How can anyone hear the stories of the Old Testament and not be moved?
I honestly believe that Machiavelli’s case was much like Bacon, Newton, Darwin and Descartes (much as I dislike Darwin and Descartes): his religion was sincere. He chose Moses.
The reason Kierkegaard didn’t understand Abraham was… He didn’t listen for God. Had no interest. Like my high scool teachers who gave us a version of the Illiad which had all the Gods removed. It was still beautiful, no doubt. Read a lot like JRR Tolkien’s battle scenes. But… Kierkegaard was also beautiful, but…
Anyway. Who indeed cannot be moved? Women maybe. We cannot ask women to bear that level of intelligence and awareness AND worship God. Well, some Gods…
And people who have only hate for themselves, God’s creation. How can they but hate God, but feel cold fear in reading those pages, in hearing those stories? The stories of the destruction of the enemies of God’s people are stories of them.
The Old Testament even gives us the riddle and paradox of Solomon, held as the best man ever, and went rather FROM God to heathenry than the opposite. And still the most beloved of the Old Testament. Even gives us such a thing as that.
Our own little secret. He may be Solomon, but he’s OUR Solomon.
What scope… What scope of the world the Old Testament gives us… The Illiad gives great scope, in suggesting such a Great Thing as Troy as only the very edges of the world outside. But the Old Testament rather encompasses it, effortlessly. No man who has read the Old Testament can look upon the world and ever feel they have stepped out, that it is bigger than they imagined, that it left things unaccounted for. For a man of the Old Testament needs no map. What can speak louder than the dust? How can anything have been more holy than making the dust speak with a brook, which sprung from a rock?
But seriously, how can anyone?