The Lost Art of Scripture

Part 1: Cosmos and Society

Chapter 1: Israel: Remembering in Order to Belong

• Discusses the history of literacy, how scripture was typically established by aristocracy, though perpetuated primarily through oral tradition and recitation.
• Illuminates the liberation fo Canaan from Egyptian authority in the dark ages. Rather than fleeing from Egypt, the historical records suggest that Egypt, rather, receded from Canaan to tend to distress at home. This allowed for an ethos of the commoner and their emancipation from iniquity, rather than the inherited and established authority of royalty or elite.
• Throughout Canaan, there were some who venerated the story of Moses, some the story of Jacob, some Abraham. Eventually these disparate regions merged these stories into the Israeli ethos.
• The Davidic story and that of Solomon indicated some privileged relation of royalty to Yahweh, which conflicted with the Yahweh who favoured the common folk and detested their iniquities. Still, a way to merge these stories was found, and depended on the fallibility of the royalty (see David and Solomon’s lust) and the reluctance of Yahweh to monarchy in the book of Samuel.
• Hoseah seems interesting. Likened idolatry to lusting after a whore, so he married a whore to embody (?) Israel’s foolishness. Hoseah’s influence probably helped in converting the polytheistic Israelites toward monolatry, and eventually monotheism.

Chapter 2: India: Sound and Silence

• ”When [Aryans] contemplated the functioning of the cosmos, they became aware of a force that somehow pulled the potentially warring elements of the universe together. This power was neither a deva nor a modern Creator God. It was rather a transcendent impersonal force which the Aryans called rta, the rhythm of the universe. … Any divisive action that tried to appropriate things for oneself was “false”—a betrayal of rta.“

  • Similar to the Tao

• “The word “mysticism” derives from the Greek verb muo (“to close”). Later contemplatives explained that they would “close” or “turn off” the analytical and propositional activity that we now know to be characteristic of the brain’s left hemisphere.“

  • Interesting—nirvana means a “blowing out”. Similar idea.
• Revelations were not intended to be private. “In India, it is said that a visionary must always “return to the marketplace.” He or she must revert to normality and transmit these mystical insights in a form that ordinary people can understand. The rishi or “seer,” therefore, had to become a kavi (“poet”). He somehow had to achieve a “verbal formula” (brahman) that expressed the ineffable in mundane language.”
• “The word brahman derives from a root which means “to swell” or “to grow.” The poets seem to have felt something very powerful surging up from within.”
• “…though he moves below, he still sees higher than any other.” (RV 6.9.3)
• “When they set in motion the first beginning of speech, giving names, their most pure and perfectly guarded secret was revealed through love.” (RV 10.71.1)

• The Rig Veda draws on an ancient Aryan myth claiming that voluntary self-sacrifice of the First Man (Purusha) brought the world into being. The various castes came from his different body parts (mouth, Brahmins; feet, shudra). The moon from his mind, sun from his eyes. The Four Vedas even emerged from his corpse. (RV 10.9.12-14)

  • Consciousness comes into being through divine kenosis?

Chapter 3: China: The Primacy of Ritual

Part 2: Mythos

Chapter 4: New Story; New Self

• Speaks of Jacob’s wrestling with God at the Jabbok river being a reflection of his wrestling with Esau in their mother’s womb. The place of the encounter was named ‘Peniel’, meaning face of god. This encounter happens the day before Jacob is going to reunite with his brother, who he believes will be upset with him. Upon meeting his brother, he remarks to his brother that ‘truly to see your face is like seeing God’. God’s face lies in the reconciliation of brotherhood?
• Speaks of Moses being a babbler, a stutterer, and how this hints at how smoothness of speech doesn’t guarantee an accurate reflection/reception of God. Aaron, whose speech is eloquent, speaks for Moses to the people. However, theologia (‘speech about God’) is particularly prone to idolatry—after all, it is Aaron who persuades people to worship the golden calf.

• 1.4 Master Zeng [Zengzi] said, “Every day I examine myself on three points. When I worked to benefit someone else, did I do my best? In my relationship with my friends, did I fail to be trustworthy? Did I pass on any knowledge I myself had not put into practice?” (Analects 1.4)

  • Golden rule.
• “Confucius may have been the first to enunciate the Golden Rule in a pithy, memorable formula: “Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.” When Zigong asked him: “Is there one word that can serve as a guide to one’s entire life?,” Confucius replied that the word was “reciprocity” (shu)… To be truly transformative, this altruism must become habitual, performed not simply when convenient but “all day and every day.”
• “The word upanishad is often translated as “eso-teric teaching,” its etymology upa-ni-shad (“to sit near to”) suggesting that this advanced knowledge was imparted by mystically inclined sages to a few gifted pupils who sat at their feet. …these new scriptures were developing the science of “connections” (bandhus) developed by the ritual specialists, which had cultivated a sense of the profound unity of reality by linking earthly and heavenly realities together.”
• Ayam atma Brahman: This Self is Brahman.

Chapter 5: Empathy

• “All the ten thousand things are there in me. There is no greater joy for me to find, on examination, that I am true to nyself. Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be reated yourself, and you will find that this the shortest way o humanity [ren].” (Mencius 7a.4)
• The word upadana, which meant clinging, also had fuel as a root meaning. Buddha used this as a pun in his fire sermons.
• “We must suffer, suffer into truth. / We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart / The pain of pain remembered comes again, / And we resist, but ripeness comes as well. / From the gods enthroned on the awesome rowing bench / There comes a violent love.” (Aeschylus, Agamemnon)

Ch6. Unknowing

• “…Krishna argued that the war could not be won by ordinary means so he persuaded Yudhishthira to trick Bhishma into revealing the only way it was possible to kill him and to tell Drona that Drona’s son had been killed in action. In his shock and grief, Drona had laid down his arms and made himself vulnerable to attack. ‘A lie would be better than the truth,’ Krishna argued, “and he that speaks a lie in order to live is not contaminated by it.’ But the consequences were appalling: Drona’s son—Ashwattaman— would avenge his death. And despite Krishna’s reassurance, Yudhishthira was tarnished. His chariot had always floated the width of four fingers from the ground, but as soon as he lied to Drona, it came sharply down to earth, while Drona, who died a saintly death, was taken directly up to heaven. The contrast between Yudhishthira’s fall from grace and Drona’s ecstatic ascension was devastating and Arjuna bitterly berated his brother: his vile lie would taint them all.” (Ref Mahabharata 7.164)
• “The epic leaves us bewildered and unmoored. Perhaps it is inviting us to shed our desire for clear-cut answers and religious certainty, as well as self-centred fantasies of afterlife. By focusing on the fact that human life is dukkha we learn that the only solution is to espond to this inexorable truth without rage or excessive sorrow but ith compassion for others and courageous acceptance.”
• “He does not show himself, and so he is conspicuous; / He does not consider himself right, and so is illustrious; / He does not brag, and so has merit; / He does not boast, and so endures.” (TTC 22)

Chapter 7: Canon

• Speaks of the Lotus Sutra, “which opens with Gotama Buddha sitting in a deep meditative trance…the whole universe is trembling, flowers rain down and perfume pervades the atmosphere. Then the Buddha begins to explain his practice of upaya (skillful means): his teachings must be adapted to the needs of each of his audiences to enable everybody to achieve enlightenment. There were not one but three “vehicles” or dispensations-for monks, the laity and the bodhisattva-each enabling people to follow the path to nirvana at their own pace.”
• Chapter 25 of the lotus sutra is devoted to Avalokishvara (Guanyin), a boddhisattva devoted to compassionate aid to anyone who calls on him. Some buddhists claim Guanyin took the form of Jesus.

• “One of the reasons for the popularity of the Lotus is that it suggests that the smallest act of devotion can have a disproportionately positive result. If somebody merely raises their hand and says, “Adoration to the Buddha,” they are on the road to enlightenment.”

  • Faith of a mustard seed can move mountains
• The Book of Tobit and the Wisdom of Solomon appeared in the Greek Torah around ~50BCE

Chapter 8: Midrash

• “God’s word was infinite and could not be confined to a single interpretation.” Big theme so far, Jewish Rabbis (‘my masters’) reinterpreting and debating over the meanings of the texts in light of current problems.
• “Whoever studies the Torah for its own sake merits many things, not only for this but [one can even say] that the entire world is found deserving for his sake. He is called the Beloved Companion who loves the Divine Presence and loves all creatures [and] who makes the Divine Presence glad and makes glad all creatures. And it robes him in humility and fear… And people shall benefit from his counsel, discernment, understanding and fortitude… And the mysteries of the Torah are revealed to him and he becomes an overflowing and ceaseless torrent… and it makes him great and lifts him above the entire creation.” (M. Pirke Avot 6.1)

• “Just as the same rain falls upon trees and gives to each distinctive flavour-vines in accord with their nature, olives in accord with their nature—so too the words of the Torah are all one—yet they contain [the distinct characteristics of] scripture: Mishnah, halakhot and aggadot.” (Sifre on Deuteronomy, 306)

  • Buddha used a similar analogy earlier do describe the oneness of the teaching but the skillful/individuized means to its application
• Paul wrote only seven of the letters attributed to him, the rest were written in the early second century to encourage followers to conform with the Graeco-Roman social norms at the time (e.g., role of wife and slaves)
• Christ and his apostles, being peasantry rather than aristocratic theologians, were probably most familiar with the psalms that would be sung at Passover/pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the stories of Moses and Elijah (men of the people)
• “…John is offering his fellow Christians a vision of an alternative future at a time when Roman power seemed invincible. But Rabbi Aha was writing at a time when Palestine was ruled by Christian Roman emperors who were similarly merciless to the subject peoples. The book of Revelation overturns the kenotic vision of the New Testament and many church leaders were reluctant to include it in the canon; to this day Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians will not have it read during the liturgy. But we shall see that it has become the scripture of choice for many Protestant Christians today, especially in the United States.”

Chapter 9: Embodiment

• Origen of Alexandria suggested the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs represented the body, psyche, and spirit—three stages to the angelic state.
• “Righteous condemnation was a sign of self-satisfaction and a major impediment to our understanding of scripture. Instead, Augustus insisted, “we must meditate on what we read until an interpretation can be found that tends to establish the reign of charity.” Like Buddhists, Jains and Confucians, Augustine insisted that scripture was pointless if it did not lead to compassionate thinking and behaviour.”
• “Whoever thinks that he understands the divine scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of our neighbour does not understand it at all. Whoever finds a lesson there useful to the building of charity, even though he has not said what the author may be shown to have intended in that place, has not been deceived.” (Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, 30)
• “So the language of scripture is conditioned by the inadequacy of human nature. Both are limited, so quarrelling about the interpretation of the Bible was foolish and destructive since the purpose of scripture was to create a bond between Christians. Augustine had no time for people who believed that they alone understood the meaning of scripture. Their pride and egotism had isolated them from the community; rather, the diversity of possible interpretations should unite Christians whose views may otherwise differ together in love.”
• “God created man aright, for God is the author of all natures, though he is certainly not responsible for their defects. But man was willingly perverted and justly condemned, and so begot perverted and condemned offspring. For we all were that one man who fell into sin, through the woman who was made from him before the first sin.” (City of God, 12.14)
• “Jerome, Maximus pointed out, had translated “eph ho pantes hermarton” (“everyone has sinned”) as “in quo omnes peccaverunt” (“in whom [i.e. Adam] all have sinned”). The Greeks, therefore, would interpret the practice of infant baptism quite differently from the Latins. In the West, it was performed to expunge the sin of Adam, but for Theodore of Cyrus, Augustine’s contempo-rary, a newborn was without sin and baptism simply a promise of her future deification.”
• “Tragically, Augustine bequeathed to Western Christianity an indelible guilt that the Buddha would have called “unskilful” (akusala), because guilt embedded us in the ego that we should try to transcend.”

Chapter 10: Recitation and Intentio

• “For centuries, Muslims have experienced the Quran as what Christians call a sacrament, a perpetual breaking-through of the transcendent into the mundane. While Christians see the Word of God embodied in the man Jesus, for Muslims the Word is present in the sound of the Quranic text as recited in communal worship.“
• “The “Five Pillars,” the essential practices of Islam, are corporal as well as mental disciplines. The obligatory prayers that interrupt all mundane activities at five precisely prescribed times each day include ritual-ised physical movements. At the sound of the muezzin calling them to prayer (salat), Muslims must first determine the direction (gibla) of Mecca and position themselves accordingly, a physical “reminder” (dbikr) of their true orientation. They then recite Quranic verses, while bowing forward, sitting on the backs of their legs, and touching the ground with their foreheads—all of which impress on the mind and heart what is required in the “surrender” to God. The Ramadan fast, which reverses the usual sequences of space and time, is another “reminder” of the ultimate. During the day, austerity is the rule: food, drink and sex are prohibited, while the night is for communal cel-ebration.”
• In India meanwhile, the Puranas (“ancient tales”) extended from the mantra tradition. Unlike the mantras, whose sounds alone were transformative, the meaning of a Purana was also important.
• One of the most popular Puranas, recited by Vishnu: ‘I alone was in the beginning; there was nothing else at all, / Manifest or non-manifest. / What exists now as the universe is I Myself; what will / Remain in the end is simply Myself.’ (BP 2.92.32)

• “Purists, the primordial “Person” of the Rig Veda, was now thought to be incarnate in Lord Krishna, who was purusbottama (Vishnu person-ified”), Purusha’s ody had contained all the worlds: all gods, demons, sages and kings; all rituals; all truth and, signifi-cantly, all the Vedic mantras, meters and chants.” So Vishnu/Krishna was not only the fulfilment of the Veda, he was the Veda in human form: “Asceticism is my heart; mantra is my body; knowledge assumes the shape of my activity; sacrifices are my limbs; the dharma born from sacrifices is my essence (atman]; the gods are my various breaths.” (BP 6.4.46) The abstruse lore of the Brahmins had now blended with the yearnings of the ordinary people, who had been excluded from the Vedic rites. The goal is no longer a disciplined, mystical absorption in the inscrutable Brahman, but ecstatic union with Krishna.”

  • Similar to the Christian view that Christ is the culmination and loving outgrowth of the Jewish tradition

• “[Krishna’s] most famous battle is with Kaliya, a many-headed monster who was poisoning the stream in which he lived and killing the cattle. Krishna jumps into the water, baiting Kaliya until he finally emerges from his lair. Instead of fighting, Krishna dances around him until Kaliya’s heads droop with exhaustion. He admits defeat, and Krishna banishes him to a distant island.”

  • The power of play, infinite rather than finite (prolonging the game rather than trying to end it)
• “Play (lila) is Krishna mode of being. A far cry from the lav-giving God of the monotheistic religions, Krishna expresses the unconditioned nature of the divine, which is not bound by human conventions. He exemplifies the imaginative, rich and creative activity of the sacred that is spontaneous and free. This theophany reveals a divinity that does not demand pomp and sycophantic praise, does not govern the world from a majestic throne, and neither needs nor desires elaborate rituals. Instead, the divine transcends human conventions and class divisions and invites us to question them.“
• “It is only when things are investigated that knowledge is extended; when knowledge is extended, that thoughts become sincere; when thoughts become sincere that the mind is recti-fied; when the mind is rectified that the person is cultivated; when the person is cultivated that order is brought to the family; when order is brought to the family that the state is well governed; when the state is well governed, that peace is brought to the world.” (Great Learning)
• If the root is disordered, so the branches will be disordered.
• “Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother, and even such a small creature as I finds an intimate place in their midst. / Therefore, that which extends through the universe I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I consider as my nature. / All people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions.” (Western Inscription, Zhang Zai)
• “The man of ren takes Teaven and Earth as being one with himself; to him there is nothing that is not himself. Having recognised them as himself, what can he not do for them?” (Literary remains of the two Chengs, Xi Zhu)

• “Our human mind is “precarious”: our selfish desires, prejudices and instability constantly separate us from our Dao mind, so we must control it, uniting it to our heavenly Dao mind by means of jing (“attentiveness” or “reverence”). “I’ve been troubled by unsettled thoughts,” Su Jiming, a member of the Cheng circle, confessed. “At times, before I think through one matter, other matters occur to me, entangled like hemp fibres. What’s to be done?” “This must be avoided; it is the source of disintegration. You must practice,” Cheng Vi replied. “When practicing, you become capable of concentrating, things will be all right. Whether in thought or action, you must always seek unity.” (Er-Cheng Yishu 223.9)”

  • Through deliberate reverence for unity, the multiplying mind is set aright.
• In premodernity, the goal of engaging with scripture was not necessarily fidelity to the past, but edification of the future.
• “”Didn’t you realise,” [Paul] asked the Corinthians, “that you were God’s temple and that the Spirit of God was living among you?” (Corinthians 3:16) We have seen that in all traditions, the aim of scriptural study was personal transformation. Paul was reminding his converts that they were not constructing an edifice of orthodox doctrines and practices: they were the building. Each one of them was developing the Spirit of Christ within themself…”
• “bent upon everybody. A Christian must improvise, each responding to their unique circumstances. The foundation laid by Paul was only the beginning; it must not be confused with the final structure.
• Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) referred to Paul’s metaphor in his explanation of Origen’s three “senses” of scripture-literal, moral (or typological) and allegorical. ”First, we put in place the foundations of literal meaning [historia]; then through typological interpretation, we build up the fabric of our mind in the walled city of faith; and, at the end, through the grace of our moral understanding, as though with added colour, we clothe the building.” (Moralia in Job, Gregory)”

Chapter 11: Ineffability

• “The Quran is perpetually new for those who recite it,” [Spanish mystic philosopher al-Arabi] insisted; indeed, anyone who read the Quranic verse in the same way twice had not understood it correctly.”
• “Unlike the jurists, who emphasised God’s justice, Ibn al-Arabi repeatedly quoted the Sacred Hadith in which God says: “My mercy takes precedence over my wrath.” Did not the Quran itself insist that God sent Muhammad as “a mercy” to the world?” Ibn al-Arabi emphasised the divine mercy so forcefully that he even insisted that the sufferings of hell could not be permanent. This insistence on the divine compassion lay behind his conviction that all faith traditions were equally valid: My heart is capable of every form: / A cloister for the monk, a fane for idols, A pasture for gazelles, the votary’s Kabah, / The Tables of the Torah, the Koran. / God is the faith I hold: wherever turn / His camels, still the one true faith is mine.”
• “It was, therefore, Maimonides argued, better to use negative terminology when we spoke of God. Our experience of “existence” was so limited that instead of saying “God exists,” we should say that God does not not exist. It was also impossible to say that God was “wise,” “perfect” or “powerful” and preferable to say that God was “not ignorant,” “not imperfect” or “not impotent.” Otherwise, we would project our limited notions of power, perfection and wisdom onto God. But this method could be applied only to God’s attributes and never to God’s essence-God’s innermost self-which lay beyond the reach of speech.”
• “Nor did Maimonides subscribe to the more recent divinisation of the Hebrew language; Hebrew was simply a human creation and, therefore, equivocal, concealing as much as it revealed.”
• “Kabbalists called God’s innermost essence En Sof (“Without End”). En Sof was utterly unknowable and was not even mentioned ather the Bible or the Talmud. During the creation, it had erupted sanimpenetrable concealment like a massive tree, whose branches manifested as attributes. There were ten such emanations, which the Kaballists called sefiroth (“numerations”), each revealing an aspect of En Sof, which lay beyond the reach of speech, each as more comprehensible than the last as they approached the material world. But they were not “segments” of the divine, because each encapsulated the entire mystery of divinity under a different heading.”
• “The first sefirah, Keter, the dark flame that began the creative-revelatory process, was called “Nothing” because it did not correspond to any reality that we could conceive. It was the divine itself, a hidden and inexpressible reality, whose “face” is turned inward and away from us—a transcendence that always eludes our understanding.” Next Hokhmah (“Wisdom”), the second sefirab, representing the utmost limit of our understanding, broke through the impenetrable darkness, followed by Bimah, the divine “Intelligence.” Then the seven lower sefiroth followed in succession: Rekhamin (“Compassion”), Din (“Stern Judge-ment”), Hesed (“Mercy”), Netsakh (“Patience”), Hod (“Majesty”) and finally Malkuth (“Kingdom”), also called Shekhinah.”
• “When Adam was created, he was supposed to contemplate the entire mystery of the Godhead on the first Sabbath, but instead he took the easier option, meditating only on the Shekhinah, the most accessible sefirab. Not only did this result in Adam’s fall; it also ripped the Shekhinah away from the other sefiroth so that it was exiled from the divine world. But by devoting therselves to the task that Adam should have performed, Kabbalists learned to contemplate the divine…”

Part 3: Logos

Chapter 12: Sola Scriptura

• Talk of the reformation, Luther claiming scripture alone should hold authority, not the body of ritual around it.
• Talks of the Dominicans and Franciscans studying Aristotelian philosophy to try to patch up the loose ends in scripture, which left things open, but thus made it difficult to convert sceptics (e.g., pagans in Spain that St Dominic was trying to convert)
• Talks of Descartes and his objective proof of God’s existence being a later attempt at the same thing, and the Chinese bewilderment of this egocentric assumption that the Dao can be named.
• “While western Christians were developing a wholly literal and historical understanding of scripture, Luria was still able to interpret the Bible mythically, bringing out its underlying significance in a creation myth that bore no resemblance to the orderly cosmogony of Genesis. While the scriptural value of kenosis was disappearing in Christian Europe, Luria depicted the creation as an act of self-emptying. Because God was omnipresent, there had been no place for the world, so En Sof, the unknowable Godhead, had contracted into itself, as it were, in a voluntary withdrawal (zimzum), to create such a space, making itself less so that its creatures might flourish and be.”

Chapter 13: Sola Ratio

• “The first freethinkers and atheists in Europe were not Enlightenment philosophes but spanish jews who were forced to convert to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition and were derisively known as Marranos (“pigs”), a term of abuse that they adopted as a badge46 of pride. Most had accepted Christianity only under duress, were now forbidden to leave Spain and were closely watched by the Inquisition for signs of reversion. Lighting candles on Friday evening or refusing to eat shellfish could mean imprisonment, torture or even death. Not surprisingly, many of these conversos (“converts”) would never wholeheartedly accept Christianity and were thrust into a spiritual limbo.” (~1492 Spain)
• “The declared objective was to return to the “fundamentals” of their faith, which they believed to be the literal interpretation of scripture together with a select group of core doctrines. Similar movements, although with very different foci, have developed in other faith traditions. Indeed, wherever a secular government has separated religion. and politics, a counterculture has developed alongside it which is determined to push religion back to centre stage.”
• “In the 1990s, at the outset of their monumental six-volume Fundamentalist Project that examined this phenomenon, Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby explained that “fundamentalisms” -be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu or Confucian-all follow a similar trajectory. They are embattled spiritualities that have developed in response to a perceived crisis. They are engaged in a conflict with enemies whose secularist policies and beliefs seem inimical to religion itself. Fundamentalists do not regard this battle as a conventional political struggle, but experience it as a cosmic war between the forces of good and evil. They fear annihilation, and try to fortify their beleaguered identity by means of a selective retrieval of certain doctrines and practices of the past. Feeling profoundly threatened, they often withdraw from mainstream society to create a counterculture…”
• “Scripture has played a part in such movements, usually in the use of “proof texts” to justify a course of action. But it is neither the starting point nor the principal means of expression— fundamentalists often use ritual to make their point. Yet, as we have seen, scripture was the focus of Protestant fundamentalism from the very beginning. This, perhaps, is not surprising. The Protestant Reformation had insisted on sola scriptura. Scripture was, therefore, the life and soul of Protestant Christianity, it was all they had, and when it was attacked, fundamentalists felt that their very selves were violated. Hence the extremity of their fear of the Higher Criticism.”
• “Pain is also joy, a curse is also a blessing, the night is also a sun—be gone, or you will learn: a wise man is also a fool. / Did you ever say Yes to one joy? O my friends, then you said Yes to all woe as well. All things are chained and entwined together, all things are in love.” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche)
• “[Scripture] must enter the mind and body of the prophet or sage who receives and recites it, as well as the interpreter who explores its meaning. The Word must somehow be made flesh. The Quran, Rahman explained, is both human and divine; it is the word of God, but also the word of Muhammad. The Prophet was not just a passive recipient of lucid divine commands; his contribution to the revelation was essential… The Spirit, Rahman maintained, was also a power, faculty or agency in the Prophet’s heart. Muhammad’s role was to release the Spirit by clothing it in the Arabic language so that it could change the world.”
• “What Muhammad experienced was a startling vision of hope, rather than In explicit message. Putting it into words, he explained, was often agonising: “Never once did I receive a revelation without thinking that my soul had been torn away from me.” Sometimes the divine “Voice” seemed relatively clear but it was often vague and incoherent.”
• “We should all, perhaps, as a matter of urgency, reflect on the Prophet’s last speech to the ummah, which ended with a quotation from the Quran in which God addresses the whole of humanity: “O humankind, we have created you all from a single male and a single woman, and formed you into tribes and nations so that you may get to know one another.”(Quran 49:13)”

Post-Scripture

• The art of scripture was meant to invoke spiritual transformation. However, now this transformation is limited to the body: diets, makeovers, shopping. People don’t seem to be aspiring for sagehood. Yoga and mindfulness are being used to elevate the self (to feel good in some way or another), rather than their kenotic intent to relinquish selfishness. Finally, as per a 2003 study, the predominant faith of teens and their parents (?) in the west is a therapeutic deity that makes them feel good. “The stern Christ of the gospels has been replaced by a Jesus who has become “my personal saviour”—a kind of personal trainer, focused on my individual wellbeing.”
• Jewish philosopher Martin Buber “insisted that the Bible was really a live voice rather than a book. That is why for centuries Jews had called scripture miqra (a ‘calling out’).”
• “When God called Abraham, Moses or one of the prophets, they regularly replied ‘*Hinneni!’ (‘Here I am!’), declaring that they were fully present, ready and attentive.”

• “Instead of the bible illuminating the world, the world explained the bible.”

• Literalists and fundamentalists mapping the world, e.g., scientific discoveries, to the bible. Idolatry.

• “God was in the fire, but was not the fire; He was the space in which the world existed; but the world was not the space in which he existed.”
• “Perhaps, Grossman wonders, this is because Samson proleptically expresses qualities that are quintessentially Jewish, the result of years of ostracisation and persecution: “loneliness and isolation, his strong need to preserve his separateness and mystery, yet also his limitless desire to mix and assimilate with Gentiles.”
• Also likens Samsons ostracized strength to that of the Israeli military, and a warning of the consequences of an over reliance on power.
• “Perhaps [Samson] sees the co-inherence of life and death in the humming vitality and busy productivity of the bees who inhabit the lion’s skeleton, as well as the convergence of violence and sweetness. His immediate response is to plunge deeply into the lion’s carcase to extract this deliciousness, make it a part of himself and share it with others.“
• Descriptions of Samson as an artist, and the honey filled lion carcass as the revelation of his inner artist, and his childlike desire to share it with his parents—see, from my violence can sweetness and beauty come!