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Chatting the BibleSlate blogger David Plotz takes readers' questions.

Posted Friday, April 13, 2007, at 11:47 AM ET

David Plotz was online at Washingtonpost.com on Thursday, April 11, to discuss "Blogging the Bible." An unedited transcript of the chat follows. To learn more about the project, click here. Browse the complete Blogging the Bible series or read the latest entry, "The Book of Job's Enthralling, Baffling Conclusion."

David Plotz: Hello. This is David Plotz of Slate, and I am looking forward to talking with you about the Bible and Blogging the Bible. Please ask away.

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Columbus, Ohio: Hi David! I love Blogging the Bible—I've been reading it since day one and I look forward to your new installments. Are you enjoying the reading, or do you find yourself kind of pushing through, like doing assigned reading for college?

David Plotz: It depends on the book. I've been reading the Book of Job this week, and that is pure delight. I'd never read it before and it's thrilling to engage with a story that is so important and beautiful and demanding. I just finished it, and the last few chapters are stunning. So in the case of Job, it's a much better read than anything else on my night table. On the other hand, Prophets and Psalms nearly killed me. That's not to say there aren't fine passages, and important chapters and pressing issues in them, but they are a total chore to read front to back.

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Arlington, Va.: What's been the most surprising thing in blogging?

David Plotz: The most surprising thing. Hmm. I guess it's how morally complicated the book is. When you hear "The Bible," you think: morality, righteousness, the goodness of God, the holiness of it all. And then you read the stories themselves, and they're incredibly confusing, morally. The Bible, at least the Hebrew Bible, does not offer clear guidance about how we are supposed to behave. What kind of lesson do you learn from the stories in Joshua, where God orders the wholesale slaughter of the other tribes in the Promised Land?

What is so demanding, and exciting, about the book is the way it pushes you to face moral complexity, and not settle for the simplest, easiest lesson.

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Potomac, Md.: In your reading, are you looking at any secondary sources for guidance, such as the commentary in the footnotes in Etz Hayim?

David Plotz: I try to avoid commentary as much as possible. One of my translations has no commentary at all in it; the other has a few footnotes that I try to ignore. Avoiding commentary is a conscious effort. I want to encounter the book as rawly as possible. Most people encounter the Bible through someone else—as their rabbi or pastor or professor or priest interprets it for them. My goal for Blogging the Bible is to read it with as clear a mind as possible.

This means, of course, that I massively misinterpret certain passages, because I don't have sufficient education and context to understand them, and it means that I skip important verses or stories, and miss connections. But that's okay. The value of the experience for me as a reader (and as a writer) is to make sense of my holy book for myself—not to succumb to the interpretation that someone else imposes on it.

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Atlanta: Blogging the Bible is such a great concept. What gave you the idea?

washingtonpost.com: Introduction to Blogging the Bible (Slate, May 16, 2006)

David Plotz: I was at my cousin's bat mitzvah, and bored out of my skull by the long ceremony, so I picked up the Torah in the pew in front of me, and opened it at random. I landed in the middle of Genesis, at the story of Dinah. I had never heard of it. She is the daughter of Jacob. One day she goes out and gets raped by the son of a local chief. He comes to Jacob and his sons (Dinah's brothers) and says he wants to marry her, he loves her, will pay any bride price for her. Jacob's sons say, okay, but one condition. You and all the men of your town have to get circumcised first. The guy agrees, they townsmen circumcise themselves. While they are recovering (and thus weakened), Jacob's son show up in the town and kill them and take their women and children as slaves. I read this story and thought: Wow! Here are the founders of Israel tricking people into conversion in order to kill them, and this story is not somewhere deep in Jeremiah. It is right in Genesis! The book everyone knows! I started wondering, if that is here, what else have I missed. I realized that I was a well educated man who was totally ignorant of his holy book, and I thought I have to read it. And once I started reading it and wouldn't shut up about it, my wife had the great idea that I should write about it. Long answer for a short question!

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Alexandria, Va.: Have your feelings regarding the validity of the Bible as word-of-God changed as a result of this project?

David Plotz: Good question. I don't think my feelings have changed. I did not believe the Bible was dictated by God before, and I still don't. I believe it was written by human beings who were inspired by religious feelings, by people who felt close to god and inspired by God. But I didn't think, and still don't think, that God himself wrote or dictated or guided it. My view is that it is a work of man, inspired by godly feelings.

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Burke, Va.: I have studied the Bible for years, and agree with you that when I read a passage with no knowledge of other factors (when it was written, audience written for, etc), I miss so much. Would you consider continuing this project after you finish a once-through without commentary? Do a second reading, this time with commentary? See what you understand differently, and what seems the same?

David Plotz: I think I will need a vacation after the first reading. Lots of trashy romances, perhaps! That's a very interesting idea. I will think about it.

One problem with doing a reading with commentary is: Which commentary? There is so much out there that you could drown in it.

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Annapolis, Md.: Was your decision to read the entire Bible based on any kind of world-historical crisis or moment that made you feel you wanted to be better acquainted with it (such as the newly-visible post-Sept. 11 clash between Christianity and Islam, or the longer clash between Islam and Judaism, or the even-longer clash between Christians and Jews) or was your decision based on more personal reasons? If so, what were they?