Akma highly recommends Dr. Rowan Williams’ lecture on the interpretation of the Bible. If the endorsement of a non-observant Jew matters—and why should it?—I agree. The lecture is fascinating to me, although also quite foreign. I would love to hear the reaction of some learned and observant Jews.

For example, Dr. Williams says that the Bible was first heard in a community, not read in isolation. It should therefore be read (he says) “not as information, not as just instruction, but as a summons to assemble together as a certain sort of community, one that understands itself as called and created ‘out of nothing’.” I both recognize this as a deep summons and hear it as expressing foundational presuppositions different from mine and my people’s. Although non-Jews often don’t give this full credence, Jews are a people. You are a Jew by birth, not by belief. (It’s more complex than that, but what isn’t?) Thus, the community isn’t created “out of nothing.” And the community with which one hears the holy text is an historical one with which one is supposed to discuss the text. Reading the Torah, at least as I’ve watched my wife and others do it, is about conversing with the tradition of great commentators on it. I think that is a different type of community and different experience than Dr. Williams is discussing. And yet, of course, there are elements of Jewish community that are much like what he describes.

Anyway, I find myself useful provoked by the lecture. [Tags: rowan_williams bible hermeneutics akma judaism torah ]

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