ABSTRACT
Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe in sacred scriptures, books that claim in some way to be the inspired word of God and truth itself. These scriptures tell stories of the past, often predict events of the future and instruct man on the nature of faith and morality. Beyond the pages of these books, however, lies the reality of the outside world. Today, our understanding of this reality makes powerful claims about what can and cannot have happened in the past, about the nature of the cosmos and about what is fair or moral. What happens when the sacred book and the world seem to contradict one another? Which one convinces us, and how do we maintain belief in scripture or reconcile its message with the outside world when a confl ict arises? This, in a nutshell, is the problem of scripture in the modern world.
