Focus 580; Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God

In this hour of focus 580 will be talking with Jack Miles. A number of years ago he published a book entitled God a biography. It was his first book and it was an attempt to approach the Old Testament as a work of literature with God being the central character. The book got a lot of attention. It has been translated into 15 languages and also won a Pulitzer Prize. And one of the interesting things about the book is that it indeed looks at the Old Testament as the story of a life and observes the ways in which the character of God as represented there in the Old Testament over time changes. And interestingly enough also fall silent as we come to the point in the Old Testament of job where Miles observes this is the last the last time that God Himself in the Person of God speaks you know has a new book that applies the same sort of approach to the New Testament and more specifically to the life of Christ. The title is Christ. A crisis in the life of God.

It's now just out but published by cop. And certainly it's guaranteed to cause the same kind of interest and perhaps a little controversy as was caused by the first book. He's going to talk with us this morning about the book and of course we invite whatever questions comments that you might have. Jack Miles has work has appeared in many different publications including The Atlantic Monthly the New York Times The Boston Globe The Washington Post the L.A. Times. Where he worked for 10 years as a literary editor and also a member of the newspaper's editorial board he has Ph.D. a Near Eastern languages from Harvard University he is a former Jesuit. He's also been a lecturer at University of California director of the Humanities Center at Claremont Graduate University and visiting professor of humanities at the California Institute of Technology. As we talk this morning you're invited to join the conversation certainly all we ask of people is that they just try to be brief so that we can keep things moving along. But all questions are welcome. Three three three wy a

Lower 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 W while our Dr. mile solo. Oh thanks for talking with us. It's a pleasure to be with you me appreciate it too. To begin when we talked. Go back a little bit to the first book. And if if we ask the question is what is what is the essence of the person of God in the Old Testament. How do we discuss it how do we describe it. He is the creator of the world. He is also the destroyer of the world. When his darker side takes over he is the bringer of peace and law. But he is also a fearsome warrior against those who turn against him or against his chosen people. There is. This fissure this conflict at the at the core of his being it is what

makes him so compelling a character on the page. And at the end of his development I don't hesitate to use that word in the Hebrew Scriptures read in the Jewish order. He seems to have come for the first time to consciousness of of his capacity to do both good and evil. He has brought to this moment by his encounter with Job. That's what I think makes that such an interesting story and one that I think I think gets gets overlooked just how important that is. The fact that here in this story you have a human being just actually questioning God and putting the question to him that perhaps many people have one way or another and in a sense called him to to account for the state of the world and

initially what God says is that who you are who you talking to who. Who are you to question me. And after a lot of sort of railing like that then God actually comes close to saying well OK so you're right you're right and restore job to his former condition and then at that point if you fall silent we don't hear anything more until Jesus comes along we don't hear anything more from God. He doesn't just restore job to his former fortunes he doubles. Job's fortunes which is within God's own law within his own Torah. What is required of someone who has wronged another and is making atonement. So by that doubling God indicates that he feels obliged to atone for something that he himself has done wrong. And this is a moment also that recalls the last time that God and the human being were engaged

with one another with the third party complicating their interaction namely the serpent in the Garden of Eden and the Satan in God's encounter with Joel. I read what happened in the Garden of Eden. It's not just the fall of man as the first human couple disobeyed God's command but also as in a way the fall of God because his reaction to what they do is so extreme and so he said on the sixth day of creation. It is good. Not long after that having expelled his human creatures from their garden and cursed them with death. He says I am sorry that I made them and in the Great Flood he almost destroys the entire human race after the flood. He doesn't promise never to destroy them again he simply says he will never do it with water. It is then as if the fall of man has also been to appoint the fall of

God and the sufferings of job in that second encounter complicated by Satan or the serpent or the devil is. Because of the kind of suffering of God as at the end of his encounter one can really almost say his struggle with job he is forced to say to those who have taken God's own heart you have not spoken rightly of me as has my servant job. Those are his last words my servant job. A very striking moment. So here we have the person of God in in the Old Testament who is the who is the creator and the destroyer. To use your words he is fierce. He is the warrior god about. He's about strength and an exercise of strength and power. So when we come to the New Testament and we come to Jesus and here we see a very different kind of individual get in this is of course

complicated by the fact that we're talking about the same person here and we'll come back in a second when we ask that same question. Then what is the essence of Jesus here this is a very this is very very different because here we you know the concept that you discuss it and at some length that is the idea that. The symbol of Jesus is the Lamb is the sacrifice sacrificial animals are about as different from the warrior god as you could possibly imagine. That's right that that God Himself the same God who destroyed the army of Pharaoh in moments. At the Red Sea could ever be appropriately symbolized as a lamb. That little animal that cannot distinguish friend from foe and goes un protesting to its own slaughter just staggers the mind God should be symbolized by a lion. And

in fact at times in the Old Testament he does use of that that image to represent himself. Otherwise he's referred to as the rock the fortress a hole the shield of the sword the whole array of military images and and images of strength. If something has happened to change his character in such a way that he can no adequately be symbolized as a lamb. Then we need to know what that something is still there. There is the question. That's the fundamental question that you raise and explore in the book that is how is it that. God goes from being the the one kind of figure to the warrior god to doing what he did taking on human form living among human beings dying among human beings and being the sacrificial lamb here and again you know that

what the what the story says is that not only was Jesus a human being but he was God so we're here we're talking about the same person. A very dramatic change in the personality of the of this of the person of God. The question is why. Why did he do that. That's right that is that is the question. And that is what I call quote the subtitle of my book a crisis in the life of God the title is Christ. A crisis in the life of God be it. You have already stated that I think I should underline for your viewers that that my book is an exception to the what has lately been the rule of books about Jesus of Nazareth. Most have tried to set aside everything that literary imagination may have added. Usually referring to those additions as adulteration was imposed upon the simple message of Jesus by the early church. I regard

these adulterations. Literary creativity of the highest order and the composite character of results is made up of memories of the historical Jesus the man from Nazareth and the inventiveness and theological brilliance of the Jews who wrote the New Testament and all but one of the writers of the New Testament were Jews. The crisis then is posed in a Jewish way because Jesus was not just another god with not just a warrior in some indiscriminate fashion. Like a you know a bully who will strike out at whoever happens to come within reach of his fists. He was a focused and intense warrior on behalf of one people the nation Israel. And when that nation seemed to suffer a crushing defeat at the hands

of Babylon. He said that this defeat was not what it appeared to be it was not really a defeat. It was rather God punishing Israel for its end. But this punishment would not last for ever would be lent after a time and indeed after a short time and would restore Israel to the glory that it had known under its great King David and and even to the glory far beyond that. But decades past centuries past when empires succeeded in other Babylon did fall but it was succeeded by Persia and been by Greece which was worse than Babylon and finally by Rome which was the worst of all and god who knew the future knew that in a few short decades a terrible 65 year war was going to break out between Judea and Rome and by the end of that war as many

Jews would die as died under Hitler in the middle of the past century and that he was going to do nothing about this. The warrior then knew that he was not going to go to war this time but he had promised he would. He had promised repeatedly that he would and with great emotion and great great eloquence how could he break that promise and still claim to be the God who had chosen this people and had. I told them to trust him. It was in this particular way with relationship to this particular people that the question of the Lion and the lamb was posed. And so it was that when God became human he didn't just become any kind of human he became a Jew and he suffered crucifixion as a Jew. Crucifixion was what thousands of

Jews and his fellow Jews once he became Jews. But you would suffer when Rome defeated and crushed the nation of Judea. The question then arises what good does that do. If you can't help them what good does it do them for him to simply suffer alongside them. And here the answer is that that he finds a way to solve that earlier problem. The problem that he created when he when he overreacted to the first sin of his first human creatures by cursing them with death. And in solving that problem he so to speak catches up. The other problem with the nation of Israel and solves both at the same time he changes the terms of a battle instead of fighting a mere Caesar a mere Pharaoh. If you fight Satan directly Satan who has

complicated things and done so much harm along the way and by defeating Satan he gives back a big gift of eternal life to the Jews. But after the Jews to the whole human race. If we live forever if we can look forward to that then. And what matters even the worst defeat that we might suffer along the way and conversely what bad are the victories that we win along the way if we're all going to die in the long run anyway. This is the way in which God resolves the crisis in his life having restated the terms of conflict he can he can win in a new way. You can still be a god and people can still believe that is of a god worthy of their confidence and trust. I should introduce Again our guest or anyone who's tuned in the last few minutes we're speaking with Jack Miles. He is author of the book God a biography from 1996 a

book that received a Pulitzer Prize that takes a literary approach to the bible looking at it as a word of literature. And as the story of God God being the central character the first book concentrated on the God of the Old Testament. Now he's published a book titled Christ a crisis in the life of God is published by coming off. It takes the same kind of approach to the New Testament. The questions are welcome three three three wy allowed to go free eight hundred two to two. W.A. I think here what's again what's interesting and significant is that like the first book I got a biography it looks at the way in which the person of God changes over time and is self reflective reflects on himself and his actions. And in fact here what happens with with Christ and the crucifixion is that God is acknowledging that

ultimately he made a mistake that that he was in. You know it's not really really so much. Ultimately Adam and Even the devil that are responsible for it sin and responsible for the fall. That in fact he's got to take the rap because after all he he created. It all and so it's his it's his saying yes indeed I do. I did make a mistake here. This with there was I am flawed and rather than have human beings pay the price he pays the price. That's my reading of the matter and I realize that that is a very unorthodox one and yet I would maintain that I don't have to add anything to the story as we find it in Scripture. To come up with this with a reading of this sort and make it plausible. When Jesus goes to the Jordan River and is baptized by John the Baptist's he is engaging in a ritual of repentance.

If Jesus is God incarnate God in the flesh then God Himself is engaging in a ritual of repentance. But if he is doing that then there must be something of which he has to repent. There must be something he's sorry he did some sin some mistake. The conventional reading of this the when the answer you would get I think most often from. A priest or minister would be that though he was sinless. He went through a ritual of repentance for sin to give us a good example that is providing him with a motive that is not stated there in his own words. Jesus never says that though I am sinless I will go through a ritual of repentance anyway. Another way is to interpret his silence is to say that the action speaks for itself. It is an action of repentance if he engaged in it than he meant

it to mean what it ordinarily means. And that is that he does have something to regret something to be sorry for. It seems to me that that for those people who have a problem with thinkers like Dominic Crossan and the other people who are involved in in what has been called the search for the historical Jesus that people have trouble with that maybe are also going to have trouble with with your analysis as well because in both cases that what we get is a picture of God that is all too human and that is something that some folks would prefer were not to look at God in that way. It is that it seems to call the whole the whole thing into question and and then we have to ask well who is in in whose images who created here. Dominic Crossan and others whose goal is to recreate the historical Jesus of Nazareth attend. In my

opinion on the whole not to say very much about God they are concerned rather to to recreate a certain human being who entertained opinions about God but. But the opinion of the Jesus had about the belief that he had about his relationship with God seemed not to be the ones that concerned them most. They're more concerned with his ethical teaching and his his behavior is democracy for example in dining with people of all social classes and all religious persuasions to a point. My concern is is rather more centrally with the figure of God and I'm sure that it's possible for for some people to to take offense to either a revised vision of what Jesus was historically or this picture of a literary character who

who is divine but whose way of being divine includes things that haven't ordinarily been thought proper to divinity such as confession of sin. But then you know when you're when you're not a professor or a priest but merely a literary critic. What you want in the essential character you were discussing is that he should be compelling that he should be interesting on the page and many of us I think as readers of literature can respond more warmly to a character who has some kind of internal struggle underway who wishes to be good who is good but wishes to be better rather is as we ourselves do and who can be an example an inspiration to us in that very regard. We have a caller someone calling in on the cell phone in cattle.

Let's talk. With that line for Hello. Hi thanks for taking my call. There's a passage in Luke I believe about Christ appearing following the crucifixion and resurrection. Two disciples are walking along the road and they don't recognize him. And I think that's because one of one of the things in the passages that you know they kind of treat the person that appears to them as a dolt it seems to me as a person who is unaware of anything that's going on in Jerusalem you know didn't you weren't you aware of all these things. Part of what they say is you know we're disappointed because we had expected you know a liberator. Right. You know they were looking for a person that was going to free them from the bondage that the Romans had on them. And it seems to me the message at least for me today is that you know they were blinded by their

expectations. They didn't see Christ not because he blinded them but because they couldn't see him for what he was. You know that became more of a Lisper than a roar so to speak you know to go back to your military strength. You know visions of Christ in that day and it seems to me now extending that to today that our vision of the second coming would be war and also like there's you know that you know Christ coming in glory. And it seems to me that you know if Christ second coming may be maybe a whisper and we may mess it up we're not looking for the right thing. It also occurs to me that we could be living in a period beyond the realm beyond the second coming that Christ may have been here and. And up and recognise

not been recognised in that we are living in a post second coming era and you know I don't know I would I would hope that isn't the case but it seems possible to me given the passages that you know in the Bible were Saint Paul you know that I've heard things or read things that seem to indicate that the coming you know it was right around the corner or you know be ready you know it's coming and they've always said well they were mistaken. You know that's what I've heard there's been you know they thought he was coming right back. Well I don't know today I sit here wondering you know maybe he did come right back and maybe we're the ones that are off base but I'd like to listen your comment about them. Well thank you. Though that's a very arresting idea that Jesus might have ever returned and been recognized. One great scholar said that if Jesus returned he would he would be crucified a second time. I would like to recur to your

recollection of the scene when Jesus is walking along unrecognized on the road to a male with two of his own disciples who are full of grief and full of disappointment and who tell this stranger as they take him to be that they had expected that the man they followed would be the liberation of Israel. That expectation is not one they should be blamed for. God Himself had promised just that. He had used military imagery of the most vivid and understate double sword and had aroused just the expectation that Israel at that time entertained entertained with every every warrant you might say God himself had told them to have this hope. When the shock of the surprise when he comes as a liberator but.

With a message that the form of liberation has changed so drastically that it is a form of liberation that can include rather than rule out a terrible military defeat for his chosen people. He authenticate that vision as I see it. He earns the right to bring such a crushing disappointment of a message to his people by joining them by becoming one of them and by suffering himself what they will suffer up to and including capital punishment by the terrible means of crucifixion. It is his way of saying. It must be this way. It cannot be the other way. Why couldn't it be. Why couldn't God come as a liberating warrior. I don't think that the text ever really answers that question. It remains a kind of mystery. The character of God the central

figure in the Bible from start to finish has changed his mind about what he will do and what he won't do. And he has offered a great compensation. The hope the promise of eternal life for everyone. After further suffering but. Final culminating victory that's the compensation. And yet in the middle term and in the middle term seems likely to run for an indefinitely long time. The Christians who accept him are in the same stance finally as the Jews were they are awaiting decisive intervention in history. With patience and and faith. The There's another dimension to that scene which I think is certainly worth noticing. They do finally recognize

who it is who is speaking to them but they recognize it when they're in the in with him and he break bread with them. Well the last time Jesus spoke to his followers at length before he died was of course at the Last Supper. And there he created this remarkable rather shocking Sunday cannibalistic ritual in which he tells them symbolically to eat his own flesh and drink his own blood. It's just bread and wine of course and yet it is intended to be a ritual that unites them physically to him united to him in that way they can die when he dies. But then they will rise when he rises. So by recalling that ritual to their minds recalling the gift that he gave them at the Last Supper.

Jesus. So these two followers of his that what seemed to be a defeat was actually a great victory and the victory has won by his having risen from the dead and being amazingly the one who is speaking to them. The ritual of even symbolically drinking blood is in Jewish terms a terribly shocking action to engage in. The rules of kosher butchery in which blood is drained from the meat before it is consumed go all the way back to the Book of Genesis and to the moment just after the flood when God gave his human creatures permission to eat meat but said that they could not consume blood because blood had life in it and life belonged to God. Human blood had human life in it. Divine blood. If there could be such a thing would have divine life that is eternal life in it and at the Last Supper

Jesus symbolically gave his followers God's blood carrying eternal life. To drink it while it's primitive its power is never exhausted. It has inspired great art and great music but at the core of it there is something that is physical and a sort of heart stopping. The flow of blood. There's one of the things that strikes me is that in the person of Jesus particularly in his more public person maybe not quite so much with the disciples perhaps even there. There is there's a certain hesitancy a certain ambivalence. He he performs miracles but just enough to kind of get people's attention. He and you would you would think that if indeed he was trying to get maximum attention he could have done some things that that would have gotten that attention he could have he could have been more dramatic and he

wasn't there was something in spite of the things that he does and says that is very understated almost as if he's not quite sure himself. Yes and I think that is an element in the page by page. The suspense that one feels in reading the gospels particularly the Gospel of John which is the one in which Jesus appears most clearly as divine and in which his own identity is the central subject. At times reading the work you wonder whether he quite knows who he is and what he wants to do. There are other times when you have just the opposite sense that he knows what he wants to do and is aware of how easily he can be misunderstood. If someone performs food miracles let's say multiplying the low and fishes.

Well he could be someone expected to perform many such miracles and solve the problem of world hunger if he performs healing miracles. He could be regarded as someone whose mission on earth is to wipe out disease. But that's not his mission. These miracles serve really simply to authenticate who he is that he is not merely a human being. And then. B the appointments on his calendar so to speak that really matters is not any of those feats but the crucifixion and resurrection that is the moment by which he accomplishes everything for everybody but you can only do that if it isn't just another Jew dying on the cross but God incarnate doing so. So he has first to establish who he is and then do just what. Who he is should never do. You would expect that once God

identified himself clearly the next stage would be the defeat of Caesar. As there came about in you know the Book of Exodus the defeat of Pharaoh. It doesn't work out that way. And since it doesn't it would be so easy to say that he isn't God so he goes to the trouble of stablish ing clearly in advance that we have coming to the point we have about 10 minutes left with our guest Jack Miles. We have some other callers who will continue here to talk with them go to Bloomington Indiana for a next person here line number for that oh I have a couple of questions about Joel but I want to comment please on your interpretation of Jesus in the New Testament. And please keep in mind we know we do all we have ten minutes and I do have some. Call it right. It is true that Jesus is portrayed as a suffering obedient servant in the New Testament and He is not portrayed as a sovereign Divine Judge. But that's because his mission on earth was to be our sacrifice

for our sins and not to be our divine judge when he was here on Earth. But you can round out Jesus character in the New Testament without getting out of the Old Testament. You see him as divine judge in the Book of Revelation. And we call it The Book of Revelation but it could accurately be called the Revelation of Jesus. And that's all I want to say about Joe. Do you date job about 15:00. The best I could get 15 20 B.C.. A public debate of the writing the date of the of the Book of Job is it is essentially impossible to state right. There is no clear indication in the text when this occurred it has to be regarded as as equally as at some point between the creation of the world and its redemption and it should be seen rather I think it is a moment in the development of a

consciousness than as a historical event that could be matched to a calendar somewhere. And Jesus is finally the judge of the world about him. He is a judge who who who is criterion in Matthew when he separates the seed from the goats is charity toward a human being's charity toward his fellow human beings. And that is a change it isn't that people should acknowledge Him as God but that they should care for their fellow human beings as human beings. OK about this native job. Obviously if we don't if we can't tell the date if we can't tell it at all then we cannot determine whether God spoke audibly after job or before him. But the chronology. And it's obvious it's a little bit doubtful. Puts job at about the same time as the pen commandments. Is the Exodus from Egypt and that area of time. Most

scholars that would mean that God was stating the Ten Commandments before the entire nation of Israel at about the same time he was speaking to. I would have to disagree I don't think that that job should be dated that way I think the story is told in a timeless way for a reason. OK you just disconnected from any flow of historical events. Well may I just make one final comment about you overnight is that job does not hold God with a guilty of doing some injustice. God God love this job. Tell that in the first you get into the first chapter of Job God holds Gotthold job in the highest esteem and God knows that even if Job's faith in virtue is put to an extreme test God knows that job will still pass that test. So a lot of job to be tested. And job does indeed pass the test. Now when Job passes this

test God does not turn against a job and God doesn't admit error he rewards job. But when Job questions God to reason God will not answer job directly if that god is not accountable to Joe. God says I'm not accountable to you you're accountable to me and job sees it and what does Job say to God he says I have I have heard of you here but now Mine eyes have seen me where for I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. That's a mistranslation I believe that's the King James Version. Yes indeed it's a mistranslation. There there it's a very. In my book autobiography I spend a great deal of time on that closing verse which is often wrongly regarded classically wrongly regarded as Job's repudiating his own views. I don't believe he is. It's quite true that job never curses God and that he passes the test but afterwards by God. Criticizing repudiating those who have

taken your view and the view of Job's comforters he ends up not criticizing Joe but by implication criticizing himself. Job has passed the test but have got past jobs tests according to God. It would seem to be that the answer is No. We have some of the callers here and we're trying to get at least a couple of others in in the time remains the next person in line is in champagne. Line 1. Hello. Thank you. If you have time to respond to this response to earlier caller the question of recognizing another coming and might have asked that person to re read the book of Mark and see how clueless the disciples come off and that don't seem to understand or recognize much of anything and if you look at it really the only ones that do are the women around him. And I'm wondering if in your book you analyze at all the importance or role of women in the development of the Jesus movement and then also. Do you at

all look at and compare contrast say Buddha and Mohamed as sort of analogous figures to Christ. They don't speak about Buddha or Mohammed because. That kind of comparison is proper to the history of religion. It's not proper to do the literary interpretation of a particular work of literary art a particular work of literature. Since Buddha and Mohammed don't come up in the New Testament they can't be properly discussed in a literary interpretation of them. No women certainly do come out and spend a great deal of time talking about Jesus encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well and with the woman taken in adultery. And note how exceptional his relationship with them is compared with God's relationship with women in the past

Jesus conversation with the woman at the well is the longest conversation that God has with any woman in all of Scripture. I hope that that gets at least in part of the question the Carlists go to Southeastern Illinois for someone else here Lie number two. Yes just a quick comment. First day you say that God changed. Perhaps God is infinite and eternal and he didn't change a belief that human beings are and I didn't need God. Well I tried for centuries to write using one method big deal with these people and maybe now I try her and see if that works for it since the first one didn't. Back to my question is if I've read this and you say you accept God and Jesus as Jesus is God. How do you know what is your explanation for Jesus on the cross trainer quiets now forsaken my God where as far as I can. There are two ways to take that of course one is that the experience of human dying which God clearly wished to inflict upon himself would

have been incomplete if you did not experience human despair at that moment and that's a possible interpretation. Another way to read that moment is that Jesus is quoting. Psalm 22 in which that line occurs but the psalm taken as a whole is a sign of victory. There is despair in route to exaltation. And I believe it's possible in fact to read the line it is accomplished. That is the last word spoken by Jesus in the passion according to John in allusion to the last verse of that very song. These are the interpretations that I think are not mutually exclusive. Either Is is possible. I incline I think rather toward the second.

That Jesus is presented more of the time as in charge of his own dying and experiencing the physical pain but never in a condition of true complete spiritual despair. All right thank you. And to Farmer city here Line 3 for another column. Well I'll be brief. Your literary reading of the Bible doesn't bother me a bit it coincides with Johnson's work and I've read that the gospels were meant to explain now who Jesus was what he did and they're not. It's not a historical record in the modern dance. Go on to a comment I just bought your book last week and I'm still I'm just fascinated just with the footnotes to the appendix A and got into the text yet. Your writing is a joy to read. It is so clear and precise and I just wanted to compliment you.

Well thank you. If you find the writing clear and precise and a joy to read in it's in the footnote to the appendix. I can only hope that you'll you'll find even more pleasure in the main text. Thank you for your for your your prayers. Thank you for your work. Right where almost the point where we have to stop. I certainly think that. That you're intending that the two books to be taken together. And that got a biography and this book really to be taken together once and then once you come to the end. Then also in the epilogue to. This book Christ crisis in the life of God. You make some observations I think in a sense intended to be a little bit more personal and bring the whole thing together. What is it what for you now does it. Does it represent having gone through this exercise. Well there were ever so many discoveries along the way. Things began for me with the hearing of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in which the image of the

Bridegroom the bridegroom of Israel that is God Himself and the image of the Lamb were joined together and set to music of great sorrow and power. That's what started me. I thought that if there was a transformation here it could only be sought in the Old Testament. But I made the fateful decision to read the Old Testament in the Jewish order. And having recognized that the Jewish order has its own artistic integrity and comes to a conclusion I stopped and wrote God a biography as a work complete in itself that did not really require the second book and was about the Hebrew Scriptures as read by the Jews in this new book. I'm not just so much writing about the New Testament as I am writing about the Christian edition of the entire Bible Christianity re-arranges the books of the OT of what he calls the Old Testament moving the prophets full of expectation to the

end. All of those promises that Jesus is about to break in a way. Gathered up and and made to seem even more powerful just before he appears and it's a very powerful literary technique and through the Gospel story the echoes of the Hebrew Scriptures are everywhere. So then we have two works which certainly can be read together and yet one is about the Jewish tradition and the other about the Christian edition of our common literary classic. And each deal in its own way with the trauma that fateful human beings experience when God seems not to keep his promises and not to deliver them from the sorrows that face them. Well we'll have to stop there and I want to tell people that of course here in our conversation we've just touched on some of the very large themes dealt with in the book there is a lot there. And

I would certainly suggest to people to look at and the other book of course got a biography is still available it's available now on a paperback. That book won a Pulitzer Prize in 1906 and then the new book that we've talked about here this morning is Christ a crisis in the life of God is published by Knopf Dr. Miles. Our guest Jack Miles Stockdale's thank you very much for talking with us. David a pleasure to be with you really.