There is a growing movement to teach the Bible "as literature" to children in public schools. The case is made that the Bible has been so central to Western civilization that ignorance must be seen as a form of "illiteracy." However, if we take off the thick religious lens through which the Bible has been traditionally read (as any public school teacher should be required to do), we will find a far more remarkable tale than is taught in Sunday school, but one that challenges traditional Jewish and Christian conceptions of the nature of God and his relationship to mankind.
Viewed as literature, the first six books of the Bible, Genesis through Joshua, constitute a natural unit and can indeed be read as a novel. As such, a primary concern will be with plot and character, especially the nature of the interaction of the two central figures in the story, Yahweh and Moses.
Early on we come to see that God has a particular project, the exact meaning of which remains to be understood, but can be termed "being known." Repeatedly he affirms that the Israelite shall "know that I am Yahweh." And at one key point he explains to Moses that the entire point of the plagues is to create the story of Passover so that the Israelites through the generations shall "know that I am Yahweh."
But if God's great project is to have the Israelites come to know him, how does Moses fit into all this? Does he, too, understand his role in such terms? The idea that God and Moses may be on different tracks is suggested early on in the story. In Exodus 5, Moses has his first encounter with the Pharaoh, telling him that Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, "Let my people go." Pharaoh responds, "Who is Yahweh that I should heed him and let Israel go?" And then Pharaoh increases the burdens of the Israelites, requiring them to find their own straw for making bricks. Moses returns to God and puts forward this remarkable accusation: "O Lord, why did You bring harm upon this people? Why did You send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, it has gone worse with this people; yet You have not delivered Your people at all."
In this we see the beginnings of Moses' role as a protector of the Israelites, not from Pharaoh, but from God himself. In the episodes which follow, a familiar pattern is repeated. The Israelites, or some group of them, commit an infraction. God is incensed, and he communicates to Moses his intention to destroy the entire people. Moses intervenes using all of his rhetorical wiles, and God relents, typically killing only those who have actually violated his commandments.
In one revealing passage, when the Israelites, having heard terrifying reports from their leaders, fear to enter Canaan and do battle with its inhabitants, God is incensed at their lack of faith. He tells Moses that he will "strike them with a pestilence and disown them, and I will make of you a nation far more numerous than they." Moses is completely unmoved by this offer, which would, in effect, be a new covenant through Moses. He immediately launches into an effort to dissuade God from his planned destruction. He says, "If then You slay this people to a man, the nations who have heard Your fame will say, 'It must be because the Lord was powerless to bring that people into the land which He had promised them on oath.' " When Moses completes his desperate rhetoric, God relents, killing only the fearful scouts and then sending the Israelites into the wilderness for 40 years, during which the entire adult generation dies off.
What is remarkable is that Moses, the human who knows God more intimately than any other mortal, would think that God could be affected by concerns about what the Egyptians and the Canaanites would think of him. And yet more remarkable is that the Bible presents God as having been moved by these very considerations.
While God's project, to be known, is not the same as Moses', it would be a mistake to imagine that they are incongruent. God's repeated statements of intent to destroy the Israelites have to be understood in terms of God's reaction to his own violence, following the Flood. At that time, once God regains his composure, he promises to never again level such destruction and he creates the rainbow as the sign that will remind him of that promise. We never again hear of the rainbow, but it is no great stretch to think of Moses, whose name means "taken from the water," as that very rainbow. God chooses Moses, not primarily for the mission of representing himself to Pharaoh, but for the far more critical mission of keeping God from destroying the Israelites, and thus undermining his own project.
The God-character that is presented in the Bible story is not offered as the source of all morality. He is not all-knowing, nor is he presented as just or even beneficent. All of this is, of course, at variance with how Judaism and Christianity came to understand God. But given that these texts were written many centuries before the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism or Christianity, it should not be surprising that there is a gap between scripture and religion.
A Bible-as-literature reading, of the sort offered above, is not inherently threatening to the religions of the Bible - there are many, both laymen and theologians, who will find the idea of an imperfect God, who needs mankind to evolve, an exhilarating concept, rich with spiritual potential. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that among the religiously minded, there will be many for whom this is blasphemy and who will block the schoolhouse door rather than permit such ideas to be taught to their children.
Jerome M. Segal is a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland's Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. His book, "Joseph's Bones: Understanding the Struggle Between God and Mankind in the Bible," was recently published.