Reading the Bible (10)｜The Book of Kings

If there is no Jehovah in Kings, it is a chronicle, like The Silmarillion.

The difference is that in "The Silmarillion", the Valars do not pay special attention to the matter of "obedience". Compared with Jehovah's violent outbursts, the Valars treat elves and humans more like loving parents, although they also hope that their children Obedient, but later had to accept the fact that the child has an independent personality, and retreated to the background with anxiety.

Reading the Bible here, nearly 400 pages, I sometimes feel as if I have accepted the cruelty of Jehovah (although it has nothing to do with me). If he loses his temper, let him lose his temper, no need to be surprised. But when I saw him "doing evil in his eyes" because of King Manasseh of Judah and saying, "Jerusalem will be wiped clean, just as one wipes a dish and turns it upside down", I couldn't help but tremble. What kind of resentment? What a hatred this is! Hitler was so cruel to Jews, right?

At the same time, I was reading "John Christopher". This book is very lengthy, with all kinds of details, and everything is covered. Christopher's growth story is a thread, and there are too many people, so there are all kinds of stories about it. The search for faith. The funny thing is that when Christopher was a child, like me now, he asked everywhere for evidence of God's existence, just like me. But he likes to read the Bible, and although he does not believe in God, he believes in the spirit of God.

Christopher's best friend, Olivier, was different. He had a long discussion about the Bible with Christopher, and he talked about the old man thoroughly. It was the most straightforward and boldest criticism I have ever seen. I am reminded of the line in "Assassination of the Novelist": A mortal man dares to kill a god!

"The gods of the Iliad," said Olivier, "are people who are generally beautiful, extremely charismatic, and many faults: I know them, and I either love them or I don't; even if I don't love and like such people; I'm a little partial to them. Like Bart Logger, I'd kiss Ahir's wounded foot. But the God of the Bible is a megalomaniac old Jew, furious The madman, cursing, threatening all the time, howling like a mad wolf, mad in the clouds. I don't understand him, I don't like him, his endless curses give me headaches, his cruelty terrifies me. "

The image of God in the Old Testament in my eyes and the image in Olivier's eyes are highly overlapping. But "John Christopher" is certainly not an anti-God book. Romain Rolland has put a lot of reflections and discussions on religion, art, and politics in it. There is also the gentle piety of Gotoflet, and in the middle is Christopher, who is both rational and emotional. Sometimes I feel like the answers I don't find in the Bible seem to come to light in John Christopher.

Great novels are not necessarily easy to read, but they must have great reasons.

Seems to be off topic. Forcibly pull back to the Book of Kings.

"The Book of Kings" is about the running accounts of the kings of Israel and Judah. Like the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the back waves of the Yangtze River push the front waves, and one generation is not stronger than the next. In fact, like all those dynasties in the past, there were bright and dim monarchs, and there were times when they were strong and times when they were declining. Eventually, when corruption accumulated to a certain level, quantitative changes caused qualitative changes, and dynasties were replaced. Israel was eventually occupied by Assyria, leaving only one tribe of Jews, Judah, which later fell to the Babylonians. Since then, the descendants of those Jews who came out of Egypt and experienced untold hardships, conquered cities and plundered lands and established a country successfully, some returned to Egypt, some were taken captive to Babylon, and some remained in the land occupied by their ancestors. But he is already a slave.

This was the operating mode of the world in that jungle age, and the Bible attributes all the merits and demerits to Jehovah. It seems that the only subjectivity of human beings in the entire historical process is obedience or not, and this only bit of free will is also very erratic, because there are many places in the Bible that it is Jehovah his God who made this people neck. hard, thus giving a good reason to cut them off. However, this logic is not very smooth, as if he can only force people to disobey, but he can't force people to obey.

After reading "The Book of Kings", the speed obviously slowed down, because history is really all kinds of repetitions, and it is about big figures. Ordinary people can't see the joys, sorrows and sorrows, and they can't empathize. When you read history books, you need to slow down. When you go to school, you need to read one book for a semester. But in any case, I will at least stick to the "New Testament", it is said that the "New Testament" is a new world, I must see it.