God's Favorites

March 1, 2019

Coogan (Harvard Divinity Sch.; The Ten Commandments: A Short History of an Ancient Text), a highly regarded and prolific biblical scholar, argues that the concept of divine chosenness is both false and damaging. The author writes from a nontheistic perspective, which he believes allows him to analyze texts through historical criticism and without significant theological biases. The first part of the book focuses on the Bible and the concept of chosenness. Coogan notes that many biblical books developed over a period of time and with the use of multiple sources. He sees passages on divine election as coming from later sources that help to justify actions that had already taken place against outsiders. A kind of tribalism emerged that resulted in outsiders sometimes experiencing isolation, violence, and oppression. In the work's second half, Coogan shows the damage this concept has caused in American history, focusing on three examples that relate to American exceptionalism and exploitation, Zionist fundamentalism, and attitudes toward immigrants and refugees. His concern ultimately is about the present situation. VERDICT Those interested in biblical interpretation and in American religious history will find this to be a helpful work.--John Jaeger, Johnson Univ., Knoxville, TN

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2019
Coogan examines the notion that God chooses certain peoples or nations to work out humanity's divine destiny, focusing on Jewish and Christian developments of the concept. Abraham was the first chosen man and, through his younger son, Isaac, his family the first chosen people. Eventually, kings of Israel were declared chosen. None of that prevented the Egyptian and Babylonian captivities, demise of the kingdom, subjection to imperial Greeks and then Romans, and destruction of the great temple in Jerusalem twice. Moreover, squabbles about who was more chosen than whom were constant, squabbles that Christians?originally Jewish sectarians, after all?joined and took beyond the Bible with such eventual concepts as American exceptionalism. Coogan comes to the conclusion that it's high time to discard divine chosenness, just as slavery has been discarded. With this in mind, he contributes to the effort with not a rant but an accessible, compact means of understanding chosenness and its effects.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)