From Palestine, Europe, and Arabia; from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; Karen Armstrong explores the changes in meaning attributed to the scriptures – how the scriptures are used, interpreted, and amended. Armstrong emphasises the right side of the brain over the left side, to glean the real meaning of sacred texts – that is, she places intuition over logic, and ritual over study.
In the Introduction, she explains “…in recent decades, neurologists have discovered that the right hemisphere of the brain is essential to the creation of poetry, music and religion. It is involved with the formation of our sense of self and has a broader, less focused mode of attention than the left hemisphere, which is more pragmatic and selective. Above all, it sees itself as connected to the outside world, whereas the left hemisphere holds aloof from it.”
For Christians, the tradition of reading the scriptures as moral story, based on the Old Testament prophets and the oral testimony of Jesus’ disciples, changed during the Reformation. The Protestant reformers encouraged reading the scriptures as history, not only the Gospel stories of Jesus, but also the Old Testament to be read as the history of the Israelite people and even from the very beginning, as the history of creation of the world and humanity.
The tradition of reading the scriptures in Judaism changed much earlier, after the temple was destroyed and the Jews were scattered far from Jerusalem. The introduction of midrash, i.e. investigative exegesis by the rabbis, after destruction of the temple, “was the search for something fresh since the old rites and meanings no longer applied”.
In Islam, Al Quran, written by Muhammad, ‘the last prophet’, as the word of God dictated by the Archangel Jibrail (Gabriel), is never to be changed. But the tradition of reading is influenced by ijtihad – independent reasoning by properly trained experts, which allows new interpretations to resolve new problems as they arise in the Muslim community.
Armstrong does not neglect other world religions, commenting also on reading the sacred scriptures from India – Jainism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Theravada Buddhism; and from China –Taoism, Confucianism, Mahayana-, and Chan/Zen-, Buddhism.
So, from what does Armstrong believe the sacred texts need to be rescued? From rationally constrained, left hemisphere understanding, which leads to literalism and fundamentalism; from fading into irrelevance as outdated history and myth; from relegation to liturgy only, to no longer provide meaning in everyday life.
She contends that free-ranging, intuitive, right hemisphere appreciation of the scriptures will keep the sacred scriptures in all faiths alive as a significant part of the everyday lives of the faithful. In the Epilogue, titled Post Scripture, Armstrong presents some modern literary interpretations by Jewish and Christian writers, as examples of how the Bible continues to influence the more artistic minds in Western society.
And what is the role of the sacred scriptures in your life?
Ian Fraser