Creation: The Biblical Vision for the Environment: A Biblical Vision for the Environment Hardcover – 1 Nov. 2009

The product came on time. As any Margaret Barker book, it is excellant and thought provoking. I can heartily recommend it and hope more buy it.

The Bible is a strange and eclectic collation of writings. Its status, however, as a Book apart, the inspired work of our maker, leads commentators to bend over backwards in order to see it as a unity. The Book of Joshua, for example, depicts a genocidal tribal war God; in the Gospels, the same God, incarnate now, preaches universal love and peace.Many benign institutions have been formed, however, as a result of the Bible's teachings. Many churches are patrons of education, the arts and charities. Christianity has been the motivating ideology for many political reform movements. Abolition of slavery and apartheid were achieved, in part, through the efforts of Christian advocates. The Bible, however, whatever movement takes it to its heart, has to be read selectively, or the reader will drown in a sea of contradictions.The Bible has been enlisted in support of a whole range of ideologies. For centuries, European monarchs saw themselves as the heirs of Solomon, ruling by Divine Right. The slaves in the United States, judging by the musical legacy, drew strength from the stories about the Hebrew flight from Egypt and the later release from Babylon. The slave owners, however, could enlist the support of St. Paul to justify the institution.The 19th century saw a whole range of Christian communists. Christian Socialism continues to this day as an organised movement. Margaret Barker is, amongst other things, a Methodist lay preacher. She is also a renowned Biblical scholar. I read also that her preaching work has gone hand in hand with the establishment of a refuge for battered wives. Not surprisingly, she is anxious to see the Bible as a book both relevant and of supreme importance.In 'Creation: The Biblical Vision for the Environment', God is no longer a communist, and certainly not the advocate of absolute monarchy. He is become a Green. To this end, the author is not only extremely selective of supporting texts; much has to be retranslated in order to recapture what she claims is the original and true meaning. Further, other, extra Biblical writings, from Qumran, Nag Hammadi and other traditions, are woven in with the standard selection of Bible books.The 'green' continuity is provided by God's original covenant with Adam, and reinforced via every man/God agreement thereafter. Cosmic harmony, reflected in sacred, astrologically based numerology, is the key to man's mission on earth. Christianity is the original 'Gaia hypothesis' centuries before James Lovelock. The priests of the Old Temple knew this, but with the return from Babylon and a new, Persian sponsored Temple, the old understanding was lost. Christ came to bring it back and John the revelator revealed all....This reviewer was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. For them God commanded his followers to remain aloof from the Satanic world and await the Kingdom of God. Biblical quotes were massed in support of this negative, life denying notion. At least Margaret Barker advocates engagement with the world's problems, for all that her snippets of 'Green' propaganda add little to the current issues. This book may reassure some Christians that their holy book is highly relevant.It is certainly an illustration of the ingenuity employed down the ages to enlist the Bible in one's own cause.