Reading Notes: The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts

Karen Armstrong

"...we all - scientists as well as mystics - know only representations of reality, not reality itself. We deal with the world as it appears to us, not as it intrinsically is, so some of our interpretations may be more accurate than others."

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"Every scriptural canon has within it texts which, read literally, can be taken to endorse narrow particularism, suspicion of strangers, and intolerance toward those who believe differently than we do. Each also has within it sources that emphasize kinship with the stranger, empathy with the outsider, the courage that leads people to extend a hand across boundaries of estrangement or hostility. The choice is ours. Will the generous texts of our tradition serve as interpretive keys to the rest, or will the abrasive passages determine our ideas of what we are and what we are called on to do?" - Johnathan Sacks

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"The art of scripture was designed to effect radical change change in those who studied it, not to give divine sanction to their own inescapably limited views"