I’m sure that many of you don’t know the song “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by the band Green Day. But for me, each time September rolls around I think of this song and listen to it. If you get a chance, check it out on YouTube. It’s actually a pretty good tune.
Anyway, welcome to September! Fall is now here (well not officially until September 23). We’re back into our regular rhythms and routines of school, work, etc. Unless you’re retired…then every day is Saturday!
I wanted to focus my letter this month as a continuation of my August letter. There was quite some feedback to my article so I wanted to take the opportunity to flesh out a few things.
One of the understandable responses was, “What do you mean Job wasn’t real?” And I simply say…just that. He was a “fictional” character placed in a story to make a larger point.
Something we have to remember: The Biblical authors do not write fiction or non-fiction. They write in a style that was common to them but quite foreign to us. Think of it this way: When you go to any branch of the Erie Public Library, they have the place generally divided into the two categories of fiction and non-fiction. Fiction, to us, means a complete fake story, with fake characters, that are made up to entertain. Non-fiction, on the other hand, is fact based and usually researched. A biography or study of a historical event would be non-fiction.
For the Biblical authors, they never thought in these terms. They had no concept of fiction and non-fiction. They simply wrote for a larger purpose (to express and explain God and God’s ways). Sometimes this meant weaving not-so-true details into real stories; sometimes it meant embellishing facts; and sometimes, as the case with Job, it was to create a character and place them into a highly made up circumstance to push a larger theme.
The Biblical authors were always writing theologically (although they wouldn’t have called it this or thought in those terms). They simply wanted to express and explore the nature of God; the nature of God’s relationship to us; the nature of our relationship with God. The literary “rules” which we all learned in elementary and middle school about keeping “fact” and “fiction” separate were not something that existed for them.
Another related point: We cannot approach the Biblical text as a history textbook. Yes, it is a historical source (by virtue of its age) and yes it does contain historical “facts.” But that, again, was not the intention of the authors.
When they sat down to write, they were not pulling together multiple sources and multiple views and different voices from scholars and researchers. Instead, they were expressing their lived experiences and utilizing the common writing styles of their day. Related to this: The narratives and poetry and prose which we read in printed form were originally completely oral. The Biblical authors came out of a culture that placed a heavy emphasis on oral tradition and storytelling. It was not until later periods (the Iron Age forward) that writing became more commonplace and important.
The sole and primary focus of the Biblical authors was to explicate God and God’s ways and so they used every medium, style, and vehicle to do this.
So, this leads a lot of people to ask this question: How come I was never told this stuff when I was growing up?
That is a great question and one I have asked myself. When I was a kid going through Sunday School, we were told that all of the stories of the Bible were factually accurate. We now know that’s not explicitly an accurate statement. But as I have come to find out, it doesn’t mean the text isn’t true.
Remember what I said last month: Truth and fact can be vastly different things. The Biblical authors were attempting to proclaim truth. And our world is based on fact as truth. We’re speaking two different languages (literally and figuratively) when it comes to understanding what we’re reading in the pages of Scripture. For them to explore and proclaim truth, sometimes they did so through made-up stories, characters, and situations. And it’s ok; their truth was still proclaimed. We, in a way, are used to this. When you read Aesop’s Fables or the Brother Grimm, you know that
there isn’t a big bad wolf. But the point the story is trying to make is still there. While the Biblical authors don’t use Little Red Riding Hood to make a point, they still use something akin to this, at times, to proclaim a truth about God.
Another chief reason that you may not have ever heard any of the things I said last month until now is because when you were growing up, Biblical scholarship was lacking. Not to say that we’re so much smarter now than they were then. Instead, we have things they didn’t have.
For example: In 1949, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. It took nearly 50 years for scholars to make sense out of what they had. Also, they were continuously discovering more Dead Sea Scrolls over that period of 50 years. Now, we have every book of what we call the Old Testament (except the Book of Esther). What’s even more fascinating is that we now have copies that are about or more than 1,000 years older than the oldest copies of the biblical books than we had before the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. We also gained copies of non-Biblical texts that had never been seen before and versions of other texts that we had only partial fragments of before this time. Thus, our entire understanding of the Bible changed drastically beginning around the 1990s and continues to change because new things are being found and understood.
Another factor: When you were growing up, archaeology did not have a lot of the tools that they now have. A lot of wonderful things were discovered by professional and well-trained archaeologists over the last 100 or so years. However, the science did not exist to fully understand and study the finds. Today we have things like ground penetrating radar; radio carbon dating; DNA technology; gas mass spectrometry, and more. All of these tools help us to discover what ancient civilizations are like (or not like) and make the texts of the Biblical library come to life. Archaeology and biblical studies go hand-in-hand.
We also have a lot more sources called “extra Biblical sources” which help to round out our understanding of events, people, and situations that the Bible may make mention of, albeit briefly at times. Stele (or stone columns) are found all over the Ancient Near East (Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Syria, etc.) and these help us to understand the ancient world better and make sense out of what we read. Houses, cities, temples, etc. are discovered everyday that give us a much clearer understanding of the verses of Scripture and what their world looked like and how it functioned.
Another comment/question I’ve been asked/heard: Ok, Drew, you went to college and seminary to study these things; I’ve not been exposed to this stuff.
That’s a completely fair point. Yes, I have spent my academic and professional life studying these topics.
But I will also push back very gently: A lot of what I say can be found in a good quality, current, study Bible. What I was saying last month (and this) can be found in the introductory essays in study Bibles where devoted scholars share their years of research and knowledge with anyone who picks up the book and reads. Their comments, albeit usually short, can be very helpful. Further, the notes that are found at the bottom of Bible pages (called the apparatus) and the comments in the margins (called marginalia) also help to understand the Bible passages better and more clearly.
So, let me recommend a few high-quality study Bibles for your use:
- The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard Version 5th Edition
-This is a personal favorite study Bible of mine and has excellent scholars who lend their voices to the study of Scripture - The New Interpreter’s Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version With the Apocrypha
-This is another excellent study Bible with great scholars and resources available - The Jewish Study Bible: Second Edition 2nd Edition
-This study Bible contains the commentary of Jewish scholars; it contains only what we call the Old Testament. However, it’s a great resource to understand how Hebrew Scriptures have been understood in the Jewish tradition.
Some folks will say, “But I just read the Bible as a devotional and to listen to and for God’s voice.” And to that I say, so do I. I’m not reading it like a textbook. I’m reading it to better hear what God is saying and has said for generations.
To be able to do this best and hear most fully, it’s best to understand as best as possible what these texts originally meant. I’ve heard a scholar say, “To read the Biblical text literally you have to read it literarily.”
We all bring our preconceived ideas, answers, desires, and questions to the Biblical text when we read it. However, we have to be cautious in this approach. If we allow our world and our thinking and our ways to govern, then we will invariably make the Biblical text say things it cannot say, never said, and never understood.
The classic example of this is Genesis 1: the first story of creation. To read this as some sort of a science textbook would be wrong headed. The authors didn’t understand science (or at least the way we do). They saw and lived in a world in which God was everywhere and in all things. They wouldn’t try to define a day in terms of a 24-hour period (a day for them was actually closer to 12). They wouldn’t try to argue that Genesis 1 is giving a blueprint for evolution (again, they don’t understand that concept and no one would until Darwin wrote it).
It’s ok to find ourselves in the world of the Bible. It’s ok for us to become another character in the story. But we have to be cautious in making words, stories, and situations mean what we think they should mean when the original authors have no conception of our world or our lives.
Another classical example of this is reading passages in the Bible about marriage/adultery/sexuality. The ancient world had very different understandings about these topics. For example, adultery was not seen as a moral issue; it was seen as a property crime. If you had relations with someone else’s wife, you had defiled their property (sort of akin to burning donuts in their yard). Also, so long as a man did not have relations with another man’s wife (instead had relationship with a prostitute for example) this was not considered adultery in the ancient day. Marriage in the world of the Biblical text was not a lovey-dovey relationship like we see in our favorite rom-com or Hallmark movie. There were no stories about falling in love at the malt shop or meeting over a plate of appetizers on a date. Marriage was an arranged business transaction between two patriarchs. It’s not to say that people couldn’t have or didn’t have romantic love. Simply put, business and financial gain were the reasons for marriage and women especially (and men to a certain degree) didn’t have a lot of choice (or any in the case of women) on who they would marry. The fathers made the decision based on what was economically expedient. And sexual purity (what today we call “virginity”) was simply a way to fetch a better price for a bride. If a woman had not been intimate before her marriage, her selling price was much, much higher than if she had been intimate with a man. These examples are meant to remind us of something: the world of the Biblical texts is vastly different from ours.
So, when we read the Biblical text we have to read what it is actually saying in its original time and place and not what we want it to say in our time. The scholar NT Wright calls this, “reading the text for all it’s worth.” To do this, we have to, as best as we can, understand the ancient world and make sense out of what is being said. If we try to impute our meaning and our meaning only, we are dishonoring the witness of the text and the work of the authors and saying that they never said things correctly and our modern reading is all that matters. By doing this, we can morph the Biblical text to say what we want it to say. In this way, it becomes our hostage and stops being a freely given expression of God’s love for us.
Some may ask: Why two month’s worth of newsletter articles about these issues of reading the Bible?
I would say it is because the Bible is so very important to us as Jesus’ people. As Reformed Christians, we see the Bible (along with the Sacraments) to be the most central aspects of our faith formation and expression. Without the texts of Scripture, we wouldn’t have any idea whatsoever about God and God’s ways.
Yes, I am personally biased in these topics because I have a deep and abiding passion for studying the Biblical text. Part of that is because I’m a huge nerd who just loves to study. The other large and most important part is because I am a Jesus follower and I want to hear what God has to say to me, to you, and to the world. And I want to get that as accurate as possible. Revelation is the process of God speaking through the inspiration of the Spirit to the original authors in their language, culture, time, place, and circumstance. To be able to hear most clearly, I have to get into their world and figure out what was originally being said to be able to make any sense for our modern world.
Another reason is because Biblical literacy (defined as a basic understanding of and regular reading of the Bible) is, depending on the research you read, in the single digits up to maybe 20% of the American population. And yet, people are happy each day to condemn, condone, or attempt to judge others based on a text they’re not even reading with anything close to regular certainty.
Here’s a classic example: When I was teaching a class on Genesis several years ago (not here at COTC, by the way), I pointed out the two stories of the creation and the two stories of the flood so that we can hear different perspectives of the same narrative. A group of parishioners attending who developed red, angry faces and loud voices said, “You’re lying! That’s not true!” I asked them, gently, to open the Bible in front of them and read Genesis 1, Genesis 2 & 3; Genesis 6-9. I gave them several minutes to read. When we came back together someone asked, “I never read that before. When did they add those other versions in?” I responded, “Those have been there the entire time.”
I could easily go on and on but I won’t. You get the point and there’s no wisdom in beating the proverbial dead horse. The point is this: The Bible is not a weapon; it is God’s loving words for us inviting us and all people into a loving and welcoming relationship with the Triune God. And if a person insists on trying to use the Bible as a weapon, they should at least have some inkling of what it says, what it means, and how it was written. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard this response, “I don’t know where it says it. But I know it’s in there somewhere,” in reference to some Biblical passage/teaching.
My hope in discussing the Bible in the ways I have these last two months is to dispel myth, remove rumor, and get to the heart of the text which are words of life for us. The greatest thing we can do as people of faith is to keep learning, keep growing, and keep maturing in our faith. God is always at work and always speaking; we have to listen. And sometimes that’s going to require us to change the tune and dig in a bit deeper.
If you ever have any questions about the Bible, don’t hesitate to ask. We can schedule a time to meet. Please don’t channel comments through others and hope they will get back to me. Call me; email me; stop by the office; schedule a time. I’m here to serve you and here to help you read, learn, and listen as God speaks.
I love our God; I love our Bible. And I want you all to be able to grow and mature in your faith.