RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewBoth secular liberals and fundamentalists see Scripture as words to be taken literally, the former to ridicule and the latter to embrace. Karen Armstrong wades into these debates and says that both sides are wrong ... A British writer and former nun, Armstrong argues in her magisterial new book, The Lost Art of Scripture, that Scripture shouldn’t be interpreted literally or rigidly from a pulpit or in a library. She argues that Scripture is flexible, evolving, contextual and more like performance art than a book ... In effect, Armstrong has written a highly rational tribute to the murky wingman of our lives that exists beyond what is material and rational ... In juggling texts in Hebrew, ancient Greek, Chinese, Sanskrit and other languages, Armstrong covers a vast range and inevitably wades into areas in which she is not expert ... while I found the broad arguments at the beginning and end of this book to be fascinating and persuasive, I yawned periodically over details of the Rig Veda, neo-Confucians or Sikh ideology. Yet this is a dazzling accomplishment, a reflection of an encyclopedic knowledge of comparative religion and of a wisdom about spirituality in the human species. What shines through is the way Scriptures in so many traditions were an art form, like an opera or poetry reading, meant to elevate us, not simply to give us ammunition to support preconceived views.
