Publisher's Synopsis
Like many in the mainline churches, the author was encouraged to read the Bible through a single, safe, traditional lens, ensuring that the truth of the Bible could be discovered only through that way of interpreting the text. The book tells the story of what happens when other lenses appear, other ways of engaging the text, other fresh ways of connecting the text to its origins, its people and its context. These other ways involve not only the original contexts but the contemporary contexts where the Bible engages, challenges and acknowledges the expectations, needs and fears of people, and their deepest concerns. It is the story of an Australian biblical scholar's painful yet fulfilling discovery that education, study, research, lifestyle, travel, environment, science, ecumenism and interfaith issues provided new lenses through which to read the Bible and make sense of its wisdom and insight into the current human condition and our relationship with God and nature. It is a story to encourage others to use significant moments in life to revisit the Scriptures with fresh lenses and renewed hope, not afraid of the challenges the texts bring to our commitment to connect faith and life. With a clear mastery of his subject, the author takes us on a tour through some of the landscapes of the Bible. This is not another dull, dusty trek through the featureless terrain of biblical hermeneutics, but a tour through landscapes we may never have visited before, places few have seen, secret places familiar only to those who have wandered this territory for a lifetime.As you traverse these landscapes, you will be delighted, surprised; you will laugh and be annoyed; you will be engaged, and perhaps even awaken again to the riches in these landscapes when you engage with your eyes and ears wide open, in fearless honest dialogue. Rev. Henry Palenschus With a clear mastery of his subject, the author takes us on a tour through some of the landscapes of the Bible... with our eyes and ears wide open, in fearless honest dialogue.
