BIBLE DREAMS
The Spiritual Quest
by

Seymour Rossel
 

Foreword by
Eugene J. Fisher

Associate Director,
Secretariat for Ecumenical
and Interreligious Relations
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Now this is a daring vision. Most biblical scholars employ a third-person, analytical methodology that is quite sound for its intended goal of determining a given text's original meaning within its historical context. Rabbi Rossel's grasp of modern biblical scholarship is quite solid, and he employs it here to good use. Solid, too, is his grasp of modern psychological theory, which he also employs to useful effect. But he stops with neither of these quite laudable scientific methodologies. These cognitive results are interwoven, drawn together, challenged, and finally transcended by engagement with the ancient, medieval, and modern insights of the masters of spirituality of a variety of religious traditions, though, for obvious reasons, he relies most heavily on Jewish and Christian tradition for it is their comments, from age to age, that have kept alive the dialogue between the people of God and God's book, the Bible.

In his innovative approach, Rossel is ironically at the same time deeply traditional, in the best sense of that term. Jews and Christians, mining the "inexhaustible riches" of the Hebrew Scriptures (to use the apt phrase of the Second Vatican Council) have from age to age affirmed that the sacred texts can have multiple meanings, ranging from the literal to the allegorical to the mystical. The "literal" (or, in Hebrew, the peshat) meaning, of course, is the historical- critical methodology mentioned above. The other possible meanings (what the rabbis would call the derash or "sought out") in one way or another apply the text to the life of the contemporary reader, what, in essence a good preacher does in one way and a good theologian does in another.

Rossel's unique approach, combining traditional insights and contemporary science, thus has no precise precedent in either of our traditions, rich as they are, or modern scientific biblical scholarship. Yet it has paradoxically millennia of Jewish and Christian wisdom behind it. The Bible is always best read as "practical theology," God's way of telling us how to live the meaning of our lives, without quite telling us how. The name Israel means, in its root, "one who wrestles with God." Rossel's wrestling will not tell the reader exactly how to live their lives either. But he does show a way for us, a new path that can enlighten as it challenges us to think, and to pray, in new ways, to "wrestle" with what comes to us when we rest from all cares and have only our inner selves, the small, still voice within, to listen to.

I must admit that I, like many who will pick up this book and wonder whether it is worth purchasing, began with a bit of skepticism. But this is not "grocery store spirituality" or "new age mysticism" (whatever, indeed, they are). This is the real stuff. Here, the Bible itself speaks to each of us in a way most readers will have never been aware it could address our deeper concerns, anxieties, and hopes -- the deeper fears and visions that we admit to ourselves only in our dreams, when we sleep and lay ourselves open to the quiet whisperings of the Spirit of God who dwells in our hearts.

     -- Eugene J. Fisher, Associate Director
        Secretariat for Ecumenical and
              Interreligious Relations
        U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops