The Kings and Their Gods: The Pathology of Power

by Daniel Berrigan

Book Overview

The scenario that confronts us in the biblical text of 1 and 2 Kings is a turbulent one. Daniel Berrigan minces no words in his assessment of that biblical era. Prophets, kings, and the gods they... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802860435
• ISBN13: 9780802860439
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
• Length: 212 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Great Commentary on a Contemporary Subject

The Kings and Their Gods is Daniel Berrigan's poetic commentary on the First and Second Book of Kings. Berrigan diagrams each chapter, though not verse by verse. It is more like getting an overview of the stories that you are told during Sunday school, only with a different perspective and an edge that could rub some people the wrong way. Berrigan confronts the characters in Kings that are usually the subject of glory and hero worship. He does not see David as a man after God's own heart. He views David as a warmonger and schemer. Solomon gets the same treatment. His exegesis is completely opposite of mainstream Christianity, which presents these two men as pillars of faith in God. Not Berrigan. He sees a David with bloody hands and vendettas, a Solomon that is a cruel taskmaster, and an Elijah that is arrogant. The surprising part is that it all sounds true. I was constantly grabbing my Bible and flipping through Kings I and II, reading the text in a different light. Berrigan then draws a comparison to our leaders today, who despite our advancement in technology, behave exactly the same as the kings of the Bible, calling upon deities to help them win wars. The only problem with this book is that it is at times too poetic. I often lost track of what Berrigan was trying to get across. There are instances when the author seems to get lost inside his own mind. Add in the fact that I had to have a dictionary handy while reading(which may be a positive, since I expanded my vocabulary immensely), and it can be a tough read. But it is one of the most interesting books I have ever read.

Let's hear it for what is never read!

Daniel Berrigan's "The Kings and Their Gods" is a wonderfully prophetic and poetic piece that deserves a spot among the other commentaries on one's biblical bookshelf. Berrigan's ability to connect the dots over the span of almost three thousand years is truly phenomenal. But what I appreciate most was his adroit handling of two incidents which are not contained in the lectionary and so are never read before the congregation as part of our regular liturgical discipline: the story of Micaiah (1 Kings 22:8ff) during the time of Elijah and the incident of cannibalism (2 Kings 6:24ff) during the time of Elisha. Berrigan's commentary on these two segments alone would have made the book worth reading. On top of the full panoply he unfolds before the reader renders it a real blessing.

ancient texts, modern contexts

In her memoir Things Seen and Unseen, Nora Gallagher recalls meeting Daniel Berrigan (b. 1921) in the spring of 1986. When she asked how many times he had been jailed, he responded, "Not enough." Poet, playwright, peace activist, and Jesuit priest, Daniel Berrigan has spent a long life obeying the good news of Jesus rather than the bad news of caesar. He and his brother Philip did time on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. In 1968 he and eight other activists stole 378 draft files of young men who were about to be sent packing to Vietnam, dumped them into two garbage cans, poured homemade napalm on them, and burned them in the parking lot of the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board. In 1980, he trespassed into General Electric's nuclear missile plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, poured blood on some warhead nose cones, then hammered away to punctuate his prophetic point. Now eighty-seven, age has not extinguished Berrigan's fire. Death row, smart bombs, Iraq, and what he calls "abortion mills" still provoke his ire. These meditations reflect on the books of 1-2 Kings and, as you would expect, draw parallels to our own pathologies of political power today. How should we read these ancient texts about a territorial god who slaughtered his pagan enemies? In what sense are these pages inspired? Berrigan reads 1-2 Kings as self-serving imperial records that portray Israel's kings as they saw themselves and wanted others to see them -- God is with us and against our enemies. He blesses us with their booty. No war crime is too heinous as a means to these delusional ends. And so on page after page we see hell explode on earth. There is one political end: extra imperium nulla salus, "outside the empire there is no salvation." There are many pathological means to this end: untrammeled imperial ego, political power with absolute impunity, military might, revisionist history, manipulation of memory and time, grandiose building projects, economic exploitation, virulent nationalism, and, sanctioning it all with divine approval, religious legitimation. In 1-2 Kings, says Berrigan, the Bible is thus "deconstructing" itself; "the medium itself is the message." A few dissenting voices object to imperial power, but they are silenced as unpatriotic and seditious. Only with the eighth-century prophets are these "official" texts amended so that we see and hear the real perspective of Yahweh about justice, kindness, and humility for all peoples everywhere. 1-2 Kings also function as mirrors in which we see our own reflection today. "Do our leaders differ, in any large degree, from the rulers of old? They are hardly different at all." Drawing upon the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz, letters from his friend Thomas Merton, and revealing snippets from the NY Times, Berrigan joins the hermeneutical horizons of ancient text and contemporary context. The last word on his final page? "One must urge (to his own soul first) a firm rebutting midrash

MOST RECENT THUS MOST URGENT CRY FROM OUR MOST CATHOLIC PROPHET OF PEACE IN THIS CORONATION YEAR OF

As this most recent installment of the Reverend Father Daniel Berrigan's exegetical Old Testament series falls upon this current year of presidential appointment (dare we yet nor ever again write election?) in direct response to such anointments this millennium and their bloody, bitter fruit, we must not avoid its careful contemplation as lectio divina, as reading the writing upon the wall, as warning and as holy prophecy. Other essential readings from this great series include Isaiah: Spirit of Courage, Gift of Tears, Jeremiah: The World, the Wound of God, Job: And Death No Dominion and Ezekiel: Vision in the Dust. Indeed we read upon the cover the words of the great Jim Wallis (author of Faith Works: How to Live Your Beliefs and Ignite Positive Social Change and Living God's Politics: A Guide to Putting Your Faith into Action): "Part biblical commentary, part poetry, and part prophecy - this is Berrigan at his best." Again, upon its book this sacred text bears these blazing and true words of the Reverend Father Andrew Greeley (author of A Stupid, Unjust, and Criminal War: Iraq, 2001-2007): "In this powerful and disturbing meditation on the books of Kings, Father Daniel Berrigan, with all his usual prophetic fervor and scalding wit, compares Israel in the time between David and Isaiah with the United States today." Our beloved and revered Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister (author most recently of The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully) joins this holy chorus with these instructive words: The Reverend Father "Daniel Berrigan's Kings and Their Gods is not one book but three. The first book in question is scripture's two books of Kings, which most people ignore. The second book is Berrigan's own poetic, piercing interpretation of the books of Kings. The third book is about us - our country, our times, ourselves. In each case, the language is elegant and the narrative is dramatic and chilling. Most of all, Berrigan's interpretation is disturbingly real, frighteningly true. My advice is to read this book with the scripture in one hand and the newspaper in the other. But whatever you do, read it. Once you do, you'll never think of the books of Kings as useless history again. On the contrary, you may think of them all the time." Like the great and grim Samuel Beckett curled seriously in a corner of a gay Parisian cocktail party when invited to join the fun responded he was drearily thinking about Dante, you might arouse from your deep meditations with the weary wail, you think only of Berrigan's Kings and their prophetic revelations within today's newspaper. We have an octogenarian papacy in Rome continuing weakly to emit encyclicals which oddly fail to resonate, such as Spe Salvi Salvados En La Esperanza, Benedicto XVI which paints as grim and despairing a picture of human efforts as anything in Jean Paul Sartre. At least Camus granted Sisyphus the dignity of his existential efforts. Here in Berrigan's Kings we find our Roman Catholic oct