Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the bestseller Eat, Pray, Love.
In her new book Committed, she writes on page 55:
…the Old Testament is such a family-centric, stranger abhorring, genealogical extravaganza… the driving narrative always concerns the progress and tribulations of the bloodline…
But the New Testament — which is to say, the arrival of Jesus Christ — invalidated all those old family loyalties to a degree that was truly socially revolutionary. Instead of perpetuating the tribal notion of “the chosen people against the world,” Jesus…taught that we are all chosen people, that we are all brothers and sisters united within one human family. Now, this was an utterly radical idea that could never possibly fly in a traditional tribal system. You cannot embrace a stranger as your brother, after all, unless you are willing to renounce your real biological brother, thus capsizing an ancient code that binds you in sacred obligation to your blood relatives while setting you in auto-opposition to the unclean outsider.
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