A world-renowned scholar
reveals how a pivotal transformation in spiritual experience during the
biblical era made us who we are today
A great mystery lies at the
heart of the Bible. Early on, people seem to live in a world entirely
foreign to our own. God appears to Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and others;
God buttonholes Moses and Isaiah and Jeremiah and tells them what to
say. Then comes the Great Shift, and Israelites stop seeing God or
hearing the divine voice. Instead, later Israelites are "in search of
God," reaching out to a distant, omniscient deity in prayers, as people
have done ever since. What brought about this change?
The answers come from ancient texts, archaeology and anthropology,
and even modern neuroscience. They concern the origins of the modern
sense of self and the birth of a worldview that has been ours ever
since. James Kugel, whose strong religious faith shines through his
scientific reckoning with the Bible and the ancient world, has written a
masterwork that will be of interest to believers and nonbelievers
alike, a profound meditation on encountering God, then and now.
