Losing My Religion by William Lobdell Page B

work.”
    “So I chose God and the Bible,” Creasy told me. “God’s a world-class poet.”
    By day, Creasy, then 52, was a popular English professor at UCLA. By night—and on early mornings and weekends—he was a tireless Bible instructor. He strove to teach the Good Book cover to cover, verse by verse, to as many people as possible.
    “The curtain goes up in Genesis and goes down in Revelation. It’s a very linear story,” Creasy said. “You can’t possibly understand Revelation without reading the 65 books before it.”
    I attended several of Creasy’s classes. He was a rich storyteller who combined encyclopedic knowledge with a sense of humor. His approach, a popular one in the modern era, was to teach the Bible as literature. His goal was to get his students “inside the narrative,” just as they would with any book, instead of “standing outside the text.”
    “The people in the Bible are as real to me as you are,” Creasy said. “And I think I make them come alive in class.”
    The problem that most people have studying the Bible, he added, was that they read it in bits and pieces. His students read the Bible straight through in two years.
    “It’s like listening to a Beethoven symphony a few bars at a time in random order,” Creasy said. “Many people always wanted to read the Bible all the way through, but they bog down around Leviticus. I’m a scout. I’ve been down the trail before.”
    Though it has at least 44 authors and was written over 1,500 years, Creasy sees the Bible as a unified literary work that is the Word of God. “The main character is God, the conflict is sin and the theme is redemption,” he says. “His face is on every page of Scripture; His voice is in every word…[The Bible] brings us ever closer, moment by moment, to the living Lord.”
    Yet most college professors who teach the Bible as literature aren’t doing so as, or for, believers. Usually, this approach is merely an introduction for students who are biblically illiterate and feel obliged to learn something about what is called history’s most influential book without wanting to commit themselves on the big questions. Indeed, reading the entire Bible means facing all the potential contradictions. The Apostle Paul wrote, “God is not the author of confusion,” yet the Bible is perplexing enough to spawn thousands of different interpretations and Christian denominations. Even theologians arrive at different answers to questions large (can we be saved through works or by grace alone?)—and small (did Jesus have brothers?). What is a believer to make of all this? By incorporating historical context and scholarship, Creasy provides nuanced answers for each troublesome verse of the Bible.
    For example, to a casual reader, the Book of Genesis turns into a horror story when God tests the faithfulness of Abraham. The Lord tells him to take “your only son, Isaac, whom you love [and is an adult], and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” (Genesis 22:2)
    It seems like a sadistic request, especially when God abruptly stops Abraham just as he’s about to plunge a knife into his son. But Creasy, in a 95-minute lecture which he pulls from geography, history and other parts of the Scriptures, explains that Abraham knew Isaac would either be saved or resurrected by God because the Lord had promised Abraham earlier that Isaac would have many descendants. God always keeps His promises, and how could Abraham’s son have children if he were dead?
    Others may disagree with Creasy’s analysis, but I found it comforting that someone of his intellect didn’t flinch as he made his way through the Bible.
     
     
    It didn’t escape me that I had the best part-time job in the world. Whatever interested me, whatever I wanted to know about religion, I could pick up the phone and call some of the country’s greatest experts, and they would talk with me.