Gods of the Bible Near the end of his book, God: A Biography, Jack Miles offers a polythe­ istic reading of the Jewish scriptures. Throughout his book, Miles argues that if the Tanakh is read as a biography of God, then it presents the one, lonely God as a being who suffers from a severe psychological disorder, a self in which several distinguishable personalities struggle for domi­ nance, without lasting success. Miles concludes:

What results in Miles’ account is a story in which six different finite gods or daimones, both male and female, play greater or lesser roles (1996: 398-401). Miles does not suggest that anyone has ever actually read the Bible in this way, or that anyone should. He presents this reading as a thought experiment, a limit­reading that illuminates his understanding of the Bible’s story of a deeply disturbed singular God by its contrast to the conventional monotheistic ways in which the Bible is actually read by Jews and Christians, and the problems that accompany those conven­ tional ways of reading.