One must be familiar with migration and know something about the experience of being an involuntary migrant in order to understand massive amounts of the Bible. And yet, as Western, comparatively affluent people, it is astonishingly hard for us to fathom what an asylum seeker faces.
All of this is why I have been developing ways to read the stories like those in the book of Genesis with people seeking asylum in the United Kingdom. They possess valuable knowledge necessary to understanding the best-selling book in history that neither I nor most scholars or theologians do, and that we couldn't gain even if we read everything on involuntary migration in the Library of Congress. These people have taught me an immense amount—and they can teach others too. Indeed, the powerful images you see with this piece are some of their responses to the stories about migration in Genesis.
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