Who is the author of The Lost Art of Scripture?

Karen Armstrong is the author of The Lost Art of Scripture.

Religion & Spirituality

The Lost Art of Scripture Book Summary - The Lost Art of Scripture Book explained in key points

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The Lost Art of Scripture summary

Name: The Lost Art of Scripture
Rating: 4.1 (76 reviews)
Author: Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong

Rescuing the Sacred Texts

4.1 (76 ratings)

39 mins

Brief summary

'The Lost Art of Scripture' by Karen Armstrong explores the transformative power of religious texts across time and cultures. It promotes a deeper understanding and respect for different sacred traditions, while advocating for a more pluralistic and inclusive approach to spirituality.

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Culture Anthropology

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The Lost Art of Scripture
Summary of 12 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 12

What’s in it for me? A rollicking ride through the history of religious text.

What is scripture to you? Maybe it’s a thick, musty book you were forced to read as a child. Maybe it’s the word of God. Maybe it’s some fun stories that aren’t particularly relevant to your life. Or maybe it’s something people use to judge others as wrong or inferior.

As you’ll learn in these blinks, in its earliest days, scripture was none of these things. Though it’s always been intended to nurture compassion in the people who experience it, scripture has gone through countless changes across time and across cultures.

These blinks take you on a whirlwind tour of the world’s many scriptural teachings, explaining how they developed, who spread them, and what they’ve been used to accomplish – from carrying cultural memory to sowing religious division.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why ritual is crucial to the interpretation of scripture;
what prompted Confucius to renounce city life and found a school for bureaucrats; and
how the British slapped a simplistic label on a complex, diverse devotional structure.

The Israelites used their experience of oppression and exile to develop the first version of the Bible.

The story of Adam and Eve isn’t about a fruit or a snake. Nor is it about being cast out of paradise. It’s about economics.

Here’s why: in ancient Mesopotamia, around five thousand years ago, the agrarian economic system ruled. In this system, an elite class appropriated up to two-thirds of peasants’ crops, forcing them into serfdom. Life was incredibly hard for serfs, so they developed the Adam and Eve narrative to explain their suffering. They chalked up their sorry state to original sin rather than to ongoing economic oppression by elites.

Two thousand years later – so, around three thousand years ago – an economic crisis in Mesopotamian city-states forced Israelite peasants into exile in the desert. There, they continued to develop their founding myths – and they did it in a way that would ultimately change the world.

The key message here is: The Israelites used their experience of oppression and exile to develop the first version of the Bible.

When the Israelite peasants fled into the desert, they felt sure they would die. When they didn’t, the Israelites attributed their success – and the collapse of the city-states that had exploited them – to the just and empathetic god Yahweh. In honor of this god, they decided that their society would be just and egalitarian, too – the exact opposite of the city-states they’d fled. In founding a society based on social justice, the Israelites reversed the prevailing political order of the age.

But as centuries passed and the Israelites’ power grew, their society began to lose touch with its founding principles. Its political structure veered away from egalitarianism. New hierarchies were established and reinforced by formal religious education. The Israelites’ commitment to social justice began to erode.

Finally, around 600 BCE, the king of a neighboring empire, Babylon, razed the Israelites’ kingdom to the ground, including their holy temples. What’s more, he forced them into exile, to live under his watchful eye in Babylon. In exile, the Israelites used their cultural memory of previous exile – the terrifying period in the desert during which they first started worshipping Yahweh – to resist the extinction of their culture.

But you need more than memory to preserve culture; you also need tools. For Israelite elites in Mesopotamia, one of the most effective tools was memorizing texts – not by reading them, but by singing, chanting, or speaking them. The most gifted students internalized religious texts so thoroughly that they could select, from the archive of their mind, the passages that worked best for the current moment, like a jazz musician improvising with standards.

They transformed the rituals and stories of their lost temples, such as the fall of Adam and Eve, into a new scripture. This would become the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

The Aryans’ scripture reflected their hard-boiled worldview – but also offered release through ritual.

Meanwhile, around 1500 BCE, nomads from the Caucasus called Aryans were getting fed up with herding cattle. They wanted to settle down, and they picked the rich Punjab region, in modern-day Pakistan, as their new home. This was very bad news for the people who already lived there. The former nomads were tough customers – hard-drinking ruffians who lived by looting. Peasants were their favorite prey.

But there was also a spiritual element to their culture. Through visions, Aryan seers called rishis transmitted the hymns of their ancient gods.

The first Chinese scripture emerged to help rulers govern ethically.

Let’s hop over to China. Around three thousand years ago, the warlike Zhou clan conquered China’s first dynasty, the Shang. The Zhou had a novel belief system; to them, the cosmos consisted of complementary yet opposing forces. The world balanced in the middle, between these forces, and its success depended on a harmonious relationship between the two.

To justify overthrowing the Shang, the Zhou claimed they had the Mandate of Heaven. The Shang, they said, displeased heaven with their corruption and immorality, upsetting the cosmic balance. This was the first time ethics appeared in Chinese religion. From then on, politics and religion would be closely entwined.

Ancient scripture helped people all over the world forge a communal identity from chaos.

How would you deal with terrifying, unpredictable political upheaval? If you answered “run away,” well, you’re not alone. During the Warring States period in China, many people just threw in the towel and retired from public life. A Chinese bureaucrat named Confucius, however, took the opposite approach. He founded an influential academy for princes – a place where they could learn to implement the Mandate of Heaven and run the state ethically.

Confucius’s teachings, compiled in a scripture called the Analects, were meant to inspire kindness and compassion, transcendence of the ego, and devotion to rituals. Service to the community began in one’s own family, he taught, and expanded to include the whole world.

People adopted scripture to fit their needs in a changing world.

Siddatta Gotama, a young Indian aristocrat you know as the Buddha, had always been a devout adherent to the religion that, in English, we now call Hinduism. He was especially gifted in the practice of yoga, and he eventually developed a new style of yoga practice, centered around directing love at every living thing. Through this practice, he achieved enlightenment, or nirvana: liberation from endless karmic rebirth. This is what allowed him to become the Buddha we know today.

What did that mean for his followers? It was actually incredibly relaxing. Just because people believed in the potential for enlightenment didn’t mean they didn’t get sick or sad. But the realization that the cosmic cycle could be arrested gave them a sense of inner calm. That calm enabled Buddhists to live serenely with the pain and discomfort brought on by life’s changes.

Jesus’s message of salvation brought new hope to the ancient Near East.

The final destruction of the temples in Jerusalem had two major developments. First, it led to the development of rabbinic Judaism. A rabbinical academy was established, and scribes began revising the new scripture, the Torah, to be more relevant to people in their radically altered world. Rabbis, drawn from the Israelite elite, engaged in spirited, ongoing reinterpretation of old stories in the scripture.

The other development was the growing popularity of a barefoot peasant from the town of Nazareth. The scriptures produced by his followers announced a new testament, or contract, between God and humanity. The peasant, of course, was Jesus.

Islam brought an inclusive new outlook on harmonious communal existence.

Jesus wasn’t the last prophet to rock the Middle East. In 610, a merchant called Mohammed fell into a trance in a mountain cave outside of Mecca. He came back to consciousness to find the first words of a new Arabic scripture pouring from his lips.

Mohammed was seriously anxious about the state of the world. Upset with the ruthless competition of the market economy in Arabian city-states, he wanted to return to a bygone communal way of living. Allah, the god who had visited him in the cave, was not a distant god. Instead, he commanded his followers to “come near” so he could guide them. At the end of every recitation, supplicants were instructed to touch their heads to the ground, or surrender the individual ego in favor of communal religious experience. In Arabic, Islam means “surrender.”

As the world continued to change rapidly, scholars reinterpreted existing scripture to explain why.

The year 661 was pretty eventful for Muawiyyah, the son of one of Mohammed’s rivals. First, he murdered Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, who some viewed as his rightful heir. Ali’s followers became known as the Shia, or “Partisans.”

Then, Muawiyyah founded the Umayyad empire, with a capital in Damascus. But that’s where his plan ended.

Mysticism reverberated throughout the world – except in Christian Europe.

Mysticism, like egalitarianism, was trending everywhere – everywhere, that is, except the Christian world.

In Islam, Sufism was a reaction to the dogmatic view that only certain theologians, descended directly from Mohammed, could interpret the Quran. Sufis had an earthier, more intuitive relationship with their faith. They developed meditation practices, involving chanting and specific body alignment, to understand how Mohammed may have been feeling when Allah spoke to him.

The Protestant Reformation changed Christians’ relationship to scripture forever.

The sixteenth century was a wild time in Europe. Exciting changes were coming in thick and fast, in the form of geographic and technological discoveries. But there was also new peril, as the Black Death ravaged the continent.

The new rhythms of life left many disoriented. Then German professor Martin Luther had a vision. In 1517, he nailed a sheet of paper bearing 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and changed Christendom forever. One thesis stated that the only thing Christians need to commune with God is scripture – not the Church.

Evidence-based reasoning affected global faith traditions in various ways.

If you’re wondering why people continued bothering with religion when it was making things in Europe so messy, well, you raise a good question. The first European atheists began appearing in the sixteenth century. They were Marranos, descendents of Spanish Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition. Barred from their Jewish traditions, and only paying lip service to Christian ones, they became alienated from the ritual aspect of religion. This made it a lot harder to sustain the myth.

Scientists and philosophers hadn’t given up on God. But they struggled to find evidence for His existence in scripture. Europeans were now using empirical evidence to make revolutionary advancements in science and technology. Evidence alone proved if something was “true.” That meant, if something couldn’t be observed, it was considered to be false.

Modern reinterpretations of scripture could revive our sense of empathetic compassion.

Scripture is a living, breathing art form, meant to inspire communion and compassion. It was never meant to be taken literally. But for a new breed of religious fundamentalists, scripture was all they had. What’s more, because fundamentalist communities spring up in response to a perceived crisis, they experience religion as a battle. When they are challenged, they perceive it as attack and cling all the more tightly to their literal interpretations of scripture.

In America, Protestant Evangelism began attracting followers in the mid-nineteenth century. Its adherents subscribed to everything Enlightenment philosophers abhorred: dreams, signs, miracles, and ecstatic physicality, all based on a literal interpretation of scripture. It’s now the most popular religion in the US.

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What is The Lost Art of Scripture about?

The Lost Art of Scripture (2019) traces five thousand years of religious tradition. It examines the common purpose and motivations of all scriptural revolutions, how literal readings of scripture birthed violent movements of fundamentalism, and how we can use scripture to address the political and intellectual concerns of today.

The Lost Art of Scripture Review

The Lost Art of Scripture (2019) by Karen Armstrong is a profound exploration of the history, interpretation, and significance of religious scriptures. Here's why this book is worth your time:

It provides a fascinating analysis of how scriptures have been interpreted and understood throughout history, shedding light on their timeless relevance.
By examining different religious traditions and their scriptures, Armstrong offers a comprehensive perspective that promotes religious tolerance and understanding.
The book challenges conventional ideas about religious texts, inviting readers to think critically and re-evaluate their own beliefs and assumptions.

Who should read The Lost Art of Scripture?

Alternative-history buffs
Those who have questions about religion but are too afraid to ask
Anyone who loves a rollicking story

About the Author

Karen Armstrong is the author of dozens of books on comparative religion. A former nun who now subscribes to a more mystical version of Christianity, she has received dozens of awards and honorary degrees from institutions such as McGill University and the University of Saint Andrews.

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