God's Favorite: Judaism, Christianity, and the Myth of Divine Chosenness

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For readers interested in exploring the roots of their religious traditions, for critics of religious intolerance, and for anyone who wants to learn about the origins of the ethnic and religious animosities that persist to this day. Throughout history, in the service of politics and power, the biblical concept of chosen people has been used to justify prejudice, persecution, invasion, and genocide. In God's Favorites, prominent biblical scholar Michael Coogan critiques the idea of "chosenness" in Judaism and Christianity. Coogan argues that it is not God who chooses individuals and groups but rather that groups describe themselves as divinely chosen to rationalize their view of themselves as superior to others. Explaining biblical texts as only one deeply versed in the languages and histories of biblical world can, he then shows how the claim of divine choice has been used from biblical times to the present, often with pernicious consequences, to enhance a group's self-importance and to legitimate its territorial expansion. In place of the idea of chosenness, Coogan calls for a renewed focus on the Bible's universal themes and the idea that God is not partial to any one group of people.

Reviews

Coogans rigorous work deserves a wide audience.
Publishers Weekly

Those interested in biblical interpretation and in American religious history will find this to be a helpful work.
Library Journal

Coogan has produced an extremely valuable book. Read it, and you will never read the Bible in quite the same way again.
Religion Dispatches

What does it mean to be chosen by God The biblical promise of the covenant has become the basis for remarkable political movements, both of liberation and xenophobia, freedom, and oppression. Tracing the history of this key concept from the Bible to the present day, Michael Coogan brilliantly brings to life the extraordinary journey of this complex religious idea.
Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College, and author of The Aryan Jesus

Gods Favorites traces the negative effects of the idea of the divine chosenness of a particular people. Starting with an overview of ideas about divine chosenness in the Bible, the book shows the concrete, violent, and oppressive ways this idea of chosenness has been used. It has shaped exclusive ideas of American exceptionalism, undergirded the beliefs of fundamentalist Zionists, and inflamed debates about immigration up to the present day. A timely and important book.
David M. Carr, author of Holy Resilience: The Bibles Traumatic Origins

With eye-opening revelations on almost every page, Gods Favorites brilliantly illuminates biblical verse by placing it in the context of biblical history. That is Michael Coogans unequaled specialty. Instead of God choosing a group of people based on their bloodlines or the particulars of their practicea view that has fueled pogroms by the powerful and terrorism by the weakCoogan argues that, in reality, people choose their (interpretation of) God. Let us choose, then, deliberately and with humility, what and how we worship, conscious of our relative insignificance within the grandeur that is creation.
Sarah Chayes, author of Thieves of State

Author Bio

Michael Coogan is Lecturer on Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Harvard Divinity School and Director of Publications for the Harvard Semitic Museum. He is the author of The Old Testament- A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, The Old Testament- A Very Short Introduction, and, most recently, The Ten Commandments- A Short History of an Ancient Text. He is also editor of The New Oxford Annotated Bible, The Oxford Encycopedia of the Books of the Bible, and Oxford Biblical Studies Online. He has written and edited many other articles and books and has appeared on such programs as Nova's "The Bible's Buried Secrets." Coogan has also taught at Stonehill College, Boston College, Wellesley College, Fordham University, and the University of Waterloo (Ontario), and has participated in and directed archaeological excavations in Israel, Jordan, Cyprus, and Egypt.