Prager’s Rational Bible – inspiration sprinkled with gold dust
by Jules Gomes:
I was not expecting a miracle on Easter Monday. Certainly not in the fluky world of publishing! If you’d told me that a Bible commentary written by a radio talk show host would soar to the top of the charts, I’d have thought it was a post-April Fools’ Day shaggy dog story.
No one ‘reads’ a commentary. By definition, commentaries are reference books. I have spent hours referring to thousands of commentaries in sepulchral libraries and my shelves are stuffed with commentaries on every book of the Bible, but then I’m a biblical scholar who gets his kicks from moth-eaten manuscripts and fragmented papyri.
So when I learned that Dennis Prager’s commentary The Rational Bible: Exodus – God, Slavery, and Freedom had debuted at second place in Amazon’s chart on Easter Monday, I saw it as a milestone in publishing history.
Prager is one of America’s most popular radio talk show hosts. He is not a stuffy biblical scholar who lives in the world of footnotes. He’s written on hot topics such as happiness, anti-Semitism and America, and his books have been extremely popular. So why has this avuncular figure with a voice like velvet and wisdom like the proverbial owl chosen to write a book on the Bible – even knowing this could be publishing suicide?
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