Light In The Darkness

Two books to be read in tandem.

First: Walter Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination. Although it is more homiletic than scholarly and Biblical exegesis is conflated with history and sociology, it still manages to provide a foundational understanding of Biblical religion's place within the Ancient Near Eastern Prophetic tradition. And, as homily, it is terrific.



Next: If one wishes to complete the circle rather than remain a Know-Nothing in the dark, Norman O. Brown's The Challenge of Islam: The Prophetic Tradition is the perfect complement to Brueggemann's book. As a scholar of Islam, Brown was an autodidact and makes occasional errors of fact to which autodidacts are prone. Moreover, he was completely dependent upon translations from Arabic and Persian. Nevertheless, being Norman O. Brown, he was also capable of deep insights that scholars trained in the field rarely acquire.



Both books are based upon lectures. Brueggemann re-worked his lecture notes into chapters and the book, originally published in 1978, is now in a second edition. Brown gave his lectures around 1980 but did not re-work his typescripts into book chapters and so the editor (Jerome Neu) essentially published transcripts. Even so, both books are light in the darkness.