Speaking of Gods in Figure and Narrative. Deeanne Westbrook.

Abstract

Deeanne Westbrook, Speaking of Gods in Figure and Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan 2011) xi + 249 $89.00 At beginning of Speaking of Gods in Figure and Narrative, Deeanne Westbrook announces that she will argue that humankind know absolutely nothing of what may be called metaphysical heavens, their supernatural inhabitants, if any, and motives and designs of whatever gods may be.... [D]espite that abysmal ignorance, mythmakers have created through figurative devices and other linguistic and narrative maneuvers 'realities' whose beneficial or toxic effects are felt day by day in world (1). Westbrook especially concerned with toxic. legacy of history of religion, she says, is a body of figurative language spoken in silence where ignorance meets fear, a body that can provide license--even sacred duty--to harass, berate, belittle, exclude, control, and even kill one's fellow human beings (ix-x). Unlike William Blake who holds that, over course of history, Priesthood took advantage of language and used it to enslav[e] vulgar, Westbrook's account locates problem in language itself, language that reflects our fear and desire, bias, and earthly (1). Figurative language, she says, only creates what people know of metaphysical, but ... imposes on everyday world, shaping mundane (4). Figurative language carries with it a human history and a wealth of associations (7), and consequently it performative and not innocent. Westbrook makes a clear, engaging, sometimes compelling case in twelve short chapters with titles that indicate potential crossover interest from scholarly (In Beginning: Time and Figurative Forms of Creation, The Great Figures of Life and Death: Dualism and Divine Judgment) to popular (All in Family: Secret Sex Lives of Gods, Look Who's Talking--and Writing: Language of Heaven). Throughout book, Westbrook explores how figures of and narratives about metaphysical Unknown reflect--and affect--the lives of people who write and live with them. Each chapter, except for last, addresses a specific kind of figuration: for instance, divine as a warrior, time as a book, family structure of gods, sacrificial behaviors of gods, legalistic character of much religious language, economies of belief, etc. final chapter, Reflections, pulls together various points of analysis. Chapter One begins with beginnings, with figurations of time and especially of origins. Tracking accounts of earthly and also cosmological time through various religious traditions, Westbrook explains concepts of nothingness that precedes somethingness as well as conventional figurations of male creators (as opposed to female procreators). She concludes that time figurative for universal time: accounts of divine origins are consistent with--and reflect --the biological realities of beginnings of human life (29). Similarly, as Chapter Two argues, prophecies about end of time describe circumstances that look a lot like human death. Human plots, like human lives, require a final scene, a final act; and God as (a human-figured) Author knows it. From Norse to Greek to Christian religions and well beyond, especially within the Western tradition, the metaphor of God as warrior common, Westbrook notes in third chapter, arguing that this metaphor has created and sustains much human conflict (49, 53). Westbrook traces circumstances and language of martial religious figurations to real historical invasions and battles. She concludes that Those who enthusiastically embrace reality of metaphor--God a warrior--inevitably see themselves and their band of like-minded fellows in mirror of heaven, congregated as 'saved,' and destined to live forever, free from sorrow and pain (67) and to act accordingly (i. …