In his latest book, right-wing provocateur Jordan Peterson looks to extract existential and political lessons from the Old Testament. Far from probing deep truths, it’s a shallow, self-serving exercise in culture war.

Review of We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine by Jordan Peterson (Portfolio, 2024)

Jordan Peterson is back with a five-hundred-plus-page book about, nominally, the Old Testament. It is the Canadian psychologist and culture warrior’s first volume of biblical exegesis, and he has promised to follow it up with at least one more on the “many other stories of the Old and New Testament.” Depending on who you are, Peterson waxing poetic on Genesis may sound either like a must-read or like a novel form of torture that would test the fortitude of Job.

I’ve read a lot of Peterson over the years and even contributed to a short volume critiquing him in depth. Part of that project was motivated by genuine admiration for some of the commonsense self-help advice he offered in books like 12 Rules for Life. A lot of my friends back home, conservative and not, found him helpful and even somewhat inspiring. Another motivation was my sense that Peterson could be on track to become a formidable conservative intellectual à la Roger Scruton or Patrick Deneen: someone who offered probing critiques of the Left alongside a rich, positive conservative philosophy that required sustained intellectual response.

Unfortunately, going through We Who Wrestle With God, it’s hard to imagine anyone but his most devout fans finding much in the way of inspiration. It’s by now clear that Peterson’s evolutionary trajectory has been toward becoming another hacky right-wing pundit in the mold of Ben Shapiro and James Lindsay.

Matt McManus

https://jacobin.com/2024/12/jordan-peterson-bible-conservatives-review