0001 Mark S. Smith is a theologian in the Catholic tradition.  He writes a book that is equally weighted between text and endnotes.  The text ends at the center of the bound volume. The endnotes begin at the center of the bound volume.  Smith sends a message.  At the very center, there is a gap.  The gap is between the text and the endnotes.  Does the text write the endnotes?  Or, do the endnotes write the text?

The full title of the book is The Genesis of Good and Evil: The Fall(out) and Original Sin in the Bible.  It is published by Westminster John Knox Press, in Louisville, Kentucky.

0002 A scholarly introduction sets the tone.  This work is not about the Bible.  This book is about scripture.  Nowhere in the Bible, does anyone say the word, “Bible”.  Instead, people in the Bible say, “scripture”, all the time.  So, their scope (or cultural impress at the time) includes Jewish scripture.  Only a retrospective reading, by Christians, years after the gospels are added to the Jewish scripture, allows the use of the word, “Bible”, which comes from the Greek, “biblos”, denoting a collection of manuscripts.  The Bible, at its heart, binds two books, which we now call the Old and New Testaments.

0003 How scholarly is that?