As committed a Christian as Blake was, he still receives little or no coinage in conventional religious circles. The reasons are rather obvious: he exploded the pet values and prejudices of the conventional Christian, like the "inerrency" of the Bible, etc. etc.
In MHH Blake promised to write the Book of Hell:
The Book of Urizen shows Urizen (Old Nobodaddy) with the Book of Brass; it doesn't save; it condemns. As Moses (and Blake) said, "would to God that all the Lord's people were prophets", and able to hear God speaking directly in Jesus' tones of love rather than like Urizen heard it.
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I think the Bible itself serves to explode the notion of biblical "inerrancy;" Blake was a pretty illuminated & illuminating guy, but what does he have to do with it?
ReplyDeleteWould you be dropping back to http://kwakerskripturestudy.blogspot.com/
again more often if we stopped trudging through Christian scriptures and threw it open to "whatever deepens our spiritual understanding"? Going back and forth, not just between Jewish & Christian but into whatever we know that sheds light for us?
Hi, Larry,
ReplyDeleteI enjoy your posts--very informative, but I was wondering if you might be able to include snippets of relevant passages in the posts sometimes, rather than just hyperlinking? I'll admit I'm lazy, but it is asking a lot of a non-Blakian to go through the entire book of poetry to see the arc of the Book of Brass!
I'd just love it if you could show me what the angel does to the book, etc.
Thanks,
Jon