culture gave [Timothy] Beal an early sense that the Bible was "the go-to book for any serious question we might have, from sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll to heaven, hell, and why bad things happen to good people." The Bible was "God's book of answers, which if opened and read rightly would speak directly to me with concrete, divinely authored advice about my life and how to live it." In short, to use an evangelical acronym that I, for one, had never heard before, it was "B.I.B.L.E.: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth."The Rise and Fall of the Bible is Beal's attempt to shatter this popular understanding of the Bible as a combination of divine instruction manual and self-help book.
from Adam Kirsch: Tablet: Known and Unknown
~~~~~~~~~~~
No comments :
Post a Comment