Experiencing Scripture: Intimacy with Ancient Text and Modern Faith

In the title 'Experiencing Scripture' full weight must be given to the experiencing, involving personal participation in the interpretation of a text. Many introductory courses about the Bible or the Older Testament teach students about these texts, but without actual experience of them. Presuming access to introductory information in one form or another, what this book aims to do is to give users personal experience of a limited number of significant texts from the Older Testament.The aim is to provide experiential awareness of these texts from the inside, rather than introductory knowledge about these texts from the outside. (From:'About this Book') In my judgement, the prophets' expression of hope and their prophecies of salvation succeed brilliantly on two counts and fail equally on two counts. Success: i. They speak eloquently of God: of the inner being and benevolence of God, desirous of peace and justice, longing for blessing for all the families of the earth. ii. They speak eloquently of us: of the need for peace and justice in human society over the face of the earth. Failure: i. They fail God: they portray the future to be brought about by God in materialist terms that are all too redolent of external wealth and national prosperity. ii. They fail us: they do not portray the inner value of the human being that might be loved by God despite all the awfulness by which it is surrounded. Ultimately, the history of humankind since the last prophetic expression of hope suggests that God's desire is not so much to change the world but to embrace the human heart, an undertaking that makes no sense unless the human heart is committed to changing the world. (From:'Theological Reflection') Any judgement on the nature of biblical text has to be reached ultimately on the basis of its evidence of itself. It is the pattern of biblical text to juxtapose rather than to adjudicate.What we are left with is an invitation to think. As revelation, the text of the Older Testament frequently does not reveal to us what we do not know but rather reveals to us what we need to think about. It is often a friendly but insistent invitation to'go think.' The implicit insistence is there:we need to know and we are not told; this is important and there are options.Therefore we need to think about it. (From the Epilogue)

About the Author :
Antony Campbell, SJ, is a Jesuit priest, formally emeritus professor of Old Testament at Jesuit Theological College within the ecumenical United Faculty of Theology, a recognised teaching institution of the Melbourne College of Divinity.At 75,he has withdrawn from the governing bodies of JTC and UFT. Describing himself as 'semi-retired', he is still teaching and publishing. He is the author of over a dozen books and many articles on the Older Testament or Christian faith (including God First Loved Us [Paulist, 2000], The Whisper of Spirit [Eerdmans, 2008], God and Bible [Paulist, 2008], Making Sense of the Bible: Difficult Texts and Modern Faith [Paulist, 2010]), Experiencing Scripture [ATF, 2012], and Pentateuch Without Sources [in preparation]). He describes himself as 'a New Zealander by birth, an Australian Jesuit by choice, and a lover of the Older Testament by passion'; he adds that, with ripening age, there are armchairs for sitting, riverbanks for walking, life for living, friends to delight in, God to commune with, even classes to teach- and nature, reading, and music to enjoy.