The divine quality of the Bible is not on display, it is not
apparent to an inane, fatuous mind; just as the divine in
the universe is not obvious to the debaucher. When we
turn to the Bible with an empty spirit, moved by intellectual
vanity, striving to show our superiority to the text; or as
barren souls who go sight-seeing to the words of the
prophets, we discover the shells but miss the core. It is
easier to enjoy beauty than to sense the holy. To be able to
encounter the spirit within the words, we must learn to
crave for an affinity with the pathos of God.
To sense the presence of God in the Bible, one must
learn to be present to God in the Bible. Presence is not a
concept, but a situation. To understand love it is not
enough to read tales about it. One must be involved in the
prophets to understand the prophets. One must be in
spired to understand inspiration. Just as we cannot test
thinking without thinking, we cannot sense holiness with
out being holy. Presence is not disclosed to those who are
unattached and try to judge, to those who have no power
to go beyond the values they cherish; to those who sense
the story, not the pathos; the idea, not the realness of God.
The Bible is the frontier of the spirit where we must
move and live in order to discover and to explore. It is
open to him who gives himself to it, who lives with it
intimately.
—From God in Search of Man by Abraham Joshua Heschel