Description
THE AUTHOR of the acclaimed and best-selling A History of God now applies her profound understanding of the religions of Abraham to one of the most familiar yet perhaps least understood books of the Bible: the Book of Genesis, the foundation stone of Jewish and Christian scriptures.
The power of Genesis lies in its stories, especially those of the creation, the Fall, Cain and Abel, Noah. Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph. Armstrong traces the grand design of Genesis and its great themes, examines its stories in fascinating detail, and shows why and how they work so well to illustrate the human quest for meaning. We discover
how these ancient tales illuminate our most profound and intractable problems: our struggle with evil, with obtuseness, with cowardice, and particularly with the difficulty of facing up to the consequences of our past actions. Most significantly, Armstrong makes clear how the stories in Genesis can help us to relate-morally-to our own personal histories in our strivings to make ourselves whole, and to grasp why the struggle itself is worthwhile even if its goal is never fully achieved.
There are no glib or facile messages in Genesis. Its stories, complex and sometimes contradictory, force us to wrestle painfully in the dark, like Jacob, before we can discern what they tell us about the nature of the divine and the human, and of the relationship between them. Karen Armstrong's new interpretation-lucid, authoritative, inspiring-provides fresh light in the darkness for all who seek both to under- stand the ancient scriptures and to apply them to our contemporary life.
ISBN:9780679450894
