The Book of God by Walter Wangerin

First published: Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1996

Genre(s): Novel

Subgenre(s): Biblical fiction; epic; saga

Core issue(s): God; Gospels; Jesus Christ; scriptures

Principal characters

• Abram/Abraham, first of the ancestors to receive God’s covenant
• Moses, leader who takes the enslaved people of God home to Canaan
• David, king of Israel who exhibits excellence and human failings
• Zechariah, father of John the Baptizer
• Jesus, God’s son, the fulfillment of the covenant and the yearning
• Mary Magdalene, a disciple of Jesus who is healed by him
• Simon Peter, a brusque and loyal disciple of Jesus

Overview

While remaining faithful to the contours of the Bible, Walter Wangerin combines faith and imagination in a selective retelling of the major biblical stories. He begins with the story of Abraham, showing him worrying about his nephew Lot’s involvement with Sodom, trying to sidestep Sarah’s complaints against Hagar, and willingly obeying God’s command to sacrifice his son Isaac.

After exploring the human side of Isaac’s love for Rebekah and their family life as well as several stories involving Joseph, Wangerin moves from these ancestral figures to Moses, who ultimately receives God’s covenant with Israel. As Wangerin tells the story of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, he embellishes the account with a fictional backstory about Achan, who is born during the crossing of the Red Sea. Achan eats manna in the wilderness and learns that his father, Carmi, dreams of having his own land in Canaan. When the twelve spies return from reconnoitering the homeland, Achan hears his father crying angrily that God has led them to a dead end rather than a homeland. This fictionalized episode is designed to put a human face on the many bitter complaints and the faithlessness generalized in the Bible. Achan first appears in the Bible in Joshua, chapter 7, as a forty-year-old culprit who is condemned to death for looting after the Battle of Jericho and thereby causing the Israelites to lose a subsequent battle.

After the Israelites fight off the other tribes and settle in Canaan, they ask the prophet Samuel to anoint a king to rule in their land. Wangerin depicts the nation’s growing sophistication by describing how the nation evolved from using primitive bronze weapons to more powerful iron arms during the reign of the first king, Saul. Next, Wangerin examines all the facets of King David: shepherd, musician, warrior, rebel, friend to Jonathan, king, father, adulterer, and frail old man. The author ends his description of the United Kingdom period with an account of Solomon, described as an archetypal wise man ultimately besotted with Sheba’s beautiful Egyptian princess.

The prophets of God continue to warn, teach, bless, and threaten the Israelites. Elijah, Elisha, Amos, and Obadiah all differ in their attempts to remind the people of their covenant with God. Assyria ultimately crushes the Northern Kingdom of Israel, amazing the Israelites with the use of horses in battle. Later, Isaiah, a young nobleman, promises Judah’s King Hezekiah: “Unto us a child” will come; a “son” will come to redeem the people. Jeremiah follows, but his prophecies are ignored, and the Southern Kingdom of Judah goes into exile for seventy years.

Wangerin then outlines the plight of the exiled Jews and their yearning to return to their homeland. Finally, Nehemiah and Ezra are allowed to return to rebuild Jerusalem. God’s word is once again taught in the temple, and Ezra reads to the faithless Jews the stories of Creation, the Fall into sin, Cain and Abel, and Noah. Wangerin inserts these early stories of the Bible here, as he closes his retelling of the Old Testament.

“The Messiah,” Wangerin’s final chapter, opens with a fictionalized backstory for Zechariah, the father of John the Baptizer. Zechariah, a nail smith, makes spikes to sell to Herod, who uses them to crucify criminals in the Roman manner. After Zechariah delivers spikes to Herod’s palace, he serves in the temple. He is visited by the angel Gabriel as a “spilling of brilliance,” and the angel tells him that he will father a son. In the meantime, in Nazareth, after losing his first wife, Joseph courts Mary. Mary’s father, Joachim, settles on house repairs as an appropriate dowry, and he approves of Joseph’s ancestry, traced back to David and to Abraham.

Wangerin, unlike many writers, sets the Annunciation outdoors on the crown of a hill. He shows Mary’s mix of girlish delight, fear, and confusion as she is told she will bear the Son of the most high God. Because she is worried about how Joseph will feel, she suddenly leaves and stays three months with her cousin Elizabeth. When Mary returns to Nazareth, Joseph, having been enlightened in a dream, tells her, “I know who is sleeping in you and I love him too.”

Jesus’ birth is recounted in visceral detail, but the only description of his childhood is a brief account of his precocity in the temple at age twelve. Wangerin next develops Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, imagining the third temptation to occur with an icy-bright Satan on a glacial icecap. Jesus establishes his authority with miracles and teachings and is followed by ever increasing numbers of disciples. Shy Andrew is the first disciple, and his blunt brother Simon is the next. Wangerin conflates various events and teachings as Jesus moves through the countryside. The disciple Mary of Magdala, who is thankful to Jesus because he cast out her demons, plays an intimate role, washing Jesus’ clothes, providing him with food, and comforting him as he grows increasingly intense, leaner, and filled with a heaviness no one understands.

The whole novel has been building to the Crucifixion, even as the Bible itself finds fulfillment in Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection. Jesus is taken outside Jerusalem’s walls and crucified. Three days later, his disciples realize that Jesus is alive. The Resurrection is joyously announced; the good news is spread by the apostles. Wangerin’s brief “Epilogue” announces that every continent has now heard the story and “innumerable hearts . . . have been shaped by it.”

Christian Themes

This novel is based entirely on the themes and narratives of the Bible and on the covenant that God made with his chosen people: They are to worship and serve him, and he will protect and provide for them. Of course, there are many side themes and peripheral accounts, but in his novel Wangerin focuses on the covenant, which is ultimately realized in God’s Son, Mary’s child, Jesus, who gives his life, as his heavenly father wills, for the salvation of all people.

Wangerin’s intimately drawn portraits of biblical characters bring passion and vitality to the original narrative. Readers are shown humanized portraits of figures only thinly sketched in the Bible: Leah, Jacob’s second-best wife; Saul, conflicted between loving David and jealously fearing him; Tamar, David’s daughter, raped by her half-brother and impoverished in exile; and Judas, sadly wrong about the role Jesus would play in saving his people.

Occasionally, Wangerin develops or expands a character beyond what is stated in the Bible, as he does with Ahikam, an exile in Babylon. He provides a biblical reading guide to supplement his text, offering the relevant books, chapters, and verses in the Bible. In addition, he suggests supplementing his story with other biblically based novels, including Ruth: A Love Story (1986) by Ellen Gunderson Traylor and Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880).

The overriding purpose of Wangerin’s work is to point to the need for God’s Son and to make real the covenant established with Abraham. While staying faithful to the biblical contours, he adds imaginative nuance and color. The first seven chapters of The Book of God are based on the Old Testament and move chronologically and artistically to the fulfillment of the covenant in Jesus Christ. The last chapter is dominated by Jesus and begins with the familiar Gospel narratives of the birth in Bethlehem. Wangerin shows Jesus revealing more and more of his wisdom and power. As his death approaches, his followers notice his increased intensity, his thoughtfulness, and his withdrawal. However, God’s promise is to be kept, for his covenant is faithful. Wangerin writes movingly of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, then closes with a few pages concerning the early church, the apostles’ martyrdoms, and Saint Paul’s spreading of the Gospel.

Sources for Further Study

Distel, Joan McIntyre. “Religious Storytelling.” Christianity and the Arts (August-October, 1997): 56-57. Provides background on the author’s career and other literary works; examines use of first-person narration, humor, and the creative conflation of multiple events.

Ryken, Leland. “Bible Stories for Derrida’s Children.” Books and Culture (January/February, 1998): 38-41. Examines four recent literary approaches to the Bible, focusing on Wangerin’s reshaping of the Bible’s varied genres written over centuries into one focused, fluid narration.

Wilson, John. “The Greatest Story Ever Retold.” Christianity Today 40 (1996): 75. Describes Wangerin’s ability to show the big picture of God’s providence; also comments on the author’s fully human, fully divine Son of God.