SPIRITUAL FOCUS ON BOOKS January 28, 2008 Issue

GOOD REASON TO STUDY THE BIBLE

LYLE YOUNG

TO READ THE SCRIPTURES in a right way is not just to read about God, but to experience God. That's according to religion author Karen Armstrong in her recent book, The Bible: A Biography. She describes the extraordinary process by which the 66 books that comprise the Bible were written and collected, and have been interpreted.

Much of humanity considers the Bible to be the Word of God. It stands as a keystone of Christianity and a cornerstone of world culture. Mary Baker Eddy wrote that "the Bible contains the recipe for all healing" and is a "sufficient guide to eternal Life" (see Science and Health, PP. 406, 497).

Armstrong follows scholar Donald Akenson in interpreting that after the destruction of the Hebrew temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE—a blow that took many Hebrews by surprise—the Hebrews necessarily, but creatively, turned away from the ritual sacrifice for which the temple existed, and began preserving their vision of God in the form of writings (see Akenson's Surpassing Wonder: The Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds, 2001). They used a technology that was still relatively new to them: the alphabet. (Hebrews had been writing only since about 1,000 BCE). Armstrong agrees that the sacking of the temple in 70 CE led to rabbinical Judaism and to the nascent Christian community's looking elsewhere than the Jerusalem temple for a spiritual anchor. This contributed eventually to the formation of the Biblical canon and to the Talmudic Jewish tradition.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

PARENTING

PARENTING WITHOUT REGRETS