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About This Book
Does the Christian Bible seem somehow remote, inaccessible, or difficult to penetrate? This unusual book offers a way in to the Bible which has probably never been attempted before...
It introduces the first six books of the Bible through a combination of poetry, conversation and commentary. The poems are written in a variety of styles, from sonnet to Haiku, reflecting the variety of writing in the Bible, and simply to enjoy the art of poetry as one of God's gifts to humankind.
Sometimes humorous, often challenging, and always accessible, this is a book for anyone who doesn't know where to start with the Old Testament.
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Yes, you can access From Cosmos to Canaan by Jock Stein in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Letteratura & Poesia religiosa. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
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Sacristy PressISBN
9781910519981
Topic
LetteraturaSubtopic
Poesia religiosaChapter 1
Genesis Part 1
Genesis means âbeginningâ: the beginning of the universe, life, humankind; the beginning of the children of Abraham; the beginning of the Old Testament and now the beginning of this book. The Bible is full of poetry and story, theology and history. The way in which they blend and balance is the stuff of scholarship. What they mean and how they matter is a challenge to every age and to every one of us.
That includes Jean Sharpin, who will become an important contributor to this book, in her own way, though her use of the term âchallengingâ was a bit differentâa kindly word she used for a book which did not quite hack it in the modern world. When I suggested that the Bible was a book which had changed the course of history, her eyebrows lifted just slightly. âPoetry used to do that,â she said, âNow itâs science.â
âTheology was once known as âthe queen of the sciencesâ,â I pointed out.
âThat was then,â Jean said, âWe live now.â
Jean and I share a love of poetry. We both came to it late, I following a career which centred on the ministry of directing a conference centre, Jean after teaching science (and some philosophy) in an Edinburgh school.
I said I was going to write poems on every book of the Bible. âOK,â Jean said, with her eyebrows firmly in place. âSend them to me, and Iâll read them.â So I did. But I told her sheâd need to read some of the book of Genesis for starters which, Iâm glad to say, she agreed to do.
In the Beginning (Genesis 1:1â2:3)
Seven days to make up everythingfrom cosmic dust to humankind.Six days of speaking, one of resting,days of seeing all was goodin origin, in process and potential.Seven days to write a poem, singa symphony to keep in mind,hint of word and spirit dancing,birling stars and swirling galaxies,making purpose out of chance.Who knows what other worldsmay sense of their Creator?We have this book,we have ourselves,we have a new beginning.
Making it up
âI like the idea of God âmaking upâ things,â was Jeanâs first comment. âI always thought the Bible was a great work of imagination.â
âImagination is a great word,â I said, âand we call poets makars. The trouble is, âpoetryâ is now used for something that is imagination and nothing more. Jews and Christians and Muslims believe that everything started in the eternal mind of God. But we can see and touch creation, which suggests rather powerful imagination.â
âHmm. I suppose it depends how you make the connection. The poet William Merwin wrote about light flying through the world, unconcerned about whether it actually arrived. Just like Stevensonâs âto travel hopefully is better than to arriveâ. All that is just poetry, and you donât need a Creator to enjoy it.â
âYou donât,â I replied. âBut my take on that is Godâs generosity. God gives us the freedom to enjoy everything God has made, whether or not we know Godâs there.â
âDo you realise you repeated âGodâ about four times in that sentence?â
âYes. God is more than just a person, and God is certainly not male or female. Thatâs our bag. But I admit, at my age, itâs hard to get out of the habit of using âheâ and âhimâ for God.â
âWell, I wonât mind if you slip up,â said Jean. She is nearly as old as me, after all. âBut back to business. I used to set sixth-formers the old question, âWhy is there something rather than nothing?ââ
âWhat did they say?â
âSome said God, some waffled, and one bright kid said that the universe could make itself.â
Nothing Much (Genesis 1)
Nothing is banalâhow typical of nothingthat it contradicts itself immediately âwhatever nothing is. But take that contradictionback behind beginning, creatio ex nihilo:what clustering possibilities, leaps inunderstanding, may lead science and theologyto bed, for ever yoked as yang and yin.
âWell,â said Jean, âAt least you donât agree with Stephen Hawking when he said that philosophy is dead.â1
âNo,â I said. âAnd I suppose, after Ayer tried to reduce philosophy to language games,2 this is the latest attempt to close it down.â
âBut you donât say âscience and philosophyâ in that poem. You say âscience and theologyâ.â
âI could easily have written âscience and philosophyâ. There are different angles on what is true, different kinds of wisdom.â
So what is true, anyhow?
Questions, Questions
Just who are youto claim whatâs true?And who can say,âYes, come what mayIâll walk my talkmy whole life through?âWell, why am Iaround at all?And why is therea world so fairto meet our need(but not our greed)?We humans mustkeep questioning(a trait that shapessuperior apes),and what we askis everything.To query âHow?âis technocratic:to query âWhy?âis quite emphaticthat weâre morethan meets the eye.But over âWhat?âand âHow?â and âWhy?âthe question âWho?âis what I cry:not, âWhat is hot?âbut âWho am I?â
âSo how does Genesis answer the big âWho am I?ââ Jean fired at me. I said I would email her if she made sure she got to the end of chapter 3.
Genesis begins with two creation stories: chapter 1 covers the creation of everything in the universe before human beings, and chapters 2 and 3 are about one man and one woman in a garden and what happened there. Chapter 1 is concerned with animals rather than humans; in chapters 2 and 3 animals are secondary to humansâan obvious sign that we are dealing with theology3 rather than history in the modern sense. Each story uses a different name for God, which is the first hint that the Old Testament has different strands, put together later by Jewish scholars in Babylon (the place of their exile in the seventh century BCE). This is what makes the Bible so much richer than a book by one person could be.
âThe book of Genesis simply assumes that God exists,â I said to Jean. âThese early stories help us know things that science cannot teach us. Why are we here? Is there anyone to thank for this marvellous world? What is the place of humankind? Is there a basis for marriage? Are there limits to how we should exploit nature?â
âBig questions. I found I had to work things out as I went alongâmost people do, I think.â
âYes, I have a friend who knew Latin, and he said it was solvitur ambulandoâwe work it out on the journey.â
The Bible shows us a way to think and act, and the testimony of Jews and Christians is that this way makes great sense and blesses human life. We prove the truth of the Bible in experience, not in some intellectual wayâbut we can think about it, and we can talk abo...
Table of contents
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Genesis Part 1
- Genesis Part 2
- Exodus
- Leviticus
- Numbers
- Deuteronomy
- Joshua
- Bibliography