The email arrived, as did the golden ticket (aka the PDF of the advanced copy).
To put this in perspective, I have been an RHE fangirl since 2012 when I first read A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I was just out of seminary, recently married, and trying to figure out life. The humor in her writing amidst her earnest questions about what the Bible calls women to be versus what a conservative, evangelical society told women.
I loved it.
On top of that, my church had RHE come in 2014 and I was able to meet her (and be her chauffeur) and she was just as gracious and funny as her voice in her writing posited her to be. I never had the same affinity for Faith Unraveled, which I chalked up to it being a first book and often not having a clear voice yet, or Searching for Sunday, which I assumed was because I was in the middle of a PhD program in theology and I just couldn't give it the attention it needed.
But I was excited for Inspired- not that my life had gotten less busy (still in PhD program + toddler now...)
And I've learned something - between 2012 and now, I am no longer her target audience and the book didn't captivate me as much as I had hoped. I came up with 2 possible reasons:
1. I've become a theology book snob
2. Mommy brain has eroded away reflection brain
While I definitely reason 2 hasn't helped (most of the book was read waiting for doctors appointments or in the spare minutes at night that I could muster), I think reason one is a lot more likely.
The premise behind Inspired is that the Bible isn't the pat, all in one answer, easily coherent work that particularly conservative, evangelical churches hold it to be. It's full of great stories that we love as children, but become more problematic as we get older and really start to understand the violence and incoherency of the text. RHE lays this out nicely in an autobiographical sketch in the introduction and her struggle with the text(s) weaves in and out of the book that follows.
For example, the book of Revelation is reintroduced not as a puzzle of science fiction-fantasy proportions, but rather as a final note on the resistance stories the prophets tell throughout the Bible - tying these resistance stories into the acts of modern "prophets" such as Bree Newsome, challenging a society based on systemic injustice and the message that God wins in the end. The miracle stories in the Gospel are posed as examples that Christ doesn't defy nature, but rather defies cultural standards about who is and isn't welcome. The wisdom literature isn't reduced to some "greeting card" appropriate soundbite, but appreciated for the complex worldview the various texts struggle with, both in agreement and in contention with each other.
But I already knew that. I blame Robert Altar and The Art of Biblical Narrative and some absolutely wonderful seminary professors for breaking down the easy assumptions of the text and instead showing the complex beauty of it. I came into reading this book already knowing that the Bible is composed of several genres, that many stories in the Old Testament are more figurative than literal, that each writer of the Gospel came from a different point of view and thus each gospel is slightly different, that the epistles are written to specific churches dealing with specific issues, and the kitchen sink.
I didn't need the Bible to be rescued for me. And what I kept wanting through Inspired was more complexity, more exegetical work, more comparative texts. I wanted it to be like the theology books I gravitate toward are and it isn't.
Which is all to say that the writing itself was great (although I missed the humor and autobiography, RHE really shines when these weave seamlessly into the greater narrative). I loved most of the opening "midrasnhic" stories before the chapters, but I also love Steinbeck, so there's something to be said about my choice of authors that have random chapters thrown into a larger work... I'm simply not where I think the audience this work is written for is anymore. I was at one time. It is a right and good thing that there are authors who are doing this work to think critically about the Bible and not be dismissive of it at the same time. I would recommend this work for someone who is in the midst of "coming of age" (to borrow Bonhoeffer's image) with the Bible and with Christianity in general; or to those that have been hurt by the the misuse of scripture.
My overall rating (if offered) would be 3.5 stars because its quality writing. I'm reducing the stars a bit because I believe a book that is trying to go exegetical work should have a more comprehensive bibliography, but that's perhaps I'm a theology jerk :-/
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