The Lost Art of Scripture: The sacred texts need to be rescued

In Ireland’s tumultuous history of religion, the events of 1641 figure prominently. While the events and their causes are contested, there is little doubt that the 1641 rebellion was an occasion of death and destruction. The 1641 Depositions record eye-witness testimonies, mainly of Protestants, of the rebellion. Preserved in manuscripts in Trinity College Dublin, and available online through the 1641 Depositions Project, the depositions chronicle not only experiences of the loss of family and the destruction of property and livelihood, they also capture the religious resentments that suffused the rebellion.

The testimony of Thomas Ricroft recalls, “Those rebells . . . before the faces of several protestants burnt all the bibles they cold meete . . . saying in disgrace & contempt of religion, what will yow doe now your bibles are burnt”, while another, having witnessed his bible being stamped upon in a puddle of water recounts the rebel saying “a plague ont this booke it hath bred all the quarrel . . . & they hoped that within 3 weeks . . . none should be left in the Kindgome”.

The 1641 Depositions speak vividly to Karen Armstrong’s argument that the sacred texts of scripture need to be rescued – from biblical literalism, from ideological misuse, from political fervour and from theological misunderstanding. But is this possible?

Over 500 pages she argues that it is. Indeed, in this wide-ranging and passionately argued work Armstrong not only insists that the sacred texts of religious traditions need to be rescued, but she embeds this argument in an account of religion as myth, suggesting that if the mythological character of religion was properly understood then it would indeed be possible to restore the lost art of scripture.

But what does Armstrong mean when she speaks of religion as myth, since in contemporary parlance to describe something as a myth implies immediately that it is untrue? As she notes, traditionally “a myth expressed a timeless truth that in some sense happened once but which also happens all the time. In effect it enabled people to make sense of their lives by setting their dilemmas in a timeless context”.

Creation stories

In order to demonstrate this point Armstrong analyses the creation stories in the Hebrew Bible (located within the Mesopotamian Wisdom traditions), the Vedic texts of India and the Daoist tradition of China explaining that each of these traditions has a myth of beginnings, and that each mythologises these beginnings in order to establish certain fundamental beliefs about the world and the place of humans in it.

These traditions do this in ways that are very different from each other, and so have distinctive conceptualisations of cosmos, society and the meaning and purpose of human life. She takes readers on a global journey that traces the chronological development of the major scriptural canons of India and China and those of the monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

She argues that the myths of scripture are not intended to be read as science, or archaeology or history, but rather they present a range of different prescriptions for humans in terms of how they can live in harmony with “the transcendent”.

Armstrong pursues this analysis in order to challenge misunderstandings of religion and to “throw light on the genre of scripture”. She argues that religious myths are more akin to poetry and art than to science, and therefore to treat religion as a form of knowledge that is in competition with or in opposition to science is to completely misunderstand its nature.

She reminds readers that the scriptural narratives never claimed to be accurate descriptions of the world or the evolution of the species, and that it was only in the early modern period in the West that the Bible began to be read as though it were a factual account of what happened. In the same way that a poem or a novel must be read according to the rules of its genre, so too with scripture. Thus, like any artwork, scripture requires the cultivation of an appropriate consciousness in order to read and interpret it.

In the case of reading scripture this consciousness must enable a transformation of mind and heart and the cultivation of the habits of empathy and compassion. This analysis of the art of scriptural reading is persuasive and illuminating. A minor quibble is that she pursues it in tandem with an analysis of the respective functions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain which this reviewer found to be distracting and unnecessary.

Throughout her expansive work Armstrong analyses many of the world’s religions, at different periods in their evolution, and in a range of geographical contexts. The breadth of this book is in many respects overwhelming. No doubt scholars of specific religions will criticise the broad brushstrokes with which she engages the specifics of the texts, doctrines, ethics and rituals of these traditions, and there are inaccuracies.

There is also the concern that Armstrong’s framing of the nature of religion and the genre of scripture derives from western conceptualisations of religion and is therefore insufficient for her project. However to focus on these and other flaws is to miss the point of the book, which is to show how throughout history, the scriptures of the different religious traditions were fluid and adaptable spiritual tools that were created to help people connect with the transcendent, and furthermore that the narrow, literal reading of scripture that prevails today is a relatively recent, misguided and dangerous phenomenon.

The 1641 Depositions capture a moment in time when the art of reading scripture was truly lost. The degree to which religious rather than political agendas predominated is to some extent irrelevant, since this episode is but one among thousands where religious texts became a lightening rod for political violence and destruction.

Armstrong has long been a voice of challenge to the violence and intolerance that has marred the politics of religion, and here her prescription is the recovery of the lost art of scripture. She may have an overly optimistic belief that imaginative, figurative and creative readings of the sacred texts can be a sufficient counterweight to literal, singular and ideological readings of these same texts. Nonetheless one hopes that her confidence is well-founded.
Linda Hogan is professor of ecumenics at Trinity College Dublin.