"The Bible gives to every man and to every era such answers to their questions as they deserve. We shall always find in it as much as we seek and no more: high and divine content if it is high and divine content that we seek; transitory and 'historical' content, if it is transitory and 'historical' content that we seek--nothing whatever, if it is nothing whatever that we seek. The hungry are satisfied by it, and to the satisfied it is surfeiting before they have opened it. The question, What is within the Bible? has a mortifying way of converting itself into the opposing question, Well, what are you looking for, and who are you, pray, who make bold to look?"
Karl Barth, "The strange new world within the Bible," The Word of God and the word of man (Das Wort Gottes und die Theologie) II (trans. Douglas Horton, Great books of the Western world, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990), 458).
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