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WORK TITLE: The Bible for Grown-Ups
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1949-10/2016
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: British
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/05/simon-loveday-obituary * https://quiteirregular.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/the-bible-for-grown-ups-a-new-look-at-the-good-book-by-simon-loveday/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 84077126
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n84077126
HEADING: Loveday, Simon, 1949-2016
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100 1_ |a Loveday, Simon, |d 1949-2016
370 __ |b Taunton (England) |e Wells (England) |2 naf
373 __ |a University of Keele |2 naf
374 __ |a Authors |a Critics |2 lcsh
374 __ |a Criticism
375 __ |a Males |2 lcdgt
377 __ |a eng
378 __ |q Simon Charles Hollier
400 1_ |w nne |a Loveday, Simon, |d 1949-
670 __ |a His The romances of John Fowles, 1985: |b CIP t.p. (Simon Loveday) data sheet (b. 2-4-49)
670 __ |a Loveday, Simon. The Bible for grown-ups, 2016: |b page viii (Simon Loveday trained as an anthropologist and a literary critic, teaching at UEA and Oxford. He also edited the psychological journal Typeface and wrote The Romances of John Fowles. He lectured at Keele University and lived in Wells, Somerset … Simon Loveday died in October 2016)
670 __ |a Legacy.com. via WWW, June 4, 2017: |b Simon Charles Hollier Loveday (LOVEDAY Simon Charles Hollier died peacefully at St Margaret’s Hospice, Taunton, on 29th October 2016. Author of ’The Bible for Grown-Ups’. … Published in The Times on Nov. 4, 2016) |u http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/simon-loveday-obituary?pid=1000000182307444&view=guestbook
953 __ |a be26
PERSONAL
Born February 4, 1949, in London, England; died of cancer, October 29, 2016, in Taunton, England; son of Pat and Denise Loveday; married c. 1976, wife’s name Jill (divorced), married, c. 1998, wife’s name Sheena; children: Zoe (stepdaughter), Henry (stepson), Jessica (first marriage).
EDUCATION:Earned degrees from King’s College, Cambridge, University College London, and Merton College, Oxford.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and scholar. Keele University, lecturer; Oxford University, teacher; University of East Anglia, teacher.
AVOCATIONS:Getting to know people, climbing, cricket, abseiling, singing, cycling, poetry, literature, bridge, philosophy, psychology, education.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Simon Loveday lived out his life as a scholar, his specialization being the field of psychology. After earning his degrees from Oxford University, University College London, and Cambridge University, Loveday moved on to begin working as a lecturer for several different universities. He was affiliated with Keele University, Oxford University, and the University of East Anglia, where he led courses in a wide variety of psychological disciplines. Outside of his academic work, Loveday also maintained involvement with his community. He spent some time residing in the city of Wells, where he helped to oversee the town’s literary festival event. During his residence in Northleach, Loveday participated in the council for the town, serving as its mayor. Loveday produced various published works throughout his life, which help to form a legacy of his ideas and achievements. Loveday passed away in late 2016, following a battle with cancer.
The Bible for Grown-Ups: A New Look at the Good Book was the last book Loveday was able to write. The book serves as a critique of the Bible and modern interpretations of it. Loveday also touches upon the history of the Bible itself, with the intent of uncovering both its meaning and origins. In doing so, Loveday holds up what we know to have happened during the periods the Bible depicts against how we comprehend the events presented within the Bible. Loveday looks closely at both Bible testaments for a complete analysis.
The book is composed of three distinct parts. The first portion takes a long look at the Old Testament. The second section does the same, but with the Bible’s New Testament. Loveday explicates each book under both testaments, comparing the events described within them to various chronological sources proven to present the facts of the period. In doing this, Loveday tries to establish what could have led the Bible’s authors to interpret the events of the period and record them in the way they chose. To accomplish this goal, he takes a psychological lens to the period’s happenings while also drawing up a timeline of what happened. He also examines the messages the Bible seeks to convey and whether they are as sound as purported throughout society. Some parts of the book seek to peer into the minds of some of the most notable Biblical figures, including Jesus Christ. Loveday also devotes a portion of the book to trying to deduce who exactly the Bible’s authors were. The final portion of the book offers Loveday the means to read the Bible closely and offer his own perspective on the messages presented within it. He goes over some key points of Biblical scripture section by section, in turn using his analysis to try to encourage readers to view the Bible as an open-ended guide to morality and the universe, rather than a strict piece of doctrine.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer commented: “This 12-year project is a book to read for pleasure and to study for enhancement.” Spectator contributor Matthew Parris remarked: “Make up your own mind, but take it from me: Loveday writes with a clarity that is little short of gripping.” He added: “He will engage you in a way a sneering reviewer can only envy.” Jem Bloomfield, a writer on the Quite Irregular blog, stated: “Loveday’s own gusto shows itself in every page, and his quest for a nuanced and literary engagement with the Biblical texts should hopefully prompt others to make their own explorations.” On the Church Times website, Anthony Phillips wrote: “The importance of the issues raised by Loveday’s analysis of the scriptures cannot be over-emphasised.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, February 13, 2017, review of The Bible for Grown-Ups: A New Look at the Good Book, p. 68.
Spectator, July 30, 2016, Christopher Howse, “The gospel truth,” review of The Bible for Grown-Ups, p. 32; August 6, 2016, Matthew Parris, “The Bible is too important to be left to believers,” review of The Bible for Grown-Ups.
ONLINE
Church Times (London, England), https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/ (August 26, 2016), Anthony Phillips, “Core Myth of the Bible Is Deliverance,” review of The Bible for Grown-Ups.
Quite Irregular, https://quiteirregular.wordpress.com/ (January 11, 2017), Jem Bloomfield, review of The Bible for Grown-Ups.
Spectator (London, England), https://www.spectator.co.uk/ (August 6, 2016), Matthew Parris, “I can’t sleep for anger at the Spectator review of my friend’s book.”
OBITUARIES
Guardian (London, England), https://www.theguardian.com/ (February 5, 2017), Jessica Loveday, “Simon Loveday Obituary.”
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Simon Loveday obituary
Simon Loveday became a pioneering promoter of psychological profiling in business
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Jessica Loveday
Sunday 5 February 2017 11.31 EST Last modified on Wednesday 20 September 2017 05.40 EDT
My father, Simon Loveday, who has died aged 67, was a gentleman, scholar, literary critic, teacher and great believer in the good in people.
His last project was The Bible for Grown-Ups (2016), a study of the history, text and context of the Bible, and he received the wonderful news of its publication shortly after his diagnosis with cancer. He faced his illness with exceptional determination, speaking on Radio 4, at the book launch and at literary festivals up until the week in which he died.
Simon was born in London to Pat and Denise Loveday. During his childhood, his parents lived in the Middle East, where his father worked as a civil engineer. Simon boarded at Uppingham school, in Rutland, but learned to drive and sail in Karachi, went riding in the mountains above Tehran and travelled extensively.
He studied social anthropology at King’s College, Cambridge, French and German at University College London and English at Merton College, Oxford. He discovered the work of the Canadian scholar Northrop Frye, a key intellectual influence, and a book, The Romances of John Fowles (1985), grew out of my father’s studies.
After teaching in Salisbury, Wiltshire, at the University of East Anglia and at Oxford, Simon joined the University of Oxford Delegacy of Local Examinations. He described the move as “a watershed”, providing a vision of how exams could be designed to promote good teaching, not the other way around.
He took this vision into the psychological sphere and joined Mosaic, a management consultancy company in Bristol, trained in Gestalt therapy and became a pioneering promoter of psychological profiling in business. Simon later joined K2 Management Development and trained as a family psychotherapist. Most recently he was involved in developing and delivering courses for the NHS at Keele University.
In 1976 Simon married Jill (my mother) and they lived in Oxford. Their marriage ended in divorce and in 1998 he married Sheena. Simon and Sheena worked together and moved to Northleach, Gloucestershire, where Simon became mayor of the town council and sang in the church choir. They settled in Wells, Somerset, where Simon was chair of the Wells literary festival from 2012 until 2014, judged the Wells poetry competition and taught bridge.
He had an exuberance and energy for life which was present both in his outdoor pursuits – climbing, abseiling, cross-country cycling – and in his passion for intellectual discourse. He cared deeply about literature, philosophy, education and psychology, had a life-long love of bridge, poetry, singing and cricket, and was genuinely interested in other people. He was clever, warm and kind.
Simon is survived by Sheena, me, his stepchildren, Henry and Zoe, and five grandchildren.
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MATTHEW PARRIS
I can’t sleep for anger at the Spectator review of my friend’s book
But beneath the sneering, it might have something important – if also wrong – to say
Matthew Parris
Matthew Parris
6 August 2016
9:00 AM
May I write a review of a review? I have to get this out of my system, having been unable to sleep last night, for anger at Christopher Howse’s beastly, scoffing and unjust treatment of a new book: Simon Loveday’s The Bible for Grown-Ups, reviewed in our 30 July issue. Somebody needs to call a halt to the tedious practice of using review to show off at somebody else’s expense.
It happens that I feel a special protectiveness towards this book, having seen the manuscript last year and encouraged its author to seek a publisher. Icon books have now published him, and done his study proud.
The book deserves it. Let me tell you first (as Mr Howse, who writes about religion for a national newspaper, finds no time to tell his readers) what Mr Loveday sets out to do. Many valuable studies of the Bible place the Christian (and, more generally, faith-based) message of the great book at the centre of the examination. Others are intent upon proving or disproving, or even mocking, its claims.
Loveday’s study is different. Written neither from the viewpoint of belief or unbelief, he aims to explain what nobody ever tried to explain to me in my own religious education: how this vast collection of stories, poetry, historical records, reports, genealogical tables, inventories, testaments and legends ever got stapled together — as it were — into the thing we call the Bible.
Who wrote the various bits, and why? What other aims might they have had, beyond the composition of a sacrament to their God? How did this all end up between two covers? How were its contents chosen?
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How much is meant to be a factual report, and how much allegorical? How much is included just because it is beautiful, uplifting, solemn? Which of its famous stories occur in other cultures, religions, or literatures?
And though Loveday insists he wants to set aside belief or unbelief, there is a kind of message at the core of the decade-long adventure that this work has represented for him. His book (and, he believes, the Bible) is a hymn to an irrepressible longing in the human spirit for higher meaning than the humdrum. Indeed, the great 18th-century bishop Joseph Butler argued that this longing was tantamount to a proof of the existence of the deity who placed the ache in every human breast.
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Howse snipes at Loveday by reminding us that long tracts of the Old and New Testaments are workaday and uninspiring, which I think we knew. Unaccountably he then launches into sustained and unpleasant disparagement of the kind of people who want Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ at their weddings, or feel moved by the Victorian poem ‘Invictus’ by W.E. Henley. Howse appears to have been irritated by Loveday’s suggestion that — be it through the psalms or Gloria Gaynor — people want to be inspired and uplifted at significant moments in their lives.
God knows how one comes to be defending Gaynor or Henley here, except that Howse suddenly attacks them; but I’ll do it. ‘I Will Survive’ is an anthem to women’s spirit of self-worth in the face of men who bully and put them down, and it resonates for millions, and should. ‘Invictus’ — a brave and original poem for its time — is a shout of defiance at God himself, arguing that we have the last word as to our destiny. It is charged with meaning, particularly for those who contemplate taking their own lives. Howse belittles the people who find such anthems moving: presumably because they are easy to understand and therefore (he insinuates with a sneer at Desert Island Discs) vulgar. He seems to have some difficulty with the common man, tittering that ‘The Good Book’ is a ‘folksy’ expression, of Wesleyan origin. Millions of folk, I suggest, meant the expression quite literally. They will not have been aware they were being folksy.
But underneath his sniggering at common people, and his dismissal of Loveday’s (to me, fascinating) discussion of the sources of the different Gospel accounts (on the grounds that he is already familiar and bored with it all), this Casaubon of a reviewer does have something big to say, half-glimpsed skulking beneath his jerky peregrination of a review.
I think Howse thinks the Bible cannot usefully be assessed or understood unless in a quest for religious truth. I take it this is what he’s saying in his conclusion that ‘Loveday’s big mistake is to think that “it is possible to set aside theology and history” and be left with anything in the Bible, except by accident, that is more “grown-up”.’
Now this is interesting. The implication is that the Bible shorn of witness and revelation is a windsock with no wind. Bible study is a pilgrimage or it is nothing. ‘Stand-back’ analysis like Loveday’s is not a welcome guest at the faith community’s feast.
If that’s what Howse thinks he should come out with it. It walks straight into David Hume’s trap. The 18th-century Scottish philosopher argued (‘On Miracles’) that it takes a miracle to believe in miracles. In other words, unless you have faith, then, presented with a range of possible explanations for an apparently unnatural event, it cannot be rational to prefer ‘divine intervention’ to the more mundane explanations, such as mistake, invention or hallucination. Miracles are Catch-22: your world has to have a place for miracles before you can rationally conclude that one has happened.
Howse (I think) thinks Bible study is like that: dead without the Living God and the Living Christ. If that’s right then there’s no point exploring belief unless we already believe.
Loveday disagrees, finding the Bible moving, instructive and beautiful even when its central figure is pixellated out. Though I am an atheist, this book has sent me back to the Bible. Make up your own mind, but take it from me: Loveday writes with a clarity that is little short of gripping. He will engage you in a way a sneering reviewer can only envy.
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A startling new look at the Bible that is 'fascinating and persuasive' (Matthew Parris).
The Bible for Grown-Ups neither requires, nor rejects, belief. It sets out to help intelligent adults make sense of the Bible - a book that is too large to swallow whole, yet too important in our history and culture to spit out. Why do the creation stories in Genesis contradict each other? Did the Exodus really happen? Was King David a historical figure? Why is Matthew's account of the birth of Jesus so different from Luke's? Why was St Paul so rude about St Peter?
Every Biblical author wrote for their own time, and their own audience. In short, nothing in the Bible is quite what it seems. Literary critic Simon Loveday's book - a labour of love that has taken over a decade to write - is a thrilling read, for Christians and anyone else, which will overturn everything you thought you knew about the Good Book.
More books by this author
Author bio:
Simon Loveday trained as an anthropologist and a literary critic, teaching at UEA and Oxford. He also edited the psychological journal Typeface and wrote The Romances of John Fowles. He lectured at Keele University and lived in Wells, Somerset, where he was at one time Chair of the Wells Festival of Literature. Simon Loveday died in October 2016.
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The Existential Jesus
The Existential Jesus
Colin Coward December 28, 2015
The guest editor on BBC radio 4’s Today programme this morning, 28th December, was the actor Michael Sheen. In a segment at 07.20 (1.20.30 into the programme) Sue Lawley asked the question which he wanted to put: ‘What power does the Bible have in our secular world?’ I’ve spent the rest of today researching the two people who were interviewed by Sue Lawley and Michael Sheen.
PROPHECY TODAY
It is clear to me that the prophetic voices of our time come either from people who are finding life in the institutional churches increasingly difficult and frustrating, or from others like Michael Sheen, who says he is not religious but who is clearly deeply drawn by the power of his Christian inheritance.
What matters to these people is that the Bible is about deep truth and that Christianity needs to evolve into a different configuration. The important questions being asked about the nativity stories are not Did they really happen? but the meaning, the purpose, the values that are behind the stories.
Michael Sheen clearly thinks we are in danger in our society, because there is something that feels absent, the something that is bigger than all of us, that goes beyond the everyday, that lifts you out of yourself; there is a connection to something that is transcendent. It’s all about the power of the story.
I think these people are talking deep, authentic truth, truth far more authentic than that which I hear from bishops and preachers and teachers in the Church of England. They seem unable to dream their way into the profound ways in which people are engaging deeply with their experience of the infinite other and the infinitely present, which we call God.
Michael Sheen was asked what it is that is so important that he fears we will lose from the Bible - because it’s something that connects us beyond the everyday, something that’s bigger than all of us.
For him there is missing a connection to something that is transcendent in society, that somehow lifts you out of yourself and allows you have a slightly different context, which some people call spirituality.
THE BIBLE FOR GROWN-UPS
Simon Loveday from Bath, was the first guest to be interviewed. He was introduced as the author of The Bible for Grown-ups. I looked for the book on Amazon but there was no sign of it. A search on Google was more productive, revealing that Simon Loveday is 66 and in fact lives in Wells. He has spent the past 12 years writing his book The Bible for Grown-ups, finally completing it in April. The book is not really about religion, but about how people are selective with which bits they take from the Bible. He couldn’t find anyone to publish it –until he asked Times columnist Matthew Parris if he could help by reading a preview section and giving an endorsement. Matthew Parris wrote about the book in The Times and as a result, Simon seems to have found a publisher.
http://www.wellsjournal.co.uk/Times-changing-author/story-28326262-detail/story.html
In the interview, Simon commented that the authors of Matthew and Luke’s gospels created stories to fill a need. If we had Matthew and Luke in the studio and pointed out the contradictions in their narratives to them, they would say:
“well, the contradictions aren’t the important thing; the important thing is the meaning, the purpose, what the kind of values that are behind the stories. What they would have said is, don’t worry about the detail – what are the stories really trying to tell you?’”
THE EXISTENTIAL JESUS
Towards the end of the segment, John Carroll, professor of sociology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, was interviewed. He is the author of The Existential Jesus, published last year.
He said: “the churches have done a lamentable job in retelling the stories in way that might speak today and that’s a great pity because Mark’s version in particular is about the lonely, solitary figure who arrives from nowhere aged thirty-odd and the story is all about being.”
It’s worth quoting at length from the blurb about his book:
Jesus is the man who made the West. What kind of man was he? Is he relevant to a modern world shaken by crises of meaning? The churches have mainly projected him as Jesus the carer and comforter, Jesus meek and mild, friend of the weak. This is Jesus the Good Shepherd, who preaches on sin and forgiveness. He is Lord and Saviour. But this church Jesus is not remotely like the existential hero portrayed in the first and most potent telling of his life-story - that of Mark. Mark's Jesus is a lonely and restless, mysterious stranger. His mission is dark and obscure. Everything he tries fails. By the end there is no God, no loyal followers - just torture by crucifixion, climaxing in a colossal death scream. The story closes without a resurrection from the dead. There is just an empty tomb, and three women fleeing in terror. The existential Jesus speaks today. He does not spout doctrine; he has no interest in sin; his focus is not on some after-life. He gestures enigmatically from within his own gruelling experience, inviting the reader to walk in his shoes. He singles out everybody's central question: 'Who am I?' The truth lies within individual identity, resounding in the depths of the inner self. The existential Jesus is the West's great teacher on the nature of being.
I don’t think the institutional voices of the Church really know any longer how to respond to people’s profound question: Who am I?
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The Bible for Grown-Ups: A New Look at the
Good Book
Publishers Weekly.
264.7 (Feb. 13, 2017): p68.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
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Full Text:
The Bible for Grown-Ups: A New Look at the Good Book
Simon Loveday. Icon, $22.95 (320p) ISBN 978-1-78578-131-5
After first setting aside belief, the late Loveday intelligently and successfully assesses the Bible in ways that are
accessible and useful for those with open, inquiring minds. Sections that cover the Old and New Testaments address
similar issues: historical context, structure, purpose, history, and morality. Loveday begins by asking (and attempting to
answer) who actually wrote each section of the Bible, and investigating the core messages that inspired its original
creation. Both parts evince the lack of correspondence between the Bible and historical reality. Loveday's declarations
underscore his research; he writes, "The only authority in the Old Testament is what we give it" and "The writers of the
Synoptic Gospels were wrong. And if they were wrong--so was Jesus." In part three, "A Vision of Freedom," Loveday
approaches the Bible as unified, like a cathedral. His rhetoric beautifies his arguments, especially when he explores the
lyrical quality of a passage such as Luke's Nativity. Quotes from scholars, especially Reza Aslan and Paula
Friedricksen, confirm Loveday's stands as his humor lifts his prose. This 12-year project is a book to read for pleasure
and to study for enhancement. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Bible for Grown-Ups: A New Look at the Good Book." Publishers Weekly, 13 Feb. 2017, p. 68. General
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The gospel truth
Christopher Howse
Spectator.
331.9805 (July 30, 2016): p32.
COPYRIGHT 2016 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
http://www.spectator.co.uk
Full Text:
The Bible for Grown-Ups: A New Look at the Good Book
by Simon Loveday
Icon Books, 12.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 320
More brides in Britain go down the aisle to Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive' than to any other tune, Simon Loveday
notes. He cannot resist adding that 'it seems doubtful that they have fully taken in the words of the rest of the song'.
That must be true. 'I'm not that chainedup little person still in love with you,' yells the defiant narrator in Gloria's song.
'You're not welcome anymore.' If anything, 'I Will Survive' belongs, it seems to me, to a genre of assertive anthems,
like 'My Way' and 'Invictus', that appeal to people who are the imaginary heroes of their own Desert Island Discs and
examine their lives as little as the lyrics that make them feel better.
So why does the author bring up this detail of the modern British marriage ritual? Because, for the brides, he says, this
song 'may be only a piece of rock music, but the resonance with the Psalms has not escaped them'. I'd have thought this
very unlikely indeed. Many brides, and grooms, are utterly unfamiliar with the Psalms, unless they have by chance run
into 'The Lord's My Shepherd'. But his larger point is that 'I Will Survive' shares with religion a language of 'high
seriousness'.
Such high seriousness is exemplified, he says, by something Emily Dickinson wrote about the only way to recognise
poetry: 'If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.' One knows what she means,
but it is a pretty useless litmus test. It would exclude most of Pope, much of Browning and long stretches of epic
poetry. Of course, she might have retorted: 'That is--not what--I call poetry.' But it doesn't help Loveday's next
generalisation: 'Anyone who examines religious language is going to find that it evokes feelings of solemnity and awe.'
That is a question-begging principle that rules out acres of the Book of Numbers, for example, or the letters of St Paul.
If you define religious language subjectively as awe-inspiring, then many people in practice omit the whole Bible.
They don't read it. That's why they plump for Gloria.
Loveday's look at the 'Good Book' (a folksy name for the Bible first used, I think, by John Wesley during his disastrous
spell in Savannah, Georgia in the 1730s) is at its most engaging when he tosses up such literary-critical propositions for
discussion. He spent more than a decade on his book, he tells us, while working as Senior Associate at Keele School of
Medicine, 'helping to design and deliver leadership and change management programmes for Foundation Trusts'.
I found that he packs too much in--or rather he packs the wrong things for an enjoyable holiday. Forget the barometer;
it's more fun with the bucket and spade. I don't insist on feeling as if the top of my head were taken off, but I might
well blow my top if someone tries once again to explain the relation between the supposititious Q Source and the
Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke.
Even more futile is the distinction that Loveday embraces between the Jesus of History and the Jesus of Faith. 'This
book is not intended to examine the Christ of Faith: it can speak only of the Jesus of History.' The trouble is that, after a
criterion is applied that excludes the marvellous and mythical, the Jesus of History, like the hunter of the Boojum,
softly and suddenly vanishes away. But then, 'the writers of the New Testament', he asserts, 'had no interest in the
historical Jesus.'
I'm not so sure about that. But Loveday does not keep to his promise of speaking only of the Jesus of History. Taking
sample passages, he examines their literary conventions. One is the passage in Mark that recounts Peter's denial of
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Jesus and his subsequent repentance. 'I make no comment on whether or not it happened,' he declares. 'But it is entirely
realistic; it could be out of EastEnders or the Archers.' High praise, but is it so?
Peter, if you remember, is tricked into denying Jesus, who is under arrest, when he is warming himself by the fire along
with the servants of the high priest. But this is only accidental realism. The reader does all the work to construct an
imaginative picture. In the Iliad, when Hector's baby son is frightened by the horsehair crest on his helmet, we regard
it, perhaps, as a masterly literary detail. But what if Peter, the historical Peter, simply did warm himself at the fire on
the night of Jesus's arrest? Then it is not, after all, a brilliant device to reveal his character in a realistic setting, even if
Loveday attributes its presence to the 'groundbreaking novelty of the way the Gospel writers constructed their stories',
treating 'ordinary lives with seriousness and depth'.
Loveday sometimes asserts things that aren't true. More than once he says that Muslims, Jews and Christians 'describe
themselves as "people of the book"'. In reality, it is a term used in the Quran, often polemically, of Jews and Christians:
'O people of the Book, why do you not believe in God's signs?' But Loveday's big mistake is to think that it is possible
to 'set aside theology and history' and be left with anything in the Bible, except by accident, that is more 'grown up'.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Howse, Christopher. "The gospel truth." Spectator, 30 July 2016, p. 32. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459413024&it=r&asid=26409af99c3b750eb1c07ded32f57943.
Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A459413024
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The Bible is too important to be left to believers
Matthew Parris
Spectator.
331.9806 (Aug. 6, 2016): p21.
COPYRIGHT 2016 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
http://www.spectator.co.uk
Full Text:
May I write a review of a review? I have to get this out of my system, having been unable to sleep last night, for anger
at Christopher Howse's beastly, scoffing and unjust treatment of a new book: Simon Loveday's The Bible for GrownUps,
reviewed in our 30 July issue. Somebody needs to call a halt to the tedious practice of using review to show off at
somebody else's expense.
It happens that I feel a special protectiveness towards this book, having seen the manuscript last year and encouraged
its author to seek a publisher. Icon books have now published him, and done his study proud.
The book deserves it. Let me tell you first (as Mr Howse, who writes about religion for a national newspaper, finds no
time to tell his readers) what Mr Loveday sets out to do. Many valuable studies of the Bible place the Christian (and,
more generally, faith-based) message of the great book at the centre of the examination. Others are intent upon proving
or disproving, or even mocking, its claims.
Loveday's study is different. Written neither from the viewpoint of belief or unbelief, he aims to explain what nobody
ever tried to explain to me in my own religious education: how this vast collection of stories, poetry, historical records,
reports, genealogical tables, inventories, testaments and legends ever got stapled together--as it were--into the thing we
call the Bible.
Who wrote the various bits, and why? What other aims might they have had, beyond the composition of a sacrament to
their God? How did this all end up between two covers? How were its contents chosen?
How much is meant to be a factual report, and how much allegorical? How much is included just because it is
beautiful, uplifting, solemn? Which of its famous stories occur in other cultures, religions, or literatures?
And though Loveday insists he wants to set aside belief or unbelief, there is a kind of message at the core of the
decade-long adventure that this work has represented for him. His book (and, he believes, the Bible) is a hymn to an
irrepressible longing in the human spirit for higher meaning than the humdrum. Indeed, the great 18th-century bishop
Joseph Butler argued that this longing was tantamount to a proof of the existence of the deity who placed the ache in
every human breast.
Howse snipes at Loveday by reminding us that long tracts of the Old and New Testaments are workaday and
uninspiring, which I think we knew. Unaccountably he then launches into sustained and unpleasant disparagement of
the kind of people who want Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive' at their weddings, or feel moved by the Victorian poem
'Invictus' by W.E. Henley. Howse appears to have been irritated by Loveday's suggestion that--be it through the psalms
or Gloria Gaynor--people want to be inspired and uplifted at significant moments in their lives.
God knows how one comes to be defending Gaynor or Henley here, except that Howse suddenly attacks them; but I'll
do it. 'I Will Survive' is an anthem to women's spirit of self-worth in the face of men who bully and put them down, and
it resonates for millions, and should. 'Invictus'--a brave and original poem for its time--is a shout of defiance at God
himself, arguing that we have the last word as to our destiny. It is charged with meaning, particularly for those who
contemplate taking their own lives. Howse belittles the people who find such anthems moving: presumably because
they are easy to understand and therefore (he insinuates with a sneer at Desert Island Discs) vulgar. He seems to have
some difficulty with the common man, tittering that 'The Good Book' is a 'folksy' expression, of Wesleyan origin.
Millions of folk, I suggest, meant the expression quite literally. They will not have been aware they were being folksy.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
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But underneath his sniggering at common people, and his dismissal of Loveday's (to me, fascinating) discussion of the
sources of the different Gospel accounts (on the grounds that he is already familiar and bored with it all), this Casaubon
of a reviewer does have something big to say, half-glimpsed skulking beneath his jerky peregrination of a review.
I think Howse thinks the Bible cannot usefully be assessed or understood unless in a quest for religious truth. I take it
this is what he's saying in his conclusion that 'Loveday's big mistake is to think that "it is possible to set aside theology
and history" and be left with anything in the Bible, except by accident, that is more "grown-up".'
Now this is interesting. The implication is that the Bible shorn of witness and revelation is a windsock with no wind.
Bible study is a pilgrimage or it is nothing. 'Stand-back' analysis like Loveday's is not a welcome guest at the faith
community's feast.
If that's what Howse thinks he should come out with it. It walks straight into David Hume's trap. The 18th-century
Scottish philosopher argued ('On Miracles') that it takes a miracle to believe in miracles. In other words, unless you
have faith, then, presented with a range of possible explanations for an apparently unnatural event, it cannot be rational
to prefer 'divine intervention' to the more mundane explanations, such as mistake, invention or hallucination. Miracles
are Catch-22: your world has to have a place for miracles before you can rationally conclude that one has happened.
Howse (I think) thinks Bible study is like that: dead without the Living God and the Living Christ. If that's right then
there's no point exploring belief unless we already believe.
Loveday disagrees, finding the Bible moving, instructive and beautiful even when its central figure is pixellated out.
Though I am an atheist, this book has sent me back to the Bible. Make up your own mind, but take it from me:
Loveday writes with a clarity that is little short of gripping. He will engage you in a way a sneering reviewer can only
envy.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Parris, Matthew. "The Bible is too important to be left to believers." Spectator, 6 Aug. 2016, p. 21. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA459977081&it=r&asid=46adc814d02ddbf380b5fa4aa1e5ab82.
Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A459977081
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WORDS OF POWER: READING SHAKESPEARE AND THE BIBLE
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The Bible For Grown-Ups: A new look at the Good Book, by Simon Loveday
11
Wednesday
Jan 2017
Posted by quiteirregular in Uncategorized ≈ 2 Comments
Tagsbiblical studies, christianity, simon loveday, the bible for grown-ups
Simon Loveday’s The Bible For Grown-Ups is an engaging and accessible book, which encourages the reader to take (according to his subtitle) “a new look at the Good Book”. The childishness implied by his title seems to be the wholesale acceptance of the Bible as a controlling text for human life, or the outright rejection of it as a fabrication or an entirely worthless system of oppression. Against these two attitudes – which rest on similar assumptions that the Bible is a monolithic and coherent book of “rules” – Loveday poses his own reading.
loveday-bible
His approach begins with the history of the texts we possess in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and with reading them as individual works. His chapters discuss questions such as “So – who did write the Old Testament?”, “The historical context: the world in which the Old Testament took shape”, “Who did Jesus think he was?” In elaborating these issues Loveday draws effectively and neatly on areas of Biblical scholarship, with names like John Barton and Geza Vermes looming large in his bibliography.
This part of the book fulfils a similar function to Barton’s own What is the Bible?, or Bart D. Ehrman’s The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction, making the findings of modern Biblical research available to a more general readership. Loveday is an engaging and likeable writer, and much of the appeal of this section comes from his explanation of how the Bible can be read in a sophisticated manner like other texts, without putting on religious “blinkers” which shut out the view. There are some areas where I’m not sure his account of the field is entirely accurate – he appears to mix up stages of the Quest for the Historical Jesus and (for me) he is far too keen to impute simple-minded piety to the entire Patristic and medieval tradition of interpretation – but there is plenty to enjoy here.
The final, shorter, section focuses on “A Vision of Freedom”, Loveday’s own preferred interpretation of the Bible. In this he carries out an attentive literary reading of some Biblical passages, and constructs a distinction between “religion” and “vision” as his model for reading. For Loveday, religion is summed up by its connection to the verb “to bind”: it is a system of captivity, exclusion, and control. “Vision” on the other hand, allied with Socrates, Jesus and the poets of Plato’s Republic, is liberatory, imaginative and creative. As I understand Loveday’s reading of the Bible, he sees it as “vision” emerging from, and transcending “religion”. The texts contain material which encapsulates both, but the value of the Bible is in its potential to offer “vision”.
The Bible For Grown-Ups is an attractive and faintly idiosyncratic read: it introduces a lot of material which many people will probably not be familiar with, in order to present Loveday’s own intellectual and literary journey through his reading of the Bible, and to explain the destination he arrived at. I have some reservations about the process especially in the light of his conclusion. It feels a little odd to set “religion” up against “vision” after drawing on the conclusions of hundreds of years of devout scholarship carried out within religious traditions.
There is also a vagueness about his handling of the Biblical texts at times, which I think stems from trying to bracket out “religion” or “theology” when dealing with books which are explicitly religious and concerned with critique and dialectic within religious systems. His discussion of universalism, for example, ignore Origen and the long theological tradition which considers the question, describing it instead as a recent movement in Biblical scholarship. Trying to put “theology” to one side is entirely commendable, especially given the book’s ambition to read the texts for what they are. But doing so can risk falling into the same trap as the fundamentalisms Loveday wishes to rescue the Bible from, reducing people’s engagement with the books and their worlds as finding what’s written and believing it.
That said, this is a timely book and one which deserves a wide readership. Loveday’s own gusto shows itself in every page, and his quest for a nuanced and literary engagement with the Biblical texts should hopefully prompt others to make their own explorations.
The Bible for Grown-Ups: A New Look at the Good Book, Simon Loveday (Icon: 2016) 978-1785781315, £10.49 (£6.64 Kindle) I am grateful to the publishers for providing a copy for review.
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bengarrysaid:January 11, 2017 at 6:48 pm
Looks like I’ll be adding this to the reading list!
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quiteirregularsaid:January 13, 2017 at 10:33 am
I’d be interested to hear what you think of it, when/ if you get round to it.
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My latest book investigates a literary urban legend about Shakespeare and the King James Bible.
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Sunday 08 October 2017
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Core myth of the Bible is deliverance
26 AUGUST 2016
Anthony Phillips on an important analysis of the truth of Bible facts and narratives
The Bible for Grown-Ups: A new look at the Good Book
Simon Loveday
Icon Books £12.99
(978-1-78578-131-5)
Church Times Bookshop £11.70
SIMON LOVEDAY’S analysis of the biblical material will infuriate the “Bible says” brigade, which makes it all the more welcome — even if some of his self-confident assertions will inevitably be challenged by Bible scholars.
The author begins by examining the Old Testament, although he, in fact, concentrates on an explanation of how the Pentateuch reached its present form. Here he asserts that we know more about the authors of the various strata than we do about the writers of the four Gospels.
In common with many modern scholars, Loveday dismisses the historicity of both the exodus and conquest narratives, as well as the accounts of the reigns of David and Solomon. He concludes that it is meaningless to speak of a single message or single morality in the “instruction manual” of the Old Testament. If you look hard enough, you will find justification for any viewpoint or action.
There then follows a much more thorough discussion of the New Testament, in which Loveday asks whether Paul invented Christianity, and concludes that the theology that underpins all subsequent Christianity is primarily the creation of a man who had never known Jesus.
For Loveday, no Gospel was written before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. The key issues for the Gospels’ authors were the failure of the mission to the Jews, the increasing popularity of Christianity among the Gentiles, and the delay in the Second Coming.
All four Gospels are examined, and the existence of Q is accepted. Rightly, Loveday emphasises that the history of Jesus needs sifting from the Christ of faith. The Gospels are concerned not with historical truth, but with revealing truth. Briefly, the author notes that the New Testament had been put together by 367, and he asks who Jesus’s hearers thought he was; who Jesus thought he was; and why Jesus was crucified, but not his followers. Much emphasis is laid on the Messianic secret: that Jesus hid the truth of his identity to protect the disciples.
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As with the Old Testament, Loveday points out that we have to decide which facts and teachings in the New Testament we should accept. But two things stand out: the Jewishness of Christianity, and the huge distance that lies between the first disciples and the established Church today.
Finally, he looks at the Bible as a whole from a critical literary standpoint, illustrating the power of its writing by citing the stories of David and Bathsheba, Luke’s nativity narrative, and Mark’s account of Peter’s denial.
Loveday argues that his book neither requires belief nor precludes it: it is about the Bible, not faith. Its core “myth” is deliverance. With Milton, he concludes that the Bible is “a metaphor for human freedom”. Unhappily for Loveday, and as I know from my own ministry, for others, too, it has been made into “an instrument of divine tyranny”.
The importance of the issues raised by Loveday’s analysis of the scriptures cannot be over-emphasised. For far too long these have been ignored, or papered over, by the Church. But more is needed than this forensic examination of the Bible. Why, after decades of Christianity, should this document of title remain central to Christian belief and practice? For that, a second volume is required — a Theology of the Bible for Grown-Ups.
Canon Anthony Phillips is a former headmaster of The King’s School, Canterbury
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