michaelcounsell
Joined: 05 Jun 2007
Posts: 3
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 Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:43 pm Post subject: "The Bible -- A Biography" by Karen Armstrong. |
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| I saw an extract from this book in The Times for September 22. I haven't managed to get a copy and read it myself yet (it's published by Atlantic Books at £16.99) but it seemed important enough to share with you at once. It appears to me that many of the debates on your forums and elsewhere which claim to be about Biblical Scholarship (which to me means scientifically verifiable discoveries about the history, archeology and literature of the Biblical period) turn out to be opinions about the way the Bible should be interpreted, or exegesis. Karen Armstrong writes that there has never been a single definitive way of understanding the Biblical text. 'The Bible is a subverisve document, suspicious of orthodoxy' she writes. 'The modern habit of quoting proof-texts to legitimise policies and rulings is out of key with interpretive tradition.' The one principle which she quotes with approval, is that when there are two ways of interpreting a text, you should always choose the most compassionate and charitable one. This would enable those who have rejected the Bible because some people use it to justify prejudice and violence, to look again and find that it is really a revelation of the love of God. And those who accept the Bible but squabble with others who interpret it differently might learn to accept their opponents as real people with a valid point of view.
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