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

Listen to the Intro

00:00

The Lost Art of Scripture summary

Name: The Lost Art of Scripture
Rating: 4.1 (71 reviews)
Author: Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong

Rescuing the Sacred Texts

4.1 (71 ratings)

39 mins

Topics

Culture Anthropology

Table of Contents

The Lost Art of Scripture
Summary of 12 key ideas

Audio & text in the Blinkist app

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.

Want to see all full key ideas from The Lost Art of Scripture?

Key ideas in The Lost Art of Scripture

More knowledge in less time

Read or listen

Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.

Find your next read

Get book lists curated by experts and personalized recommendations.

Shortcasts ^New

We’ve teamed up with podcast creators to bring you key insights from podcasts.

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.

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.

Categories with The Lost Art of Scripture

Religion & Spirituality

Books like The Lost Art of Scripture

What Is the Bible?

Rob Bell

How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything

A One-Year Guide to Reading and Understanding the Entire Bible

The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam

The Women of the Bible Speak

Shannon Bream

The Wisdom of 16 Women and Their Lessons for Today

Western Conceptions of the Orient

Near-Death Experiences, God's Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You

17 min

4.1

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson

A journey into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer

Timeless reflections in defense of Christianity

31 min

4.7

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

Mark Manson

A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

22 min

4.3

The Little Prince

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

A Tale About the Human Condition and the Search for Happiness

19 min

4.9

Happy Mind, Happy Life

Rangan Chatterjee

The New Science of Mental Well-Being

Winning the War in Your Mind

Craig Groeschel

Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

Adam and Eve’s Disobedience and the Battle Between Satan and God

Your War with a New Financial World Order and How to Fight Back

What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know

21 min

4.1

Religion for Atheists

Alain de Botton

A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion

Regicide and Revenge in one of the World's Most Famous Tragedies

How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything

Observations on the Nature, Theory and Strategy of War and Combat

366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature

30 min

4.5

The Name of God is Mercy

Pope Francis

Pope Francis's appeal for peace and hope

Liberty and Equality as an Alternative to Utilitarianism

A Study of Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece

How We Know What’s Really True

A Daring Strategy to Change How We Live, Lead, and Love

The Science of Self-Healing - A Practical Guide

A Flaw in Human Judgment

19 min

4.4

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do

Amy Morin

Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success

How to Boost Your Sex IQ and Own Your Pleasure

20 min

3.9

The Design Thinking Workbook

CJ Meadows

Essential Skills for Creativity and Business Growth

16 min

4.5

When the Body Says No

Gabor Maté

The Cost of Hidden Stress

Lose up to a Pound a Day, Reclaim Energy and Focus, Upgrade Your Life

Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose

19 min

4.4

The School of Greatness

Lewis Howes

A Real-World Guide to Living Bigger, Loving Deeper, and Leaving a Legacy

17 min

4.5

The Psychology of Money

Morgan Housel

Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness

How Europe Went To War in 1914

22 min

4.6

Allen Carr's Easy Way to Quit Emotional Eating

Allen Carr

Set Yourself Free from Binge-Eating and Comfort-Eating

One Boy’s Desire for Reinvention to Climb the Social Ladder

22 min

4.5

My Philosophy for Successful Living

Jim Rohn

Life Lessons From a Master Motivator

Ruminations on the Tenets of Christian Belief

A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

19 min

4.5

The Trial of Henry Kissinger

Christopher Hitchens

The dark side of American foreign policy

The True Teachings of Bruce Lee

A 3,000 Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires

30 min

4.2

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain

Freedom, Civilization, and Prejudice in the Pre-Civil War South

20 min

4.6

8 Secrets to Powerful Manifesting

Mandy Morris

How to Create the Reality of Your Dreams

17 min

4.4

Emotional Intelligence 2.0

Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves

Discover how to Increase your EQ

11 min

4.1

Beat Sugar Addiction Now!

Jacob Teitelbaum and Chrystle Fiedler

The Cutting-Edge Program That Cures Your Type of Sugar Addiction and Puts You on the Road to Feeling Great – and Losing Weight!

17 min

3.7

People ❤️ Blinkist

Sven O.

It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.

Thi Viet Quynh N.

Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.

Jonathan A.

Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.

Renee D.

Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.