There are all these books about Moses or Joseph as a political leader and Moses as a great CEO, etc, but never the other way round. Why not a book on Napoleon as a Hasidic rebbe or Ike Eisenhower as a leader of YU or Paris Hilton as a pioneering lesbian Reconstructionist rabbi teaching mishna at Limmud LA to mitnagdim?
With all due respect, I think we can safely assume that your average new edition of three books of the Old Testament is not likely to fly off the shelves at the same air speed as, say, a new Grisham novel. But given a recent report, Grisham better duck.
According to Thursday’s Times of London, Scottish novelist Alasdair Gray’s new version of the books of Jonah, Micah and Nahum, coming soon from Edinburgh publisher Canongate, might be a sizzler. Among other things, said the paper, Gray characterizes "Abraham and Isaac, founding fathers of the Jewish faith, as ‘polygamous nomads who get cattle or revenge by prostituting their wives or cheating foreigners or relatives.’" For good measure, Gray goes on to describe Jonah as "cowardly or childish," speaking with God in a "self-pitying cackle" or a "dismal whimper."
Gray is obviously a marketing genius. Both Jewish and Islamic religious leaders deemed the book "insulting and offensive" and called for a ban. The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Muslim Council of Britain have demanded that either the offending passages be deleted or the book be destroyed.And front-section Times coverage, of course, is something publishers pray for.
Said Gray: "I didn’t intend to cause offense, nor did I expect to." Uh, which planet did you say you’d been living on, Mr. Gray?
The Lord himself, he continued blithely, was a co-conspirator. "I can only say that my notion that God connives with Abraham to get richer by prostituting his wife is to be found in the Bible," Gray chirped to the London paper. "These are stories that very few children are directed to, therefore, not many people know about them." Quite.
