The Good Book Mar12

The Good Book

The Good Book Bible references are everywhere, giving the lie to the popular notion (especially amongst our younger readers) that the Good Book is irrelevant. Bruce Springsteen’s song Adam Raised a Cain makes references to the first man and his son Cain, the first murderer; Dostoyevsky mentions Elias from the book of Luke Chapter 1, verse 17 in his The Brothers Karamazov: ‘and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah/ to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children/ and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just/ to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” Who’s Luke anyway? I hear you ask. He is, according to Bible scholar David Pawson, “the best loved but the least well known of all the four Gospels.” The book of Luke contains the stories of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son (The Rollings Stones have a song called Prodigal Son). And while other books such as Matthew talk about the Disciples being likened to salt, Luke elaborates on the metaphor. Luke also contains the only story about Jesus’ first 30 years. Steven Pinker, renowned Harvard academic and author writes in The Better Angels of our Nature (reviewed elsewhere on this website) that the Old Testament is proof that the world has got less violent. The book Sex and Punishment by Eric Berkowitz mentions the book of Leviticus and how in it the Jews outline their laws including their ban on homosexuality because it doesn’t promote the production of more Hebrews. Leviticus is also where you’ll find Sodom and Gomorrah (Gomorrah is a movie too, while The Pogues have an album called Rum, Sodomy and the Lash). Iron Maiden have a song called Revelations inspired by the Book of Revelation,...