songs, the Book of Ruth, Psalms,
Ecclesiastes, Jonah, and Job. In prose that is personal and
probing, analytically acute and compellingly readable, Ostriker sees
these writings as "counter-texts," deviating from convention yet
deepening and enriching the Bible, our images of God, and our own
potential spiritual lives. Attempting to understand "some of the wildest, strangest, most
splendid writing in Western tradition," she shows how the Bible
embraces sexuality and skepticism, boundary crossing and challenges to
authority, how it illuminates the human psyche and mirrors our own
violent times, and how it asks us to make difficult choices in the
quest for justice.
For better or
worse, our society is wedded to the Bible. But according to
Talmud, "There is always another interpretation." Ostriker demonstrates
that the Bible, unlike its reputation, offers a plenitude of surprises.
About the Author:
Alicia Suskin Ostriker is an award-winning poet,
critic, and midrashist, whose writing appears in many Jewish
anthologies and journals. She is the author of The Nakedness of the
Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions (Rutgers University Press).
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Price: $22.95
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