I confess that I am more than sympathetic to this shocking sense of discovery, perhaps because I am a historian of religions, and this is how revelation has long worked—as a more or less passive receiving, as a showing or gift that elicits awe, indeed a sense of wonder so great that it often ends up transforming the course of human history. We can question the content of that revelation (I certainly do) and explore its cultural precedents and obvious shaping (I certainly do), but I do not see how we can question the passivity of the revelation itself or the cultural and historical effects that
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