Consecrated Venom: The Serpent and the Tree of Knowledge.
From the publisher's blurb:
"Arguments about the Bible often dispute whether its account is
pure myth or divine revelation. In a stimulating departure from the normal debate, Caryl Johnston interprets the biblical
events as figures or motifs of human knowledge, a way of seeing the Bible which is both novel and revealing.
"The author starts from the dual significance of the serpent, as
tempter and as symbol of wisdom and inspiration. Human awareness changed from the moment that Adam and Eve were tempted by
the serpent and tasted the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. By that act, they became aware of themselves as thinking beings.
The venom of the serpent was to engage human beings in the historical process itself, to make them active in the world through
paying attention to their own thought.
"However, the Bible also reveals to us the serpent of Moses, that
he 'lifted up' to rescue his people. Through thinking we are bound into creation by responsibility and moral presence, and
by engaging with history we confront the greatest lessons that humanity has to learn.
"With striking and fresh insight on every page, Consecrated
Venom explores the very nature of human awareness as imaged in the Bible stories of the Garden of Paradise, Cain
and Abel, Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac, as well as the historical reality of humanity's Covenant with God."
Caryl Johnston was born in 1947 in Birmingham, Alabama. She is the author
of Instead of Eyes (1979) poems on biblical themes, and The Thoroughbred Colt: Identity and Moral Will in a Southern
Family (1999) a study of the impact of slavery, civil rights and religion on one Southern family over five generations.
Ms. Johnston works as an Editorial Assistant at the University of Alabama.
Current Note: The Thoroughbred Colt has been revised and retitled
"Stewards of History." I am currently employed at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.
