Getting things across …

… Untranslatable or Unrelatable? | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lill.)

… as I surveyed Alter’s actual demonstrations, his persuasiveness dimmed. I don’t think the fault is his. My imagination and my memory joined in making me wonder whether American civilization right now actually could foster anything in the spirit of the original Bible. We are utterly unlike defeated Judah under the weird, saving sponsorship of the Persians, and even more unlike the early Christians in the shadow—whether sheltering or threatening—of the Roman monolith. We are an absurdly successful, materialistic, late-imperial society, with bright, pixelated luxuries of individual autonomy and self-esteem. How could we think the way the Bible does, or aim where it aims? In particular, what would motivate us to throw ourselves into the arms of an immense Otherness, an act at the heart of both monotheism and supreme artistic creation?