From a Chronicle of Higher Education article on the future of libraries now that Google Books is here:
As someone with experience in print and electronic publishing, Darnton is seeking “common ground” between the Luddite jeremiad and come-to-Jesus techno-millennialism.
You could conclude from this fun little sentence that to read intelligently today you still have to know the Bible—or perhaps simply to know the major things educated people know about it.
But is even that going too far? My read of our culture is that there are many people who understand this sentence perfectly without knowing the three Bible etymologies inside it. “Jeremiad” just means a “lamentation,” even to people who have never read Lamentations. “Come-to-Jesus” is recognizable as an evangelical TV preacher’s come-on. And millennialism is anyone’s confident utopian dreaming, not just Christians’.
People forget where their words and ideas come from. They’re just in the air. But we can be thankful to God that, by His grace, truths from His word are still floating around at all levels of our culture.
HT: Dustin Battles
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