Alstflan.

sto

born in Bethlehem, that his birthday
wasn't Dec. 25 and that he wasn't an
only child.
Davis, 44, a New York City resi-
dent who attended but never graduat
ed from college, grew up as a Congre
gationalist in Westchester County,
north of the city. He learned little of
the Hebrew Bible in
Sunday school.
DON'l
He began the
MUCH
"Don't Know Much
THE
About" series while
working at home, tak-
ing care of his
preschool son. With
the publication of E.D
Hirsch Jr.'s Cultural
Literacy and Allan
Bloom's Closing of the
American Mind in the
1980s, he said, the tim-
ing was right for books
that were both educa-
tional and entertaining,
"to get people to think
and question easy assumptions."
Christians, he said, aren't familiar
with large parts of the Hebrew Bible.
"The Book of Esther is completely for-
eign to them. They don't know what
Purim is about. By the same token,
most Jews do not read the Christian
Bible. As a result, "the assumptions that
Christians make about Jews and Jews
make about Christians" may be skewed.
Jesus, he said, "was a devout Jew who
would be more at home in synagogue
than in St. Patrick's Cathedral."
Most Americans, he said, are high-
ly, selective about which tenets of the
Bible they choose to follow. Even
"those people who profess to be fun-
damentalists, or biblical literalists,
pick and choose — and don't we all?
We don't stone adulterers, although
that may be ready for a comeback."
Speaking of adultery, he said, at
the time of the Hebrew Bible it was
not the same as infidelity. "Ancient
Israel was a polygamous society, so
this commandment was primarily
directed at women," he writes.
'Although it applied to a man who
committed adultery with a married
woman, adultery was viewed as a
crime against the husband and it
demanded the death penalty."
Turning to the Book of Joshua,
Davis suspects that if the walls of
Jericho came tumbling down — and
there is no archaeological evidence
that they did — it might be because
the Jordan River Valley lies on a
fault line. But the story of Joshua's
battle, like other biblical legends,
became exaggerated over the years.

Who killed Goliath? David is cited in
I Samuel 17 But in II Samuel 21,
Elhanan, a soldier, is credited. In his
book, Davis speculates that "the authors
of the Hebrew Scriptures may have tried
to dress up David's military exploits
with a few embellishments."
With such light-hearted
subtitles as "Were David
and Jonathan more than
just friends?" and "Did
Delilah snip more than
just hair?" Davis acknowl-
edges that the book is
bound to offend funda-
mentalists.
"I try to be irreverent
and fun without being
blasphemous," he said.
"There is a fine line. I
probably cross it." But
while he doesn't expect
to win over creationists,
he thinks it's time for
the intellectually curious
to "step back and look at the truth at
the heart of [Scripture]."
"The Bible is a book of faith. It's
not history, not science, not philoso-
phy. Because something isn't true
doesn't alter its spiritual truth."
What about Davis' own faith? "I'm
a work in progress," he said. "I believe
in God. I believe in the power of
prayer. I believe miracles can happen.
I believe in life after this one. I would
say after writing this book — for all
the debunking — my faith is stronger
than it was five years ago." Ili

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For further reading on the origins of
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Harman views Jewish and Christ-
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