The title of this important and fascinating book requires exegesis. By ‘Bible’ H. means the Jewish Bible (the Christian Old Testament), especially as depicted in the Pentateuch (Tanakh). Rather little is said about the so-called historical books, wisdom literature or the prophets. His appeals to the New Testament are even less frequent and insightful. By ‘Homer’, of course, H. has in mind the Iliad and the Odyssey, whose gods he favours to the Yahweh of the Bible, not because he believes in them, of course, but precisely because no thoughtful modern would assume that they actually exist. The Yahweh of the Tanakh is morally reprehensible, but his existence is assumed by so many with tragic consequences.
H. champions a different kind of tragedy; he calls his world view a tragic vision, because, as the Homeric poets recognised, human life is tragic, and it is this visio that requires one to take responsibility for the world rather than expecting a deus ex machina to intervene at the end of the tragoedia. He ends the book with this explanation: ‘“Tragic” in the world of Homer … demands a constant effort to push back against the universe, to insist to ourselves and each other that we do matter, that we can make a difference’ (p. 339).
H.'s introduction summarises his argument as follows:
[T]he rejection of the Homeric gods in favor of the Abrahamic deity has been a serious mistake for Western culture. The polytheistic, humanized, and amoral (at best) gods of Homeric epic provide the basis for a more realistic and useful approach to life than has been offered by Yahweh and his interpreters. The Olympians (the major Greek gods in Homer's epics) are, I will argue, a vast improvement on the God that most contemporary believers are taught to worship … The late biblical compilers and the subsequent exegetical traditions (Jewish and especially Christian) have tried to turn Yahweh into something he generally is not. By … applying the wobbly standards of theological argumentation, they have invented a transcendent, nonanthropomorphic, monotheistic deity possessing divine perfections. But the biblical Yahweh is rarely any of these things. He's solidly Homeric, and as such he is simply not up to the Herculean task he has been assigned in the Judeo-Christian tradition … But unlike the theologies that derived from the biblical traditions, Homer's gods account perfectly for the vicissitudes of our lives in a universe that remains unimpressed by our efforts and unresponsive to our demands. (pp. 3–4)
H. restates his thesis at the end of his introduction:
[Jewish and Christian] interpretive traditions found the God in the [biblical] text disturbingly Olympian. What was to be done to suppress his Homeric nature? The winning strategy was bold—ignore what the text clearly reveals. Theology is often little more than literary criticism gone horribly wrong. A metaphysically perfect deity was invented and then projected back onto the Bible … God is now a model of and guarantor of justice, benevolent, loving, perfect, free, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, one, transcendent, eternal, impassive and immutable. Yahweh, however, very rarely demonstrates any of these characteristics … The Homeric gods are what they are, no more and no less, and that paradoxically forces us mortals to negotiate life without a roadmap supplied from any ancient myths. We are thus asked to think for ourselves, to make our actions match our ideas in a more courageous fashion, to be more authentically heroic in a capricious world. (pp. 16–17)
This reviewer largely agrees with this assessment of the Yahweh of the Tanakh and finds the evidence generally compelling. Yahweh does indeed share traits with Homeric deities, except that he is more jealous, vindictive and murderous of worshippers of other gods. The biblical references to him, argues H., are more morally objectionable than the Homeric Olympians with respect to the environment (Chapters 9–10), human mortality (Chapters 11–12), social justice (Chapters 13–14) and sexuality (Chapter 15). Although he occasionally grants that the Abrahamic religions have produced positive outcomes, he surely is right that ‘There is an inverse relationship between the religiosity of a nation and its social progress’ (p. 288). He fairly targets for special censure Evangelical Christians.
Despite my appreciation, I was frequently disappointed. By largely avoiding poetry and the prophets, he unfortunately shrinks the diversity of the Jewish Bible. As important as it has been, the Tanakh is not Judaism any more than the Homeric epics are Greek religion. Jews themselves often were troubled by many narratives about their deity. Furthermore, much more might be said about Jewish reception and imitations of the Homeric epics by Jews, such as those in Judith, Tobit and frequently in Josephus. Not surprisingly, as a classicist and authority on Homer, H.'s treatment of the epics is far richer and independent, even innovative.
I am a scholar of early Christian literature who has published extensively on mimesis of the Homeric epics in and outside of the New Testament (H.'s bibliography lists one of them); so I am particularly sensitive to H.'s occasional excursions into my more familiar world. The Gospels present the interpreter with technical challenges at nearly every turn that should not be ignored. For example, H. at points seems to be naïve in mistaking biblical portrays of Jesus with the historical Jesus. He says nothing about the lost Gospel Q (or any solution to the Synoptic Problem), where Jesus himself is critical of Jewish Law. Even I as an atheist find objectionable this claim that ‘Jesus’ moral vision is no improvement upon Yahweh's; in fact, it is a step backwards. For Yahweh, apostasy and disobedience deserve merely death … How much less just is Jesus who demands not death for “wickedness” by his curious standards (that is, for not being a true believer), but eternal postmortem torment!’ (p. 303). This statement ignores many sayings in which ‘Jesus’ moral vision’ explicitly seeks to be more compassionate than the Tanakh.
My most serious disappointment, one not shared by most scholars in my field, is his silence about the profound influence of the Homeric epics on the composition of the Gospel of Mark and Luke's two-volume Gospel-Acts of Apostles, where one finds scores of polemical Homeric imitations to depict Jesus and his followers as more powerful and compassionate than the Olympians. In other words, the stories in Mark and Luke-Acts offer the most promising opportunities for one to observe the agonism between the biblical and Homeric traditions. To be sure, Gospel authors did not contest the immorality of Yahweh with the same intensity; they should have done so more often.
Such criticisms notwithstanding, H. has offered a brilliantly researched, original, engaging, witty and frequently humorous engagement with the abuses of the Bible by contemporary believers. I strongly applaud his humanistic integrity, erudition and righteous indignation with ignorance and intolerance. I am now retired from teaching in a United Methodist seminary – H. teaches at a Roman Catholic University! – and regret that I did not have this volume for required reading for my introductory course to the New Testament. I know of no text that better introduces these two monumental repositories of ancient myths, one Jewish and one Greek, to the cultural capital evoked by the Gospel authors or that would more profoundly shake students into critical engagement and disturbing discovery.
