A Word on Words; 3013; Bruce Feiler

oh i'm just you know once again welcome to word on words our guest bruce feiler welcome to you as to the studio to talk to you about walking the bible in a new book the journey island through the five books of moses you may know the journey before you went to japan for learning to bow again and as fuel for bringing out loud and now you're off to the middle east and the world traveler i stumbled early on in my life and this way of living which is sort of going out and joining a particular world and then coming back and writing about it and i came of age in the immediate discount airfare and that somehow lied about how i came to learn best and this in the nineteen nineties i decided that i was this writer i had the poem written a number of books and i wanted to re read the bible i hadn't read it since i was a kid which meant as a practical matter that i haven't really read it set of the bible of my shelf at that about my bed where probably sat untouched for two years down in boston making me feel guilty or then in the summer of ninety seven the socially in nashville at the time

our i decide to go to work and i just finished reading aloud about my book about country music and as a reward to myself i went to the middle east to visit an old friend and his friend was getting a toy some high school kids and took us to this problem i'm overlooking the city and he said over there is haha ma controversial neighborhood and over there is the rock or a grammar to sacrifice isaac and it just had like as bolton says a bit of a likely mean these are actual places you can touch and visit and feel and the crazy way i live my life i thought as an idea what if i travel along the route and read the bible on the way and the essence of that moment for me was how i can take the bible this body men of old fashioned knowledge and approach it like these other roles like essentially join it it's almost like it's the circus of that doesn't sound strange become a part of it and try to experience it and that would be my way of trying to essentially re read the bible and well you have re read it and you have made it possible for us all

to un to get a grasp on what's missing and what's reality there is controversy and always has been and as long as there is this universe there will be controversy about whether places we now designated as sites of events were indeed the places those events took place if indeed in some would say really ever took place how much skepticism that you take with you i think when i got into it i was actually consumed with this particular question that the actual rock the actual body of water and the actual mountain man that because i'm at the time it was a much more rational person and i kept saying this is not about me and my daughter mia my spirituality it's about me in the bible so i went into it with that experience it didn't take me long to realize that that was sort of in my part at least self protective falling i remember in the earliest good days we were driving out i went to this archeologist

article on the war and yet the prince of a man well known nine inaugural address there's as a distinguished archaeologists and very call for just the right spirit and it was this big sort of teddy bear of a man then we were driving out in eastern turkey and the kurdish wars on our way to arm good to visit the spot where noah's ark may have landed him and he was in the back page numbers it has gps device anytime in the shoulder but today's and it was dry when it was just their tanks in the red mosque and stuff he said they're an about fifty miles ahead soaring out of the ground was this enormous abandon volcano are with a snow capped peak on the top and that is not our app and it was so much taller to tell us now to the middle east that that would be the second tallest mountain in europe and for me was this powerful moment the panel there may not have been will there ma'am and i've been a flood or part one hour but there wasn't a flood and an hour and that was art it surely would've come to rest on this mountain because this would've been the first a body of land to emerge out of the water and i think that

what i took away from that moment so many moments like it later is that the people who were gatherings the stories had intimate knowledge of the landscape of the geography of the terrain and they were clearly trying to connect their stories to real places and essentially over time i became less interested in this issue of the actual rock and watched it in the meaning and the what these are the lessons that the stories were are containing it the principal us in this case is that these are real events that took place in real places and affect us and in a real way when did you come to the conclusion and how early on and how much how much of the aura of reducing the region and walking in the footsteps of both of the people the bible own including erin joseph age of laughter

how much of the aura of facts that judgment when you're when you are getting information and research for a book like this a few days after leaving now that while we then and i'm going to a small town on the border of ran an eye on the sky and devout noah's ark in a very colorful guy in an integrated counter we were driving south and contribute toward iran which is the first place god speaks to abraham and then from the place where he says go forth and we would drive on this road so strains in their purpose and it was just dust and straight and when i was driving and i felt this incredible connection to the slant the dominance jug band was moving car take off all my clothes and roll around naked on the ground say that in the book that and the thing is what i'm sitting as it was it was so unexpected that's not what i was trying to do but then when you go back and open your bible he read the story of the garden of eden the talks about adam and adam comes from the paperwork and drama which means soil

and suddenly that turn how many times have we all heard it from dust to dust from ashes to ashes from the attack on this new ipod the bible seems to say that we come from these places and we carry these places around within us and so what happened to me was that i realized very early that the experience i was about to have was different and experienced expected that so i had been two questions one what was i feeling about to slam into why did i think that i can go on his journey and it wouldn't be impersonal and spiritual yet so i had to realize wow well there i am of this generation that did that and to go in that in the books of took on that direction which i resisted which i thought which i try not to do it which i felt uncomfortable doing and sure enough the people in this book thats for the ride he's with you he's accompanied you in some ways is he's giving isn't direction the

arrival in spirit opera is an archaeologist is in his fifties and arden he had fifteen years that is looking for the sinai he was the chief archaeologist the region and we have to understand first of all as a thing to talk about in the book of people tried to talk me out of this that most the spaces aren't saved many of them are in war zones there's no archaeological evidence that any these events ever took place and that really before i tell my mother that this is really the first person i met the kids who came to meet me and he was he's the size of say ms teddy bear of a man and this white scarf that made him look like lawrence halfway out of oxford arabia me around the corner and i'm i tell them i want to do and he said to me he was interested and i said have people come out of my mind he said was the driver by its outcome of fun as i think died somehow i knew you wouldn't by the way would you come along he did not wish we had known each other for fifteen minutes and he had agreed to go what kind of being

retirement five countries for war zones ten thousand miles are i think for ham in it to the way he talks about it now is sort of watching the sort of inhabit these stories and he had seen a lot of people do this and i think for him he was what these archaeologists who at times would frankly retreat behind the mask of science and i think for him because our relationship ends of being as you as you know the sort of sense of them father son bonding there that the experience that night i gather i've had and the reason i asked a question about his reaction and yours is because you come from totally different and the and you had read the bible and were reading the bible but on the other hand the rings to have the knowledge or didn't haven't i'm standing in half and maybe

even save cynicism and i think anna's eyes scientists often do and i brought to a certain naivete an app and a freshness i think right now in nashville and loses it would decide it was like little it doesn't return to the national about that so that's what that's mostly where the ideas came from my window both staples the ardent i think the point here is i think what you were you really driving that is that from every that same thing to me about the bible is its ability to continually reinvent itself for every generation and for every new reader so that you would hear a collective experience reading at me with my experience reading and everybody reads it and takes a different thing out of it and that's what's so striking its ability to be perpetually now and two hundred years ago it in under the bible was

unchallenged it was the divine word everybody bought in the last two hundred years this book has experienced the most concentrated attack academic attack of anything ever written in history archaeologist historians botanists linguist you name it and the bible has survived time and time again it doesn't mean that everything it's true but it means that its nuances are more active on display and its power more intact that i think is the powerful lesson is it is more alive today not because it hasn't been challenge but because it has been challenged and it has survived and therefore its ability to be relevant every person is what really shines through for those of you just joining us were talking with bruce feiler about his new book are walking with about walking about a journey by land through the five books of moses tracking roses is and isn't homeless task that they go and how did just a cap a pan and just know that you know how much how much time you had to

commit to this to this jury i didn't open up the iconic no nothing i didn't know what i was gonna do i don't know how long it was going to take me and i think one of the things we lose a people tried to talk me out of it is cause they solved various side tracks and it could lead me down essentially what happened was after that initial experience recommended i went back to new york wide them from nashville and i did my homework as penny you're giving myself a self taught master's degree in its revival and writing hundreds of vultures then i went back and there was the year of the travel now we didn't do a continually we did it in chunks we would go out a couple weeks we come back we go out for a month an and originally we did that the practical reason to schedule my schedule the time of year when you can go it ended up having an emotional benefit as the experience had had time to reflect on what was happening to me to process or do you self aware and then there was this year of writing but the the answer is we made a series

of decisions very early on for example not to concentrate on every story the story jacob a nice are wrestling and others wrote it's a great story but it can't be enhanced by being in a place so crossing the red sea salt and m aura of mount ararat not me but we concentrate on stories they could be enhanced by being a place and in and they would go to the places and the great surprise mean there is now in this book then there's the book on the bestseller clothes custom what we're going to do when we got there we didn't really know and the faster things with all the people that we met who were there who were experiencing the book that as a real entity that the year of the monkey in st catharines monster living next to the burning bush or that the people we met this guy crossing the red sea bass what was so surprising was all the people who were living their lives at as if they were in daily contact with the characters before you wrote it did you know you were going to rely on local a quote billboard abraham goforth amazing sinead so

perfectly sense that what follows because you did go up and he did go forth i will tell you a true story of the morning the first morning that we started in turkey and i woke up and i use and the number of you know you hear that cry from the head from the article to prayer two hours before you want to hear is that and i woke up and i we were going to be tightening euphrates river to see sunrise because it raises some procedure in genesis and i had just that that image goforth popped into my mind and i thought go forth from the land of your family to the land know i will show you and i will make you a great mission and your distance would be his nemesis the stars and i what struck me at that moment which have never struck me before was who was this voice why was he doing this and i was like why am i doing this we would like to aqim wouldn't i've barely met in a place that is very strange and what am i doing and it struck me and it was i think in a lot of ways the first

indication that having the experience would lead to insider forward to a different way of viewing the story that's why he opens it seems a radical that you can learn something about the stories by being in the places that's what it's not taught that way and characters and iran or at the university and i was like how you know what he's doing and i did an interview a look at the successful in hip the bustle of the main anybody who has any sense oh the meaning of september eleventh and tragic terrorist attack has done is gone to want to get your book and delve into it for a sense of love and the meaning of this new reviews and just

been laudatory and offices don't like all reviews all the time but i wouldn't i would have to say that if i'd been asked if the fellow who wrote of dreaming and learning should take a listen as what he doesn't know of that you know the transition is a major player in the last row is one thing but japan to nashville to jerusalem and cairo too much too much unless they're needed most of the students some solo show struggle with but you know at the time and nobody i'm not surprised to do that but i would say the fact that you pulled off

so well so affectively it has such a reach a user of all of all praise the critics have given one that that's very kind of you and you're you're heading toward the one thing which i can answer which is really why did i didn't like where did the idea come from where did occupying the story this was a struggle that i mentioned not a writer in particular has struggled with the actual process most of my writing life and i really struggled with this one and i think it's i felt it a lot more deeply there were those months of me in the fetal position under my desk could actually do it i get my mind around it i think that the one thing i guess i can say about this is the life i was in retrospect i was very fortunate on the one hand i was young enough to throw my life for my life into the disruption is their people that this put it on the other hand i was experienced i'd done four books of the time so i could keep of keep that in my head but in

terms of this kind of reaction from either the reaction as you say since september eleventh and i find it incredibly moving and i'm done it long enough to know how rare it is to feel very privileged that still to this day i just feel privileged have been a part of it was my ticket to the work i did the travel i was under my desk as much money as i still feel privileged i feel like it is in bigger thing to me and i just happened to stumble into it well you mentioned earlier on the people you've gone and cordial and indeed you were i mean it's one thing from where joseph flee egypt it's one thing for a band to reach that you point out that in the book you say that from us from jerusalem cairo was among the walking two weeks by camel a day by bus now or by air now that the moses forty

years to get going in the wrong face and a napoleon ever made would you also advocate but you know the point i'm making here is that it's a different one hour live here today given the tension and hostility in that are the world each time there's another moment you're talking about going to jordan and you say we are near peace now peace is seems to be at hand i'm slightly paraphrasing that but september eleventh changes all that changes everything whenever our country and egypt have in common and barak has been chosen friendship love for us there was still thousands dancing in the streets of cairo are celebrating the attacks on new york and washington and so on and so there is tension there and

then there is conflict conflict between two cultures there are jewish and mosul and if you three coaches if you put general which you must have in that region assassinated by the there are references to the weather gods mahmoud witnesses is thought to war or three sides of the street you get you have a conversation with mahmoud about the quran and he gave a little double talk about the game close and i thought getting to the heart of what's the end of the ambiguities that they just on the muslims are we were in jordan i went to petra and we just got a

large scale and we were in this attempt three part time and in fact the tent the bedouin tents today are structured exactly like a dance of the bible there's a guest section there's a middle section there's a female section there's a story much earlier in the bible were the messages come down and visit a lamb on their way to sodomy gomorrah and they promise abraham that they will give him a son and sarah laughs it's a great moment a bible and now you can understand why because the messengers would have been with abraham and the guest section that would've been the mail section and stare out not be welcome in the guest section with another here in the women's section such as listing on the corner and she laughs and you can understand that when you stay in these times when the guest section and we're talking about moses because moses is a big figure in the crowd of course and he's a big figure in the bible at this point and the moment where he he strikes a rock rather than speaking to the rock god says speed rocket more will come out he strikes the rocket it is the moment that god punishes him and says that you cannot now go and bomb site you have to die in the desert great sadness and so we were discussing it and they either grants

out and we had a bible sound there was a fire or a little play a little tiny tweak it was a moment of great emotion i thought oh my god this is what i came for you we are muslims jews christians sitting around reading the bible the grand we can all get along can't wait but the castle hard and i was like so what is the punishment when it's in the klan because in the bible does as the punishment not like we're talking about a michael you get it in the pot he didn't understand it and we pressed and i realized that the punishment part of it is not in the cramped the fact that he can't enter the promised land is not in the grand because the land equation has been removed from the grant the promised land is not qualified and i just had this moment it was a sickening moment i thought oh my gosh we are the people of the book but if we are a different books where different people the point i think here is progress to september eleventh that the bible was about the nexus of the it's about the god and the land and the people that that is the essential person i wanted to be a great nation on this land the middle east is all about this coat that

this nexus of religion and politics and land that's with about three thousand years before the bible three thousand years since the bible now i think what's happened is that now middle eastern sprawl has come to america but that nexus has finally touched us that what's so powerful about september eleventh is politics and religion in our land suddenly our land has always involved we were the new promise land that's why america was founded will suddenly now the new promise land pakistan caught up with the old promised land and our we feel the violation of our land being touched and i think one of the ripples it's going to america right now is this feeling of oh my gosh now politics and which involves our land it is the oldest story in time and now this place a sacred place a special place as been caught up in this old maps you touch just briefly on the conflict between the core and the bible abraham kill was going to

kill i think abraham was an acknowledgement of the car and says it's one of the bible says we make of that conflict and the uae when you get right down to it if it makes you wonder was the true story and this is a conflict here is there conflict somewhere else i mean the reason they ram on both cultures the i'm going to i'm a break protocol here in civil and amiri said to you asked me is my last question when i was working on next and i'm not going to answer questions and before you ask it because i i had this i'm going to keep going on it gee i always wanted to keep going to the rest of the bible and the new testament but in the wake of what's happened in the last month i decided to put the project off and spend the next year going around the country and going on the world and talking to people about a gram and to write a book about abraham as both this unifying and this divisive

figure among jews and christians and muslims and and it's because of exactly what you just said that that is the moment abraham is the father of judaism he is the christians then we attach themselves to have the father of christianity and the same thing muslims chose to attach and various they've all said he is our father at the same time because of the split of the sun's isaac goes on to be the head of head of the year the year the covenant with god and paul is the one who first said i wait a minute however it's jesus it was the real son of abraham and muslim said you know we choose to align ourselves with a smile i think the point is that the division is built in to the story but also the unity is built in to the story in the bible is very clear that both ishmael and isaac will be great missions that have to do that i was a total control itself as you can remember scenes and dialogue and conversations

with it wanted to kill ishmael is no could've been killed by he saw was killed that you saw table was gilbert as odd so he chooses to keep him in the family and i think that the point is that there is this blood connection that's the reason that there's a blood feud but that's also the reason i think that we all are still and i still feel a somewhat affinity with one another what a great night we've been talking with bruce feiler about his new book walking the bible was on a flight you know being here or thank all of you for joining us and i thank you for watching warlords on johnson and dollar keep reading