Having taught seventh grade religious education and otherwise been involved in various ways with pre-teen and teen religious education, and thus experienced their lack of familiarity with the Bible, I was excited to pick up a copy of Henri Daniel-Rops, The Book of Books, a retelling of Old Testament stories intended for this age group.
Many of the stories are written in an engaging way and overall the book provides a reasonably good chronology of Old Testament events. Having said that, I would not choose this book as a way to convey a sense of the Old Testament to young people.
Originally written in 1955 and published in English in 1956, the book has been re-released as an ARKive edition of Sophia Institute Press. The ARKive Editions are exact reproductions of the books as originally published. The publishers recognize that “previous ages and cultures had their faults: and even in good books from earlier times we often find language, ideas or values that were once deemed acceptable even by honorable souls, but are now seen clearly to be wrong.” Their view is that where “books that are overwhelmingly good are tainted by unfortunate peripheral remarks or occasional wrongheaded judgments, we have chosen to publish them intake,” judging the good of the book to outweigh the harm done by such remarks.
In the case of this particular book, the “language, ideas or values,” include an extremely derogatory stance toward women (not only cursed by curiosity, but always the cause of trouble for men), an incredible comment about the lack of civilization of Africans (making it sound as though the entire country in 1956 was one large jungle), and a display of complete disdain for other religions. (It is one thing to believe that one’s own religion is the true one, it is another to refer to other religions as “outlandish” and their gods as “absurd.”) The book also suffers from a Lake Wobegone effect in its treatment of the Israelites; are we really to believe that virtually every Israelite was highly intelligent and gifted? That there were no average, or even below average people among them?
I don’t disagree with the publishers that “good men and women these days can (and should) dismiss” objectionable comments “as the unfortunate products of an age as flawed as our own, albeit in different ways.” However, this is not a book aimed at adults, but at pre-and young teens and it is a book that says in Chapter 1: don’t read the Bible yourselves, it’s too hard, so I’ll relate everything you need to know. I’m far less comfortable thinking that a young person reading this book can filter out the author’s prejudices in the same way an adult can. For an adult, this might provide an interesting window into views that may have been prevalent (or at least not uncommon) in the 1950s; for a pre-teen or young teen it risks confusion and misinformation.
Apart from that major criticism (and my unhappiness at discouraging people from reading the Bible itself), there are at least several places I noticed – and I am no Biblical scholar – where the author simply is wrong in his retelling of certain stories. (E.g. there are several inaccuracies in his telling of the Story of Ruth.) These are not major, but they are surprising.
Overall, despite the engaging way in which the stories are told, I would be very hesitant to recommend this book to its intended audience.
I read this book as part of the Catholic Company reviewer program.
