Eats with Sinners

This comes from a book I am currently reading by Bruce Feiler, a Jewish historian, archeologist, and author entitled, Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses…

The conservation had the same effortless intimacy I had experienced at so many times, and in so many places, along my trip. It was as if the Bible were its own kind of lingua franca that opened up instant lines of communication among people who had little in common but shared interest in the text. Considering that the international language of travel has changed so frequently in the last 2,500 years – Greek, Latin, French, English, American English – and that the stories of the Bible have not changed at all, one could argue that for much of the Western world, those stories form a collective language. Certainly in the Middle East today, with so much suspicion and hostility, a common interest in the Bible can be an immediate source of kinship, much stronger than nationality, denomination, age, or wealth. This is the power of pilgrimage: a willingness to place the spiritual lessons of the past over the political divisions of the present, a desire to connect to a place not for its food, art, golf courses, or even beauty, but for its meaning.

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