Welcome to the library of congresss National Book festival a vibrant series of programs meant to bring you into the heart of this historical dynamic institution in the library of congress, your national library. Thilibrary. This is a brandnew after it to which we hope 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 literary novelist to the program that you have come to hear tonight we connect the work of living writers to a deeper understanding and we delight in making those connections for you and in that kind of exchanges that make all of us more informed and mindful citizens. You are part of that by being here tonight. Thank you for joining us and for helping us carry the torch. I hope youve taken a moment to look at the display put out for your nextdoor and perhaps youve taken that were some of the librarys vast holdings that will make tonights conversati conversation. Wwe chide you incorporate thesee features in every program and we want you to experience the depth and breadth of this library, if your library. But to cut through to the task at hand, i am thrilled to be standing here to introduce one of the worlds greatest minds on spiritual studies, a writer and scholar that helped contribute to our understanding of faith, scripture and history of religion around the globe. She is of course the current ambassador to the United Nations alliance of civilizations and if you dont know what that is, if a dedicated ambitious body and the United Nations that amounts the actions internationally against any form of extremism. She would like to make the world talk to one another. Its an alliance that nurtures communication and strives between those that profess different faiths. Shes also one of the forces behind the charter for compassion, campaign that began about ten years ago after she won the prize. It is a publicly create createdo document and in more than 30 languages that urges the peoples and 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 sister a member of the Roman Catholic sisters of the holy child in england from which she separated when she enrolled in studies that Saint Annes College in oxford to study english literature. She has been a teacher, historian, writer, Television Personality on religious issues, but always and above all she has been an explainer, connector. The lesson throughout is the worlds major faith and religion have more in common than you might think. The differences over which they have been fought and the hatreds that have been made harder are if you study the very heart of the scripture actually very few and surmountable. It is a hopeful message. Cara armstrong is the author of the bestselling history and has given up consistently deeply researched and thoughtful work among them is through the narrow gate, tongues of fire, the holy war about the crusade, mohammed a biography, buddha, safe after the 11th of september, stepped to a compassionate life, and my favorite, her gripping memoir my climb out of darkness. Now she gives us a timely and important new work that explains where faith resides in our brains and our hearts. It is in short an examination of the way tests have been coopted by hardliners and fundamentalists around the world who insist the books should be taken literally at their word when in fact as a she argues so well sacred texts are works of art. They are tools to approach the divine and to a higher consciousness. They were never meant to be rigid and unbending written in stone. Shes here tonight to tell us about this work of history in a time of intolerance and mutual incomprehension. It is a comfort and clarion call. At the end of the talk we will take your questions and i hope that you will formulate them as she speaks to you please hel top me welcome the talented writer karen armstrong. [applause] that was a wonderful welcome. Thank you why is scripture a lost art . Well, first of all, lets think if you are reading a book with pride and prejudice, you are not astonished or even dismayed to hear that he never existed. [inaudible] scripture in a very factual way where we are factual people in the early most period we started in europe and hear over here in the United States towards reason, logic, the enlightenment were these things, science in particular have done wonderful things for the world. But its no good reading scripture or the stories of scripture as though they were factual any more than pride and prejudice is because in about the 18th century it 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 to develop the science of archaeology and learn how to decipher the ancient languages that we could make it create this world of the past but as human beings is the older members of the audience will agree with me it is to forget rather than to remember. [laughter] scripture tells us what we should remember and it does so in a way that brings out the reasons why we should remember that stand stories of scripture and what they mean rather than what actually happened. Now, ive got only a few minutes to talk and its quite a fast buck as you see. So i thought i would just focus on three things about how we misinterpret scriptures and the lost art. One of the things im not going to go to in detail is the fact that it was essentially a performative art. Some of you may have seen those wonderful bibles on display but that is a fairly recent thing. Before it was memorized. Most people couldnt read until the 18th century. You resize it your scripture. It meant recitation and muslims dont read the text as we do even when they are learning it by heart they dont learn it from a text. Its recited to them and that they learned that way. As a catholic child, i bought scripture through and through and the cadences of thought but we never read the bible much. It was always don is always dong of music and acted out in rituals because we learn things far more with our bodies than ar minds. We learn more about human nature iand the world through movement and gesture. If someone is talking and they 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 the scripture tells us what we must believe. It gives us the truth that we must accept. Its a very odd idea that came in rather late. Around about the time of the protestant reformation and you remember luther said famously a poor man armed with scripture can learn as much about the faith then any pope or bishop, gives everybody the bible and they will be fine. Well, that didnt work because the reformers soon found they couldnt agree with one another about what the scripture said even on absolutely fundamental matters. This was so disturbing that from the beginning the Protestant Movement was put. Its not teaching anything. How can it because it is talking about a reality. It means the all, everything that is. Its reality in itself. So you cant define a word that literally means for the latin root to set limits on something. You cant limit god. As a catholic child at the age of eight, i learned my cataclysm and one of the questions was what is god. In a single sentence, we had summed up. God is the supremgod is the supo alone exists in himself and his infinite in all perfections. I have to say that left me rather cold. But i now think it is entirely incorrect because the tapes first of all it takes for granted that you can simply draw a breath and define a word that means to set limits upon a reality that is not the mythical, that cannot be grasped. Furthermore, who alone exists with himself. Before the modern period before we summed up the european thought in the great logic, it isnt one of the things that exists. All things that we know exist are very temporary. They come and go in detail. They are feeble. It is being itself. It is a tells you nothing about god and neither does the bible. Weve only got a little while, i just want to take one scripture many of you will know well, the book of genesis. In chapter one of genesis, the famous chapter one, we have a portrait of god, everything a 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 in the new struggle to him he speaks and it is done. God is totally good and fair and the end of every day he blesses everything that he has made and says it is good. Even his old enemy the sea monster and other stories that it is supposed to have destroyed, he blesses it and if they are made peaceful. The rest of the book of genesis systematically undercuts that nice picture of god. [laughter] by the end of chapter three, the god that is in total control has lost control. They are on their own. The god who is so benign becomes a coo destroyer in the time of e flood in a fi and a fifth of whn only call the peak, he decides to destroy the whole human race but he saved noah and his family as soon as he gets out of the ark he gets drunk and commits a horrible act, but he wipes out the entire world so much for the benign god. As a god who is completely impartial in chapter one, blessing all that he has made, has monstrous favorites. Endlessly choosing one person after another for no good reason as far as we can see. Cain and abel. Kancain brings his sacrifice and god says no. He takes abels sacrifice instead. No reason at all. And when hebrew tells us that his face crumbles like the face of a child when its shocked by something and you have the first murder he kills his brother, abel. He goes on doing this, god does. He chooses jacob radova rather n esau, the older time and you are made to feel the pain of the rejected one. Have you no blessing for me, father, he cries. Bless me, too. And hagar just dumped in the desert with her baby son by abraham and gods command to face an almost certain death. This is not the benign god we think. At the end of the book of genesis, god is continually butting in and intervening and appearing and advising and disappears from the world. Joseph and his brothers have to struggle with their own insights and dreams just as we do and that image this is the world that we know. This is the world where people do die in terrible senseless disasters and this is a world that is not fair. None of the people that hes chosen is particularly good or better than the other and yet they are the ones that get the blessing and that is what we see old ways. And we are left at the end wondering what is this god, and notice when later on moses meets him in the burning bush and assess what is your name because to know the name of someone gives you power over them. He says i am what i am. Thats been translated to say he is a self sufficient being but its very early hebrew and they didnt have that kind of metaphysical thought. They havent developed the metaphysical tradition. It is a praise to the phrase used in hebrew. It will say they went where they went. It means i dont know where they went. [laughter] and what god is basically saying his mind your own business and dont ask me. Similarly, he chooses moses to speak for him and moses says at one point why are you choosing me. Ever since a child i had a terrible speech impediment and no one can hear a word i say. God says never mind. Your brother will speak for you. So we are only getting what god has said to moses secondhand and you wonder how much of it is understood. And furthermore, it is aaron, the speaker, who is guilty of the idolatry because it is his idea that the israelites worship the god in the form of a golden cast narrowing dog down to a single image. And she still prefers moses who cannot speak because god is unspeakable. The great scripture begins that which can be named is not the eternal. If you can say what god is, that isnt god. If you can say what it is, that isnt god at all. And so, having doesnt speak of confucius, of the highest reality in confucianism. Having does not speak. We just got glimpses of what we can see. In one of the scriptures, his nephew says i sit quietly and forget everything ive been told, not building up of his knowledge about god. So, scripture isnt telling us what we should believe. Its rather opening up our minds and heart to the fact when we speak about god, we do not know what they are talking about. Its the fundamental. Very early on in the tenth century, the priests of india, ancient india had a competition and they would go off into the wilderness and pray and come together. The indians left competitions. The object of it was to find a word that summed up when i mentioned earlier which is everything that is and so the first challenger drawing on the earnings and mystical experiences would come out with a phrase that he thought summed it up and the other priest would have to reply, build upon that and reply, but the priest who won the competition was the one that reduced the mall to silence and in that silence, he was present. He wasnt present in the learned declarations but in a certain realization of the impotence of speech when you face the divine. So, when we go why did we have cataclysms in the first place, because after they found they couldnt agree themselves, they said there was no thought of letting ordinary people read the bible anymore. That was clearly out so they had to have cataclysms instead, the catholic leaders and protestants did this so that you would approach the scriptures through a set of theological answers devised by human beings like thats what is god and not the model of scripture. One of the favorites is a terrible story of an appalling war its hard to see any light or glimmer of hope in it at all even in the end it isnt clear that there is a heaven at all actually. Youre not left wondering whether it exists and certainly a great doubt about what the dogs are up to and get that is one of the best loved scriptures because instead of giving us answers, it plunges into obscurities and lets you see the ambiguity of scripture. Okay, point number two. It doesnt expect us to go back to the original meaning of the text. In modern scholarship thats what we do. We go back to the original text and they want to go back to reproduce the early church. But the problem about that, they were men and women of the early modern period. Wwere still doing that today. Youve got in saudi arabia for example and going back to what the prophets ha have done at tht time but they are not of the seventh century and there are fundamentalists in this country whove suggested that they revive the old hebrew legislation which would include children. We are not programmed to do this. In every tradition that i have studied, and i didnt notice this at the beginning of my research it insists that you move forward and apply it to the present. They were destroyed by the romans and could not read the old hebrew text in the same way because the whole of the spirituality there was a terrible cold right in the heart of the scripture. And now another from the prophet and another from the book of genesis it had no relationship to one another and their youve got an answer that answers this particular question. So it was invented and it is perfected by the great rabbi who was killed by the romans in the second century and there was a story told about it that the fame of his brilliance was so great that it reached heaven and moses got to hear about it and he was intrigued so he came down to earth and tested his scripture and stacke sat in thek row among the found to his intense embarrassment he couldnt understand a word. But he goes back shaking his head proudly saying my children have defeated me that theyve grown up, theyve gone beyond me. A jewish student with his teacher conferences the sacred text. And there would be a page of which he would invite his own thoughts and discoveries and they were told to imagine he and his master was standing together on mount sinai with moses and taking the revelation further but it wasnt something that happened in the past. It happened every time they confronted the sacred text. And the new testament particularly have formed their own. Its a little different more like the sectarians which solvel their own Movement Predicted in the past and matthew, for example, never misses the chance of taking it from the Old Testament as they called it and applying it to jesus. He says i took my son out of egypt. Matthew applied to baby jesus who was forced to flee and when things died down he came back to palestine and was bought out of egypt. That is just one example. Theres one story in the gospel of luke which shows how this worked. It wasnt just a stunt. It was profound. After the crucifixion, two disciples distraught, they thought jesus was going to be the messiah and he died in this terrible death and they leave jerusalem anjerusalem indigo byy village and theres the stress obviously and a stranger approaches that emphasize a. That could have been the end of the old story but they do. The. Thatof how it applies to jesusd it says nothing of the sort it is more of a rash and at the end you know the end of the story they see he disappears. And they say this is the important bit dead our hearts not burn within us when he opened the scripture for us so it swells with joy and its an insightful thing not just a cleverness. And that is how we will see jesus today in the breaking of bread in this inventive scripture and when we reach out to a stranger for help. So he says every time a you recite a piece it should mean Something Different to you and if it doesnt mean Something Different to you youre not reciting it correctly. Not condemning any of this but for example, it isnt signed as a sort of aerobic exercise. It was designed to get rid of that selfish part. It cant just tell us about our own private internal spirituality relationship with god there is a story about him when he had achieved if it was basking in the newfound peace perhaps they should teach other people about how to do this its very difficult. Then the world is lost, the world is utterly lost and he descend from heaven and yields before the enlightened man and he says lord, please preach your message. Look at the world. So he looked at the world and solve the pain of the world and spend the next 40 years we would never see this but its in the scriptures chanting around the villages hoping people to deal with their suffering and a way to overcome it. This is all the scriptures tell us to act. Later, i think that he would tell them to do the same after achieving enlightenment, he said, you must go back to the place and immerse yourself in a. So this was crucial and if they went further and said wait until you achieve enlightenment. You will gain enlightenment by helping other people because again it hopes to put yourself to one side. And if the gospels are full of it, too. Iwhen the kingdom comes to eart, those that get into the kingdom but not those that will cry laura, laura, and say their prayers nicely. But i was hungry and you gave me to eat, thirsty, you gave me to drink, sex, naked and in prison, and you visited me. The reaching out to the suffering of the world. Sometimes you go to church, sing your hymns and then go home to lunch and thats the end of it. It isnt. I dont know what they do now but they used to say go, you are set forth and it didnt mean go home to lunch, event go and immerse yourself in the pain of the world. I think it is to our Unequal World today he said he learned compassion and that meant the golden rule. He was one of the first two and the disciples asked him which of your teachings could we put into practice all day and every day and what is the Single Thread that runs through all of your teachings and he said likening to the south. Look into your own heart, discover what gives you pain and then refuse any circumstance whatsoever to inflict pain on anybody else. Anybody else. And ask yourself how many people this year cracks in london for example where i come from a rich city 25 percent of the population living in poverty. And then the third circle to the whole country and then finally the whole world. In the whole world now we are so globally small we are unable to get away from one another and yet we are retreating into brexit. Moving away from the fact so thats what the scriptures are saying. To find out what scripture said 500 years ago. And how you heal the moment now and remember i will make you realize as you come to the end of what words and thoughts can do. Thank you. [applause] that was extraordinarily illuminating and exciting. Thank you so much. We will have a question and answer with the audience but i have a little surprise. And i will ask my colleague one of the great curators of this library to present at. Hello everyone. You will recall you came through to show your sacred text and those of us who are fans have learned that the sacred text changes over times with use and meaning weatherby arcade from our collections of manuscript of the bible to the printing of the gutenberg bible to the printing of the key james bible with the sacred text is always in flux but theres always one aspect even as far back as the 15th century which is jerusalem. So that pilgrimage to jerusalem in the seventies and eighties or to this, the image of jerusalem from 1493 this has remained as the center and image of truth and reality when all that was displayed in fiction and fantasy so to remember i would like to give you jerusalem. [applause] it is so wonderful we can connect this vast library with what you just said. We will now take questions shall be raise the house lights quexs and happy to hand you a microphone. Do you think humanity has finished writing scripture do you see it creating more scripture . What are the interesting things my editor in new york when he read the first draft of my book he said that scripture goes off in the modern. To get philosophical and scientific. But there artist at that time so first of all miltons paradise. And really that is the embassy going on about the ordained because what he is doing is rescuing he is a calvinist of the predestination because that is a disgusting view of god. And it was torture africa people were having breakouts. Me know milton read hebrew to say you could only read a scripture if it was in the universal languages. So on the last day of creation instead of god saying it is good it is very good. Because that is why he created that evil incarnation. Animals are not evil. Sum is that evil inclination good cracks yes they said because without it a man would not marry a wife. The sexual instinct is good but cannot be perverted. That you have to win and put other people out of business. That is what satan is. He made evil human. That is where he sees eve for the first time that is stupidly good is so lost in a trance by her milton puts on to satans lips about his regret for what he has done with a mixture of good and evil. And there are other scriptures that i mentioned looking at the joseph books with the trilogy of four books that tells the story of joseph and his brothers also discussing the rise of not see azam in germany at that time and comment on his own time. And finally a difficult story but those kinds of thugs but if you want to see what it is like he takes every single sentence and comments on it. Of the person of that unlikely hero. So yes there are attempts to find description one dash scriptures they tend to be rather sloppy and sentimental. And then you have the intelligence and apply them to your own age. Wonderful accommodation of scripture and literature. Thank you for that. I have a quex question given that one of the Worlds Largest libraries you reminded us tonight that throughout the history of writing the primary way we have communicated was an oral technique much of which we have gotten since we engaged in writing so much with the invention of the press but everything you talk about a couple centuries later. Do you see modern technology and social media that we are shifting in some historic way to understand and communicate one communicating into something that is less writing becoming more oral or visual and in the new way of communication that could be something similar but not quite. We talk about this earlier but we are not in the moment anymore. I was in singapore recently as a couple came in to have lunch together and they sat down and immediately took out their phones and talk to other people which they did for the entire lunch. And then when the lunch arrived he took a photograph of his hamburger. So he could say this is lunch in the hamburger. Instead scripture is asking us to be in the moment and very often i see them walking up and down the street 18th century in the middle of london and talking to somebody on the phone but we have to be in the moment. So i also worry with social media about the ugliness of some of it and the fact that children are driven to suicide by the unkindness because you dont have to look somebody in the face to tell them something horrible but anonymously without taking the consequences that there have been suicides or even you could go to find out how to commit suicide as a 14 yearold child did recently. I am not saying it is evil because it is good and evil next i think. It could bring us together more and of the prophet mohamme mohammed, when the koran came down i wasnt on about mountaintop like moses talking about a problem in the community he wouldnt just say think about that he would go deeply into it he would grow pale and sweat even on a cold day or even shake struggling to find an answer and then outcomes this message to the depths of his being. Sometimes would say cover me up and would shake but out of that effort but was entering into that moment his body and soul to get his deep into that problem as possible. So i fear so whatever character it is it could become and escape from imprisonment. We dont now in the scripture tells us to live in that moment. But with that iconoclast and to enjoy that or inhabit that. I hate the telephone even the regular one. [laughter] i find it as an intrusion when i am writing. To prefer seeing people face to face. But still but it is probably a bit of good and a bit of evil. Marvelous answer. I interpret you as saying scripture is not close even though we talk about sacred scripture. And that should not be something that are taking and freezing in time. With a that human endeavor. It is scripture to take the United States constitution it occurs to me that there is a dynamic here and i would like your comment that the dynamic was one of fear and it comes from once upon a time as a musician i never performed exactly the same because if i did it was dead. If i engaged with it then i discovered something now. On something new. s what you say about scripture is like somebody performing a piece of music you must constantly engage its a challenge and you dont know where it will go or how those are different from yours. That is a profound remark i do think of the fear that we are all frightened beings and we have good reason. And i think scripture teaches us the things we are afraid of like extinction to say that over and over again exactly the same that somehow it has died. And we are all frightened beings. We all face are death. And we have to live with that. And we want to leave our mark with the death fear. Even when we are gone. To revise it and make it live again. [inaudible] definitely because now we are living where we know about other people scriptures. And then to tell weird stories. And running around a little building. So now we understand and then those scriptures and how profound those likenesses are. And that makes some people afraid and thats where we began to find out. But it is linked with the terrible ways of nationalism that is coming up. I keep saying brexit but that is what we hear about these days. [laughter] then we are so profoundly divided. And then when people were dancing in the street. And then to see people cheering at the prospect with the United States. So you have a sense of your little scripture. The world is coming to us. And then you have a terrible story from people from vietnam that died in a refrigerated car in essex trying to get into the united kingdom. Keeping other people out and there scriptures at bay is a result of fear. The scriptures are all asking like confucius and then to embrace the world. And as we finish from the koran that is seen by so many people as an evil in scripture. And if they had read it i will say thats not how you read the koran. Carranza. But this is the last message to his community. And then told not to fight one another. We are all one family to speak to the whole of humanity that is something we need to learn today humankind. He is talking about adam and eve so now i will suggest each one of us is a fusion of opposites coming together to make a new person all humankind to the people of the world and then to form into tribes of nations and to get to know one another. That should be our task to date. [applause] doctor armstrong. Thank you that you have wrought that talk down deep to places we usually dont go in and brought us up with the true roots. Thank you so much. Please meet her at the signing table nextdoor or perhaps you can ask another question. Thank you for joining us. [applause] [inaudible conversations] talk about the pot calling the kettle black. This is fascinating the media is constantly savaging the president for the language he uses. Calling him a fascist while every despicable name you could hurl at the president of the United States this is one of the findings of the book that all modicum of decency his opponents they call him far worse things they are attempting to do far worse. They have no right. None. You have a right and i have a right these books have a right to pass judgment on Donald Trumps language. The press does not. Jerry you have been around this town for a long time. Did you learn anything a warning quex. This story is startling new in its basics with the critique of the Trump Presidency that we have heard with the previous oped by the same author anonymously but the depth of the concern of this