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  • Published: 1 September 2016
  • ISBN: 9780399185557
  • Imprint: Tarcher
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $45.00

How God Became God



From a historical perspective, the Bible is shockingly, provably wrong–a point supported by today’s best archaeological and historical scholarship but not well understood by (or communicated to) the public. Yet this emphatically does not mean that the Bible isn’t, in some very real measure, true, argues scholar of mysticism Richard Smoley.

From a historical perspective, the Bible is shockingly, provably wrong–a point supported by today’s best archaeological and historical scholarship but not well understood by (or communicated to) the public. Yet this emphatically does not mean that the Bible isn’t, in some very real measure, true, argues scholar of mysticism Richard Smoley.

Smoley reviews the most authoritative historical evidence to demonstrate that figures such as Moses, Abraham, and Jesus are not only unlikely to have existed, but bear strong composite resemblances to other Near Eastern religious icons. Likewise, the geopolitical and military events of Scripture fail to mesh with the largely settled historical time line and social structures. Smoley meticulously shows how our concepts of the Hebrew and Christian God, including Christ himself, are an assemblage of ideas that were altered, argued over, and edited–until their canonization. This process, to a large degree, gave Western civilization its consensus view of God.

But these conclusions are not cause for nihilism or disbelief. Rather, beneath the metaphorical figures and mythical historicism of Scripture appears an extraordinary, truly transcendent theology born from the most sacred and fully realized spiritual and human insights of the antique Eastern world. Far from being “untrue,” the Bible is remarkably, extraordinarily true as it connects us to the sublime insights of our ancient ancestors and points to a unifying ethic behind many of the world’s faiths.

  • Published: 1 September 2016
  • ISBN: 9780399185557
  • Imprint: Tarcher
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $45.00

Praise for How God Became God

Smoley is a crucial guide to the ancient traditions, and to how a greater understanding of those traditions can make our lives today more meaningful

Eben Alexander, MD, author of Proof of Heaven

I have a standing rule: I read anything Richard Smoley writes

Larry Dossey, MD

Smoley . . . is adept at unknotting the paradoxes of spiritual traditions and making new connections across centuries and languages

Library Journal

One of the liveliest, most intrepid, and most gifted explorers of the spiritual landscape writing today

Ptolemy Tompkins, author of Paradise Fever