Lives of Unforgetting

Book excerpt: The ancient Greek word for "truth" means unconcealing or unforgetting. Yet today many ideas and stories that were once critical to how early Christians understood, practiced, and defended their faith often remain "hidden in plain sight" in our Bibles. These ideas are concealed from us by the distance between languages, between eras, and between cultures-yet they are so worth unconcealing and unforgetting. In this book, discover: The forgotten women who co-founded Christianity Whether the first-century church thought there was a hell What happens when you realize that in Greek, faith is a verb Why gender in the Bible is more complicated than we think Which concepts our modern tradition takes for granted that would have been alien to the original readers (like homophobia) We have also forgotten that to read the Bible is to receive an invitation to adventure-to encounter the impossible, to move mountains, to walk on water. Instead, we have been taught to read the Bible tamely, to make no choices, to risk no questioning of our tradition. What would happen if we took the adventure? If we readers walked out into the wilderness toward God, leaving home far behind? If we stepped out of the boat of our received tradition, out onto the crashing waves? Let's find out.