Sunday Bible Studies

Andrew Sullivan turns this up at The New Yorker today, David Plotz, the guy who read the Bible and then wrote about it.
Makes me want to read the book.

The overarching theme of the Bible, particularly of Genesis, is real estate. God is Trump-like, constantly making land deals (and then remaking them, on different terms). When Sarah dies, for example, there are two verses about her death, and a whole chapter about Abraham negotiating to buy a burial site for her in Hebron. It’s not just land that the Bible is obsessed with, but also portable property: gold, silver, livestock.

and...

My own feeling is that the Messy Bible—with its ambiguous (or worse) heroes and its erratic and wrathful God—is a lot more interesting, and more true to our ugly world, than the Sunday School Bible. But the Sunday School Bible is easier to teach.

and..

And one rich vein in the Bible is the tension between church and state, as God and His prophets are arrayed against a series of kings who aggrandize themselves and try to keep God out of the public sphere. The Bible, naturally, comes down on the side of church supremacy. My own sympathies are with the kings, who are always being undermined by meddling prophets. But I didn’t find a Biblical Obama.