c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Independent scholar and former Catholic nun Karen Armstrong has been writing books for 25 years. In an age of narrowly focused scholarship, she has tackled the broad scope of the world’s great religions.

Her breakthrough work, “The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions,” examines the spiritually fertile Axial Age (800 BC-200 BC) that gave birth to the world’s religions. She has written acclaimed biographies of Muhammad and Buddha and the best-selling “A History of God.” Her own memoir, “The Spiral Staircase: My Climb out of Darkness,” chronicles her own spiritual path, including leaving the convent that she joined as a teenager, and her mysterious illness, ultimately diagnosed as epilepsy.

Armstrong’s newest work, “The Bible: A Biography,” offers a history of the composition and changing styles of interpretation of the text sacred to Jews and Christians. Armstrong, 63, lives in London.

Q: Why is your new book a “biography” of the Bible? Biographies are usually about people.

A: It seemed to me this was very important in our present situation. People are quoting all kinds of Scripture, not always in helpful and insightful ways.

A sacred text doesn’t give us privileged information about God. Its truths are best understood as a form of spiritual discipline, whereby you learn to read Scripture, making a quiet place for it in your heart. We expect truth to come to us so quickly today, almost at the click of a mouse.

Q: How has biblical interpretation changed over time?

A: Because of the scientific bias of our education, it’s very difficult for us to think of truth that is not historically verifiable. We now tend to think that unless something is historically or scientifically true, it can’t be true at all. The early rabbis weren’t interested in uncovering what the biblical writers actually thought was the word of God. It is infinite. Until and unless you put your exegesis into practice, your exegesis was incomplete.

That’s very important about the nature of biblical truth. It’s not a series of metaphysical descriptions; it’s telling us how to behave. The point of biblical interpretation is to lead to compassionate action in the world. Compassion is the key religious virtue, and it struck me very forcibly how that ran through the exegesis of the great interpreters of the Bible.

Q: And today?

A: People don’t try with the Bible _ not enough. They discard it as ludicrous, or quote it in a literal way.

Q: How do you compare your view of the Bible and biblical interpretation to some of the other popular books popular about how the Bible was formed?

A: The Bible presents a whole range of competing visions. The biblical authors didn’t choose one Gospel. They chose four, each with its own distinctive view of Jesus. Jesus was too huge to be tied down to a single interpretation, and I think that’s something we can learn.

Q: You’ve called yourself an amateur theologian. How do you see your work in relation to that of “professional” theologians?

A: I never intended to write about religious matters, or even be a writer at all. It’s not really fashionable in academia to take these big broad sweeps that I do. What you have to do if you’re an academic is polish up one small aspect. I use and acknowledge my debt to the scholars who’ve done this groundbreaking work. But I’m joining things together; I’m taking it to a wider audience. All these truths belong to us all. They don’t just belong in the universities.

Q: Your books are copiously footnoted. How do you work?

A: You’ve got to do your best to just think fast and efficiently. You’re so concentrating on the end of the writing that you find very often you discover what the book’s about and something entirely new you hadn’t expected comes out. The first draft of many books of mine is always so awful. It usually does come right in the end.

Q: What’s next?

A: I’ve been doing a lot of traveling in the Muslim world. I think this is important work. They learn not all Westerners want to bomb them and despise their traditions.

Q: You once described yourself as a “freelance monotheist.” Is that still a good description of your faith?

A: I sometimes regret I ever said that! I draw nourishment from all three of these faiths. I cannot see any one of these as superior to the others. Now I would say my interests have broadened considerably, so that I’m now looking more at the Eastern religions. The Chinese have no notion of supernatural in their experience of the divine. I’m enthralled by some of these insights. I would see myself no longer just strictly monotheistic. Monotheists have a huge amount to learn from the other religions.

A file photo of Karen Armstrong is available via https://religionnews.com.

KRE DS END NELSON