Status Updates From The Secular Bible: Why Nonb...

'Let us never underestimate how much havoc a skilled exegete can wreak on a dominant reading when blessed by a peculiar and poorly attested word.'

'we are not interested in taking a particular side in contemporary political debates that invoke biblical authority. Let us qualify that once more: the side we take is the one that points to the ironies and impossibilities of coherently invoking this anthology in contemporary political debates.'

'But is it not the goal of academic inquiry to portray the words of historical documents as accurately as possible? Should scholars willfully mistranslate an unintelligible passage from Scripture in deference to an unspoken conviction that Scripture ultimately makes sense?'

'As for divine origins, well let's just say that it might be an act of grace to *not* ascribe various books of the Hebrew Bible to God or the Holy Spirit. For if those texts were indeed written, didacted, or inspired by a heavenly author, then His literary competence, not to mention His sanity, would frequently be questioned.'

'A biblical scholar is a person who has devoted his or her life to reasoning with a madman.'

Tell us how you really feel.

I think the most intriguing points thus far are that Biblical scholars are likely among the most well-versed professors in the humanities and in the development of Western thought, and that they just as often bowl over the fact that the Hebrew of the Old Testament is quite frequently unintelligible, even to them (and I thought it was just because I hadn't learned the Hebrew well enough yet, right?).

This is a really dense book; even though I am quite familiar with the subject material, this book requires me to read it slowly to digest it properly. Very informative, and quite insightful thus far.