Event the National Book festival . Nice. Nice to see that. Welcome back. And how many of you have attended one of these dash book festival presents . Good, keep coming back. We like you. Thank you so much. [laughing] welcome to the library of congresses National Book festival presents, a vibrant new series of programs inspired by the National Book festival and t to bring you into the heart of this historic, dynamic institution, the library of congress, joe national library. Library. This is a brandnew effort through which we helped to spark conversations, engage, inspire and entertain you with some of the most diverse, provocative, and notable writers of the day. In every program that we put before you, save from the childrens writer to a conversation with the haitianamerican one of the literary novelist, to the program you have come to hear tonight, we need to connect the works of living writers to a larger history, a deeper understanding. We delight in making those connections for you, and we delight in provoking the kind of exchanges that makes all of us more informed and mindful citizens. You are part of the collective mission by being here tonight. Thank you for joining us and thank you for helping us carry this torch. I hope youve taken a moment to look at the display for religious texts are curators have put out for you next door, and perhaps youve taken a tour of some of the librarys vast holdings that make tenants conversation, a live for you. So we try to incorporate these features in every program, and we want you to experience the deaths and breadth of this library, of your library. But to cut to the task at hand, im thrilled to be standing here to introduce one of the world great minds on spiritual studies, a writer and scholar who has contributed richly to our understanding of faith, scripture, and the history of religions around the globe. She is of course karen armstrong, the current ambassador for the United Nations alliance for civilizations. In the event you dont know what that life is, its a dedicated and vicious body within the United Nations that mouse action internationally against any form of extremism. Karen armstrong would like to make the world talk to one another. Its and a light that nurtures communication and strives to defuse tensions between those who profess different faiths which is also one of the forces behind the charter for compassion, a campaign that she began about ten years ago, after she won the prize. The charter for compassion is the public good document and more than 30 languages that urges the peoples of religions of the world to embrace the essential values of compassion, so fundamental to many of the worlds core beliefs, no matter what your religion. Karen armstrong began her career as a religious sense, a member of the Roman Catholic system of holy child in england from which she separated and she enrolled in studies of Saint Annes College in oxford to study english literature. She has been a teacher, a historian, a writer, a Television Personality on religious issues, but always and above all she is been an explainer, a connector. The lessons throughout her new book, the lost art of scripture, is that the worlds major faiths and religions have more in common than you might think. The differences over which wars have been fought and the hatreds which of inmate harder are, if you study the very heart of scripture, actually very few and surmountable. Its a hopeful message. Karen armstrong is the author of the bestselling history of god. Shes given up consistently brilliant deeply researched and thought the work, among them through the narrow gate, tongues of fire, the holy war, about the crusades, mohammed, a biography, buddha, safe after 11 september, 12 steps to a compassionate life, and my own favorite, her gripping memoir, the spiral staircase, my climb out of darkness. Now she gets us this time and for new work, the lost art of scripture a book that explains where they reside in our brains and our hearts. It is in short an examination of the way sacred texts have been coopted by hardliners in fundamentalist around the world who insist that these books should be taken literally at the word when, in fact, as she argue so well, sacred texts are works of art they are tools to approach the divine, roads to a higher consciousness. They were never meant to be rigid and unbending written in stone. Shes here to tell us about this clarifying work of history in a time of intolerance and mutual incomprehension. Her voice is at once a comfort and a clarion call. At the end of her talk we will take your questions. I hope you will formulate them as she speaks to you. Please help me welcome the prestigious only talented writer and thinker karen armstrong. [applause] thats a wonderful welcome. Thank you. Why is scripture a lost art . While, first of all, lets think if you are reading a book like pride and prejudice. You are not astonished or even dismayed to hear that he never existed. [inaudible] we are reading scripture in a very factual way. We are factual people in the early modern period we started turning in europe and over here in the United States towards reason, logic, the enlightenmen enlightenment, all of these things, signs particularly come have done wonderful things for the world. But its no good reading scripture or they say the stories of scripture as though they were factual. Anymore than pride and prejudice is. Because before about the 18th century was impossible to write history as we know it today because its only since the 18th century where we started to learn about ancient cultures. We learned, develop the science of archaeology and learned how to decipher ancient languages, that we could make, that we could read, create the world of the past. But as human beings, as perhaps the older members of the audience will agree with me, its more natural for us to forget rather than to remember. [laughing] as scripture tells us what we should remember, and it does so in a way that brings out the reasons why we should remember these texts and the stories of scripture, what they mean, rather than what actually happened. Now, ive got only a few minutes to talk him and his quite a lot to talk as you see. I thought i would just focus on three things about how we misinterpret scriptures and lost art. One of the things im not going to go into in great detail but intrigued me first and get me started on this project was the fact that scripture was essentially a performative art. Some of you may have seen those wonderful bibles on display, but thats a fairly recent thing. Scripture before was memorized. Most people couldnt read until the 18th century. You recited your scripture. You sang it. The quran means recitation, and muslims dont read the text as we do, even when their learnig it by heart they dont learn it from a text. Its recited to them and they learn it that way. As a catholic child, i bought scripture filtered through the gregorian chant and the cadences of that chant, but we never read the bible much. It was always done in the setting of music and also acted out in rituals, because we learn things far more with our bodies than with our minds. We learn more about human nature and the world through movement and gesture. I am told people, if someone is talking and a use a lot of gestures, people will believe the gesture rather than the words. Because the body doesnt lie so much. But im going to take three different things, and the first one is that scripture tells us that we must believe. That it gives us truth that we must accept. Its a very odd idea. Came in rather late, roundabout the time of the protestant reformation. And you will remember that luther said famously that a poor man armed with scripture can learn as much about the faith than any pope or bishop. Give everybody the bible and they will be fine. Well, that didnt work because as the reformers soon found that they couldnt agree with one another about what scripture said, even on absolutely on the mental matters like the eucharist. This was so disturbing that from the beginning the Protestant Movement was split, and scripture is full it is not teaching anything. How can it, because it is talking about our reality, we call it god over here, in india they call it the and that means the all, it is everything that is. Its reality itself you cant define it, a word, which literally means, from the latin root, to set limits upon something. You cant limit god. As a catholic child at the age of eight, i learned my catechism, and one of the questions was what is god . And in a single sentence we had him summed up. God is the supreme spirit who alone exists in itself and is infinite in all perfections. Well, at age eight i to say that left me rather cold. [laughing] but i now think it is quite entirely incorrect, because first of all it takes it for granted that you can simply drop a breath and define a word as i said that means to set limits upon our reality that is, that cannot be grasped. And for the more who alone exists with himself. Thomas aquinas before the modern period, i will be summed up european thought in his great theological and said god is not one of the things that exists. All things that we know exists are very temporary. They come and they go. They failed. They are people. God is being itself. That force of life. It is certainly not a he who alone exists. And it tells you nothing about god and neither does the bible. I guess what ive only got a little while, i just want to take one scripture that you probably, any of you will know well, the book of genesis. In chapter one of genesis, the famous chapter one, we have a portrait of god, and everything i god should be. There he is in total control, totally powerful. He simply has to speak and it comes into being. Unlike other creation stories, which the bible also includes, god doesnt have to fight any terrible monsters, sea monsters in order creation is no great struggle to him, as he speaks and it is done. And god is totally good and fair, and at the end of every day he is very nine. He blesses everything that he is made and says it is good. Even his old enemy the sea monster that he was supposed to have destroyed, he blesses him and they are made peaceful. The rest of the book of genesis systematically undercuts that nice teacher of god. [laughing] by the end of chapter three, a god who was in total control of his creation, has lost control, cant manage them all, human beings. They are on their own. The god who was so benign becomes a cruel destroyer in the time of the flood, in in a fitf what we can only call peak. He decides to destroy the whole human race. He saves noah and his family. As soon as noah gets out of the arche gets drunk and commits some horrible secular act. But he wipes out the entire world. So much for the benign god. And the god who is completely impartial in chapter one, lessing all that he has made, has monsters favorites. Hes endlessly choosing one person after another for no good reason as far as we can see here can enable cain and abel. Kane ranks the sacrifice and god says no. He takes abels sex licenses. No reason at all. And when hebrew tells us his face crumples like the face of a stepchild went into shock by something and you have the first murder and he kills his brother abel. And he goes on doing this, god does, he chooses jacob rather than easel, the older twin and youre made to feel the pain of the rejected one. Having a blessing for me, father . He cries in despair. Father, bless me, too. I cannot do it. And hagar just dont in the desert with her baby son by abraham at gods command to face almost certain death. This is not the benign god we think. And at the end of the book of genesis was continually biting in and intervene and advising, disappears from the world. And joseph and his brothers have to struggle with their own insights and dreams, just as we do. And that image of god has instead this is the world that we know. This is a world where people do die in terrible, senseless disasters, natural disasters. And this is a world that is not fair. None of those people he have chosen is particularly good or better than the other, and yet they are the ones that prosper and get the blessing, and that is what we see always. And we are left at the end wondering what is this god . And notice later on moses meets god in the burning bush and says what is your name . Because you know the name of someone gives you power over them. God says, i am what i am. Now, thats been translated to say god is saying he is a selfsufficient being, but this is the early hebrew and it didnt have that kind of metaphysical thought yet. They had not developed a metaphysical tradition. Its a phrase used in hebrew of deliberate vagueness. When you say, the bible say they went where they went, it means i dont know where they went. [laughing] basically mind your own business, dont ask me. And similarly he chooses moses, the stammer, to speak for him. Moses says to them look, god, why are you choosing a . Ever since i child ive had this terrible speech impediment and no one can hear a word i say. And god says never mind. Your brother will speak for you. So were only getting what god has said to moses secondhand, and you wonder really how much moses has understood. And furthermore, it is erin, the speaker who is guilty of the idolatry because its his idea that the israelites worship the god in the form of a golden calf, narrowing got down to a single image. Moses, he still prefers moses, cannot speak because god is unspeakable. The great taoist scripture begins the doubt that can be named is not the eternal tao. If you could say what god is, you can say what that doubt is. Thats not the doubt. If you can say what it is, thats not god at all. And so heaven does not speak to confucius of the highest reality in confucianism. Heaven does not speak. We just get glimpses of what we can see. And in one of the taoist scriptures, confucius his nephew is supposed to say i sit quietly and forget. I can forget everything ive been told. So scripture is not telling us what we should believe. It is rather opening our minds and hearts to the fact that we we speak about god we do not know what were talking about. The tao that community is not the eternal tao. Very early in the tenth century, the priests of india, ancient india, used to have competition, and they would go off into the wilderness and they would fast and pray, and they would come together to the indians loved competitions. The object of it was to find a word that sums up the all, that is everything that is. And so the first priest, a challenger, drawing on all these huge learning and all his mystical experience would come out with a phrase that he thought summed up the all. The of the priest would have to reply, build upon that and reply, but the priest who won the competition was the one that reduced the all to silence, and in that silence, he was present. He was not present in the learned declarations but in a sudden realization of impotence of speech, when you face the divine. And so when we go why did we have catechisms in the first place . Because after reformist and the couldnt agree themselves upon scripter they said they were still thought of ordinary people read the bible anymore. That was clearly out, and so they had to have catechisms instead, catholic leaders and the protestants did this. So you had, so you would approach the scriptures through a set of catechism on theological answers divided by human beings like that, what is god. One of the indian favorite scriptures is the story, a terrible story of an appalling war, its hard to see any light or glimmer of hope in it at all, even at the very end when they go to heaven. Its not clear that there is a heaven at all actually. You are not left wondering whether heaven exists, and certainly your left in grave doubt about what they were up to and that is one of their investment scriptures. Because instead of giving us answers, it plunges us into obscurity, get rid of your catechisms and oppose, let yourself see the ambiguity of scripture. Scripture does not look, expect us to go back to the original meaning of the text. Now, in modern scholarship thats what we do, isnt it . We go back to the earliest account of something or the earliest version of a story of something, and we go back to the original text. And indeed thats what the protestants, reformers wanted to do. They wanted to go back to the early church to reproduce the early church. Theres a problem about that because they were men and women of the early modern period, not the First Century of christianity, and its impossible for us to go back, especially as all the first christians were jews who had an entirely different view of scripture. We are still doing that today. Sometimes in very youve got, in saudi arabia, for example, the wahhabi who reproduce a lot of century customs and mores, going back to what the prophets at that at the time but theyre not meant and women of the seventh century. There are even fundamentalists in this country who have suggested that they reside the old hebrew legislation, which would include the stoning of disobedient children. We are not programmed to do this. Scripture, and every scripture tradition that i studied, i found this out why i didnt think this at the beginning of my research, it insists that you move forward and apply it to the present. Invented, if you like. The jewish people, after they lost the temple which was destroyed by the romans in the year 70, could not read the old hebrew text in the same way because the whole of that spirituality is centered around the temple and theres a terrible hole right in the heart of the scripture. They didnt just chalk it up. They develop something called midrash. Which means to go in because go in search of something. You would take, someone would come to one of the rabbis and asking a question, and if you would answer it by taking a verse from the book of psalms, lets say, or another verse from one of the prophets, and another from the book of genesis, texts that have no relation to one another, bundled them altogether and say you got an answer that answers this particular question. So it was invented, and midrash was invented and perfected by the great rabbi who died, he was killed by the romans in the early second century. And there was a story told about it, the fame of his brilliance was so great that it reached heaven, and moses got to hear about this. And he was intrigued so we want to find out so we came down to earth and tended the rabbis scripture class and he sat in the back row among, at the very back. But found to his intense embarrassment that he couldnt understand a word of the torah text the rabbi was expounding, the tour that it been revealed to him on mount sinai. Instead of being miffed about a company goes back to heaven, shaking his head probably rather like a proud father say my children have defeated me, but theyve grown up. They have gone beyond me. One rabbi put it this way, he said every time that which was not revealed to moses was revealed to the rabbi and his generation. Scripture revelation is not something that happened once in the distance past. It was present whenever i jewish student with his teacher confronted the sacred text and found something in it. And then the early versions, it would be a page on which the student must imbibe his own thoughts come his own discoveries. He would they were told to imagine that he and his master were standing together on mount sinai with moses and taking the revelations further. Because revelations was not something that happen once in the past. It happened every time that you confronted the sacred text. In the new testament, the writers of the new testament, matthew, mark and luke particularly had for him their own kind of midrash. This was more like a sectarians by the dead sea which saw the own Movement Predicted in the past. And matthew, for example, never misses a chance of taking a bit from the Old Testament as they called it, and apply it to jesus. He quotes the prophet and says i took my son out of egypt. Obviously hosea was talking about the exodus of egypt with moses. But no, matthew applies it to the baby jesus who was forced to flee king herod, but when things died that he came back to palestine and he is brought out of egypt. Thats just one example. Theres one story in the gospel of luke, second century, early second century possibly, which shows how this worked. It wasnt just a clever stunt. Was something that was profoundly after the crucifixion, two disciples distraught, they thought jesus was going to the messiah in the died terrible death. Leaving jerusalem and going to the village, and they are sad and distressed obviously, and a stranger approaches them and said you look awfully upset. Is anything i can do to help . Im always relieved theres disciples were not sort of stiff upper lip brits the weight of applied no, no, were fine. That wouldve been a story. But they do, they make themselves vulnerable and they meet the strange and you laugh at them but they say we thought jesus was the messiah and look what happened. He said, started with moses, he goes through all the scriptures showing how it applies to jesus and take her to his crucifixion. Scripture say nothing of the sort. This is more invented midrash brick. And at the end, you know the end of the story. They have supper together when the stranger breaks the bread ac that it is jesus and he disappears. They say and this is important bit, did not our hearts burn with an us when you open the scriptures for us . Their hearts swelled with joy and this was an insightful thing, not just a cerebral cleverness. That, look, is saying how well see jesus today, in the breaking of bread in this inventive scripture, and when we reach out to a stranger for help. Every time in the 12 center, wonderful jewish philosopher, every time you recite a piece from the koran it should mean Something Different to you. And if it doesnt mean Something Different to you, youre not reciting it correctly, because youre not sufficiently in the moment to say what youre going to do. Finally, im looking at the time, but theres a lot of spirituality today that is all about we. Im not condemning any of this yoga for example, is not designed as a sort of aerobic exercise. It was designed to get rid of ego, that selfish thing that always turned everything on towards ourselves, i was thinking ourselves. Let the ego go. Similarly, mindfulness. The buddha design mindfulness and told his monks to practice it not so they get could feel e centered in themselves but they could realize their self did not exist. The self is a a fiction. It had no reality. And so theres a scripture, is not about me. It cant just tell us about our own private internal spirituality our relationship with god. It must have practical action. The story about the buddha, we often see him, dont we, lost in concentration in yoga trance, and he did a lot of yoga. Theres a story about in in the biblical description that when he had achieved enlightenment he was basking in this newfound peace, and in contingent that perhaps he should teach other people about how to do this. And he thought well, no, im not going to do that because its very difficult. It means youve got to let the eagle go and most people are just not going to be interested in that and are not going to do it. At which point rather highest god gave a terrible cry and uses then the world is lost. The world is utterly lost, as he dissents from heaven and the god kneels before the enlightened man and he says, lord, please preach your message. Look at the world. Buddha looked at the world with the eye of the buddha and saw the pain of the world and spent the next 40 years, we never see this, but its in the scriptures, going around to the towns and villages of india helping the people to do with her suffering and a way to overcome it. This is all the scriptures tell us to act. Later, i think he would tell his monks to do the same. After achieving enlightenment you must go back to the marketplace, immerse yourself in the pain and nastiness of the world in order to assuage it. You got a job to do. And so this outward turning was crucial. Confucius went for thought for the period they said dont wait until you have achieved enlightenment. You will gain enlightenment by helping other people because i can helps you to put yourself to one side. The gospels are full of it, too. When the kingdom comes to earth, those who get into the kingdom of jesus says that those who will cry lord, lord, and say e prayers nicely. But i was hungry, he gave me to eat. 30, he gave me to drink, in prison and you visited me. The reaching out to the suffering of the world. And sometimes you go to church, sing a few hymns and then go home to lunch, and thats the end of it. It isnt. The end of the mask i dont know what to do now but the priests would say go, you are sent forth. It didnt mean go home to lunch. [laughing] he met you are now to go and immerse yourself in the pain of the world. And i want to end with the confusion vision of how that should be done. Because i think its very appetite to her all the rights and today. He said you learn compassion, confucian say, and that meant the golden rule. Confucius was one of first people to enunciate the golden rule. His disciples asked him, master, which echoed teachings could we put into practice all day and every day . And what is the Single Thread that runs through all your teachings . And he said, likening to the self. Look into your own heart, discover what gives you pain, and then refuse under any circumstance whatsoever to inflict that pain on anybody else. And you do not just when you feel like it, all day and every day. And that means all day every day you are leaving yourself behind and putting yourself in the position of another, and thats how you gain enlightenment. Anyway, you start, the confucians would say later, in the family. You learn compassion, now to live with other people in relation to the family. You cant go and put the world right if your own family is in disarray, but it can start in the family. You then move out into the next circle, in the city which you dwell. And look, ask yourself, people are living in the streets this year . What, and london, for example, i come from, which city, 25 of the population are living in poverty. We should be going out to that. Then the third circle to move out into the whole country, but finally to the whole world. And the whole world is, now we are so globally small, linked together as never before, our unable to get away from one another and yet we are retreating into nationalistic ghettos like brexit. Moving away from the fact that we have that would reach toward the whole world. So thats what the scriptures are saying. Not to focus and just sing a few hymns, not to slavishly find out what scripture said 500 years or even 1000 years ago. What is the same to you now, how will it heal the moment now . And remember that it will tell you nothing about god. It will make you realize that when you in the form of the divine, you come to the end of what words and thoughts can do. Thank you. [applause] thank you so much. Thats extraordinarily illuminating and inspiring talk, dr. Armstrong. Thank you so much. We will have a question and with the audience, but i have a little surprise. And im going to ask my colleague, one of the great curators of this library, to present it. Mark . Hello again. Hello again. Hello, everyone. You will recall you came through and had opportunity to show some sacred texts. Those of us who are fans of yours know that weve been on this journey for me about in which weve learned that sacred text changes over time in place them both in terms use in meaning. Whether it be in our case of our collections of 14 century hungarian manuscript of the bible, to the printing of the gutenberg bible in 1454, to the printing of the King James Bible and 1611 and beyond, sacred text has always been in flux. However, is one aspect of the material that we showed you today which is a constant, its true, and even as far back as a 15th century was real, and that is jerusalem. And so whether it comes from bryden box pilgrimage to jerusalem in the 1470s and 80s, or to this, the image of jerusalem from the nuremberg chronicles 1493 come jerusalem has remained as the center, an image of truth and reality while all the rest of the world was displayed in fiction and fantasy, jerusalem was always portrayed realistically. So as remembers a good time with us today i would like to give you jerusalem. Thank you. [applause]. So thats a thrill for us. We will now take questions. Should we raise the house lights so that we can see one another . Questions for dr. Armstrong. We have microphones floating through the room and they will be happy to hand you a microphone and give you a voice. Your talk, do you think humanity has finished writing scripture . Do you see us creating more scripture . Well, one of the interesting things that my editor in new york asked me to do when he read the first draft of my new book, he said, you know, you say that scripture starts going off in the modern period when we start getting all analytical and scientific about things. And yet, scriptures an art form. Perhaps there are artists who at that time were writing scriptures better and i had fun with this. And i was right when he sate why dont you include some . So i did cecil miltons paradise lost. Now, miltons god is a disaster. Really, that is the god of the catsi catsism catechism, and free this and free that, utterly boring, but satan is a triumph because what hes doing is rescuing goodness. Milton was a calvinist, but he did not agree with calvins with the calvinist doctrine of pre disnation, that when youre born you are pre destined to go to hell or heaven. And a, this is a disgusting view of god and b, it was really torture, people were having breakdowns and satan had become a figure of absolutely monstrous evil. Now we know that milton read hebrew. He was one of the few people who were allowed to read scriptures. Because the reformers said you could only read the scriptures if you could read it in the form. And greek and hebrew and he read and on the last day of creation, god said instead of its good, he said its very good. Why . Because the rabbis said on that day god had the evil inclination. And we are the only evil enclin nation, animals are not evil, but we had these big brains that make us do evil. But, so, is the evil inclination good, said the rabbis . Yes, this he said. Because without it, a man would not marry a wife or engage in trade, for example. The sexual instinct is good, but it can easily be perverted and become hurtful and harmful and dangerous. And in trade, which the rabbis are very keen on, you have to do it your partners down and win and put other people out of business, but without it we are a mixture of good and evil and thats what satan is. It was satan, hes a human being. Hes made evil human. Theres one passage in miltons paradise lost where he sees eve for the first time before shes fallen and he becomes, milton said, stupidly good. Hes so lost and entranced by her. He puts milton puts on to his, satans lips soliloquies that could be on hamlet, a mixture of good and evil that all of us are. So, there are other scriptures that i mentioned that i also looked at thomas manns joseph books a trilogy, four books that tell a story of joseph and his brothers, but its also discussing the rise of naziism in germany at that time, a comment on his own time and finally, i took David Grossmans little book, a difficult story, but sampson is a very unlikely hero, a kind of thug, really. But goldman does if you want to see what mid rush is like, you see it with goldman. He takes grossman, rather, he takes every single sentence and comments on it and comes out with some beautiful thoughts about human nature in the person of that unlikely hero, samson. So, yes, i think we can probably there are people, attempts to find scriptures, new ones. They can become rather sloppy and sentimental, but when theyre applied with rigor the way that grossman did and mann and you have an intelligence that makes you see the scriptures differently and applies them to your own age. Wonderful combination of scripture and literature. Thank you for that complete answer. Theres a oh, right over there. Hello, my name is jack. I had a quick question. Given the fact that were in the Worlds Largest library and tonight youve reminded us that thought the history of writing, the primary way weve communicated taught and learned was through oral technique. Much of which weve probably forgotten since weve engaged in writing so much, not only the invention of the press, but a couple of centuries later. Do you see that in modern technology, social media, the world of all the various devices that we have, that we are shifting in some historic way away from understanding and communicating in writing to something that is morphing to some combination of something thats less writing and again becoming either more oral or visual and Something Different than weve experienced before and moving into a way of communication that may be something similar to the ancient, but not quite . Im not very on yes, they will be right. What slightly worries me, we were talking about this earlier about the phone. Is that were never in the moment anymore though. I was telling a story, i was in singapore recently in a restaurant and two, a couple came in to have lunch together and they sat down at the table and immediately took out their phones and started talking to other people which they did for the entire lunch and then when the guys lunch arrived. He took a photograph of his hamburg hamburger, so he could say, we had lunch and this was the hamburger that we had. Instead, scripture is asking us to be in the moment and very often when you see people, i see them walking up and down my street, which is a very pretty and 18th century street in the middle of london, beautiful curb, theyre not looking at it. They are yattering on to someone on the phone or walking along a beautiful cliff at the sea and chatting to someone in the office. We have to be in the moment. So i worry, too, in social media about the about the ugliness of some of it, the bull yyin bullying, the fact that children are sometimes driven to suicide because of the unkindness because you dont have to look someone in the face and tell them something horrible, you can do it anonymously without taking the consequences. And weve had, i dont know, we probably have had this here, but there have been suicides and there are even websites where you can go to find out how to commit suicide, as a 14yearold child did quite recently in birmingham. So i think that like all im not saying its evil, because its good and evil mixed, i think. It could it could bring us together more, but and i think of the proph prophet mohammed for a moment because when the koran came down, he wasnt always on some lonely mountaintop like moses. People would come and ask him about a problem in the community, a knotty problem and were told that he wouldnt just say, oh, ill just think about that. No, he would think deeply into it, so deeply that he would grow pale and sweat even on a cold day. Sometimes he would shake with the effort of struggling to find an answer and then out would come this message from the koran, from the depths of his heart, from the depths of his being and sometimes he would say cover me up, he would shake, but out of that effort, what he was doing was really entering into that moment with the whole of him, his body and his soul entering to get as deeply into that problem as possible and i fear that some you know, with the whole idea of the tweet and whatever characters it is, is, i think this will could become a simplification as well as an escape from the present moment. The present moment is all we ha have. We might all be dead the next moment if something happened or a terrorist suddenly marched in. We dont know. And as the scripture tells us to live in that moment, but i dont want to sound too much like a sort of iconaclast of this view, im too old to enhabit it fully. I havent embraced it much. I dont want to be chatting, i hate the telephone, the regular ones. I always find it an intrusion when im writing or thinking and really prefer seeing people facetoface, but still, i may be one of those iconoclasts. But its probably a bit of good and a bit of evil as all things are. Great question, thank you. And a marvellous answer. We have time for one more question, i believe. Im prefacing this by im interpreting you as saying that, a, scripture is not closed, even though we talk about sacred scripture in cannons. And that b, the engagement with scripture should not be something that we are just taking and freezing in time, okay. In much of human endeavor, thats what we want to do. Thats both religious scripture. That is to take the United States constitution, to take communism, the works of marx and lenin, et cetera. It occurs to me that theres a dynamic here, and i would like your comment on this, that that dynamic is one of fear. And it comes to me from the standpoint that once upon a time i pretended to be a musician and as a musician i never performed a work exactly the same because if i did, it was dead. If i engaged with it, i discovered something new. So my question to you is, what youre saying about scripture, its like somebody performing a piece of music you must constantly engage, it is a challenge, you dont know where its going to go and that that should be informing how he relate to people whose scriptures are different than yours . Yours . I think thats a really profound remark. I do think that i think about the fear, too because i think that about fear, we are all frightened beings and we have good reason to be fear at the present moment. And it is, i think, scripture teaches us, i think what i heard you say, scripture makes us look at things were afraid of, like extinction, if you do the same thing over and over again exactly the same somehow its died, a sense of fear and we are all frightened beings. Weve all were all going to face our own deaths. And we have to live with that. I think thats some of what you would saying is probably a bit about the death fear and we want to leave our mark for when weve gone in that and we go back to the part that would make it make it live again in the presen presence. And so, what was the last thing you said . Music. [inaudible] dont repeat it. Yes, definitely, because we are now living in a world where we know about other peoples scriptures. And other peoples religions. We used to hear we heard, travelers would come back from far distant lands and tell us weird stories about what goes on in other parts of the world. You know, muslims running around a little building, what on earth are they doing . Now we understand the depth and the profound similarities that we see right in china and india, the muslims, christians, jews, and their scriptures and we see how profound the likenesses are, as well as the differences. And that makes some people afraid because they want their faith to be singular and its when we began to find out about other peoples scriptures that we started getting fundamentalism, people going back and saying this is the bedford of faith, mines better and thats linked up, too, with the terrible wave of nationalism that is coming up at the moment. Brexit, for example. I keep saying it, but if youve just come from britain, thats all we hear about these days. It fills some of us with despair and i obviously dont know how the country is going to come back together after this, we are so profoundly divided. But here you have remember when the berlin wall came down and people were dancing in the street and weve seen people cheering at the prospect of a war between mexico and the United States so that you have a sense of wanting your little scripture, your little world to be the one. We cant do that anymore because the world is coming to us and it comes to us in the form of migrants dying every day to try to get into europe and the united kingdom. You heard the terrible story from the 29 people from vietnam who died in a refrigerated car trying to get into the united kingdom. Keeping out, keeping other peoples scriptures at bay is a result of fear and yet, the scriptures are all asking us, like confucius, to open to go out from in a series of concentric circles to embrace the world. And go out to all tribes and nations. Let me finish on a word, with the phrase from the koran, which is seen by so many people as an evil scripture. Most havent read it of course, and if they have read it, i would say thats not how you read the koran, people dont read the koran, they listen to it in arabic. But this is his last message to his community, he knew he would be dying soon. And they made the mecca pilgrimage together and he told them not to fight one another, a muslim must not fight one another were all one family and he ended with this phrase in which god speaks to the whole of humanity. And i think its something that we need to learn today. Oh, human kind. And hes using hes talking about adam and eve that we all came from a single person, but im going to do a bit here and suggest that we all come from a man and a woman. Each one of us a fusion of opposites coming together to make a new person. Oh, humankind, god says to the people of the world, we have created you all from a male and a female and we have formed you into tribes of nations so that you may get to know one another. And that should be our task today. [applaus [applause] dr. Armstrong, thank you for that enlightening talk in which you have brought us down deep to places where we dont usually go and then brought us up to an illuminated explanation of faith and its true roots. Thank you so much. Please help me thank dr. Armstrong and please meet her at the signing table next door where you can actually ask her another question or two, perhaps. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. [applaus [applause] youre watching a special edition of book tv, airing now during the week while members of congress are in their districts due to the pandemic. Tonight we look at foreign affairs. First ambassador william vaneden hooval, hope and history. The dragons and the snakes, look at ways Hostile Forces adapted to the way that the u. S. Fights wars and later, the power and influence. Enjoy book tv. The president s, just released in paper book by public affairs. Theyre our president s ranked in historical ranking, cspan. Org the president s. Order your copy wherever books are sold. In his book sam houston and the alamo avengers, Brian Kilmeade of fox news provided a history of the 19th century of war with mexico over texas. [inaudible conversations] good evening. Okay, here we go, excellent. All right. Hey, thank you guys so much for coming tonight. My name is Christian Pinkston and we want toel
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