Founding Father.

The Discovery of God: Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism, by David Klinghoffer (Doubleday, 304 pp., $26)

Some 30 years ago I struggled through a Yale religious-studies course called "The Bible as Literature." Despite energetic leadership from a world-class scholar, the experience amounted to an uncomfortable ordeal leading to an inescapable conclusion: As literature, the Bible stinks. Beyond the pedestrian translations, the random repetitions and contradictions, the unanswered questions, the long stretches of gratuitous detail (such as genealogies of bizarre names), there's the text's chilly distance from its own protagonists. With the singular exception of Joseph, none of the figures in the five books of Moses comes alive on the page in the style, say, of the thrilling heroes of the Iliad or the Odyssey. The academic solution to this problem was to focus on the "documentary hypothesis" -- the view that the Pentateuch was fundamentally an incoherent pastiche of priestly and folkloric material cobbled together from various sources.

Yet somehow tens of millions of our fellow citizens continue to study these ancient, elusive verses daily, and, according to public-opinion polls, a majority of Americans believe that they represent the authentic word of God. In an electrifying and immensely important new book, David Klinghoffer presents the most effective possible case for the idea that the traditional believers are right in their approach to the Bible.

The Discovery of God makes no attempt to prove the historical accuracy of the stories from Genesis, but rather advances an impassioned argument for their relevance. Though he draws on extensive background from history and archaeology to provide a context for his Biblical hero, Klinghoffer never demands that we accept the notion that traditional accounts of Abraham are true; he insists, rather, that the text will deliver its significant rewards only if we at least entertain the possibility that they are. He asks only for a suspension of disbelief -- at least long enough to encounter the patriarch on his own terms, as described by sacred tradition. The result is a bracing challenge to contemporary cynicism, and a stunningly intimate, totally persuasive portrait of the remote but towering figure embraced by Jews, Christians, and Muslims

alike as the founder of monotheism.

In the interest of full disclosure, I note here that I am proud to count David Klinghoffer, former literary editor of National Review, as one of my most valued friends. But even perfect strangers to this audacious intellectual will feel intimately connected to his detailed account of a life that unfolded nearly 4,000 years ago. Klinghoffer gathers his information and understanding largely from Jewish oral tradition -- stories and insights transmitted from teacher to student for many centuries before they took written form in the Talmud, Midrash, and rabbinic commentaries in the years following the first century A.D. To those with no background in Orthodox Judaism, these tales may sound bizarre, far-fetched, even shocking, but they do serve to flesh out the sketchy details in the austere Biblical text and to render Abraham as a vivid, compelling human being.

In the traditional account, vibrantly retold by Klinghoffer, Abraham first meets God in a fiery furnace in Mesopotamia to which he has been consigned by the local tyrant for his refusal to worship the state's official idols. According to rabbinic sources, this fire originated in a lime kiln; and Klinghoffer observes that "to make limestone burn, it must be heated to a temperature of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit . . . He felt every one of the thousand degrees, but only for the smallest moment, enough to demonstrate his just-acquired faith." God proceeds to rescue His servant directly, declaring: "I am unique in my world, and he is unique in his world. It is fitting that the Unique One save the unique one." Abraham emerged from the furnace unharmed, but utterly transformed by his brush with death and his contact with the Almighty.

In transmitting such stories, Klinghoffer relies on authentic traditional accounts, never on his own imagination, though his writing is lively and imaginative. Where two versions of the same story seem to contradict each other, Klinghoffer forthrightly presents both traditions and outlines the understanding to be gained from an attempt to reconcile them. For instance, in the famous incident of the binding of Isaac, with Abraham commanded by God to make a human sacrifice of his beloved son, the Biblical text suggests that the Lord intervened at the last moment to save the young man. A number of authoritative sages, however, suggest that Abraham actually succeeded in killing his child, and refer to "the ashes of Isaac" on an altar on the mountain that much later became the site of Solomon's Temple. This version flies in the face of the Biblical description of Isaac's long life following the near-miss sacrifice, but traditional sources offer fascinating hints about parallel realities, even alternative universes -- speculation that is lucidly illuminated by Klinghoffer.

The Discovery of God boasts fascinating discoveries on virtually every page. In the course of following the long, eventful life of the patriarch, one learns about Mesopotamian marriage practices, Egyptian gods depicted as creating reality through masturbation, the traditional Jewish view of angels and of Satan, the true nature of the sin of Sodom (involving economic more than sexual transgressions), and the mysterious, unexplained cold wind (reported by countless sources, including modern investigators) in the burial cave that reputedly holds Abraham's bones.

In fact, the wealth of information and insight jammed into this dense book results in its only shortcoming: the refusal to highlight sensational and mystical material which often arrives, totally unheralded, in the midst of reflective or matter-of-fact narrative passages. Suddenly, while reading of Abraham's many journeys or transactions with local potentates, we encounter a menacing giant with supernatural powers, or a lonely priest who just may be an improbably surviving son of Noah. This story might have benefited from more dramatic chapter breaks and headings, not to mention illustrations of some of the ancient artifacts and archaeological sites to which Klinghoffer frequently refers.

In another context, the stubborn unwillingness to sensationalize the story serves Klinghoffer well: He resists the temptation to view an ancient story through the prism of contemporary Middle Eastern politics. A recent bestseller -- Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths, by Bruce Feiler -- uses the patriarch as a convenient excuse for pleading for a simplistic "can't we all get along?" approach to reconciliation between Jews and Muslims. While providing fascinating material on the similarities and differences between Biblical and Koranic versions of Abraham, Klinghoffer never succumbs to such political correctness. He quotes the Biblical pronouncement about Abraham's first son, Ishmael, who is accepted by Jews and Christians as well as Muslims as the founder of the perpetually embattled Arab people. An angel of God predicts that he "will be a wild ass of a man, his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand will be against him" (Gen. 16:11-12). Klinghoffer pointedly observes that in "the culture of Islam . . . we see the struggle of two nations. There is the 'wild ass' of Ishmael, the violent, reckless inheritance of pre-Islamic Arabs. And there is the pure faith of Abraham, whose memory Ishmael's descendants retained in their traditions. In Muslim civilization at its best, the Abrahamic inheritance is ascendant over the Ishmaelite."

Yet Klinghoffer never ignores or airbrushes the more troubling elements of that Abrahamic inheritance. He provides a thorough and probing investigation of Abraham's habit of passing off his supremely attractive wife, Sarah, as his sister when famine drives him into foreign lands. The author acknowledges the indications that Abraham and Sarah experienced marital difficulties, and even reveals the traditional reports that both partners suffered genital malformations that explain their longstanding inability to conceive a child.

Many readers will persist in characterizing these accounts as odd, primitive legends about a mythical figure whose very existence most historians continue to doubt. But even the most confirmed skeptics must confront the force of Klinghoffer's core argument: that a willingness to take Abraham seriously as an actual human being proves more nourishing for modern readers than the competing tendency to disregard him as a folkloric figure of ancient tall tales. "If we reject Abraham," Klinghoffer writes, we are rejecting the Bible. If we reject the Bible, then a question asked by the philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel comes tugging at our sleeve: "It may seem easy to play with the idea that the Bible is a book like many other books," a "fairy tale," but "consider what such denial implies. If Moses and Isaiah have failed to find out what the will of God is, who will? If God is not found in the Bible, where should we seek Him? . . . If God had nothing to do with the prophets, then He has nothing to do with mankind."

Such reasoning helps make Klinghoffer's book one of the most memorable ever written about a Biblical figure, and also a surprisingly effective introduction to the essential elements of Jewish faith. Christians who yearn for a better understanding of a belief system that had already flourished for nearly 2,000 years at the time of Christ will find this work invaluable. "Abraham is my father," the author writes, "because like all converts to Judaism I acquired upon my conversion the patronymic 'ben Avraham,' son of Abraham." With this satisfying, original, and warm-hearted work, David Klinghoffer proves himself a faithful son of the patriarch.