It's time to summarize my impressions of reading the Bible straight through over a 20-month period. My comments will focus on the Old Testament, as that book was a challenge to read. In fact, I discovered that there were parts of the OT I had never read, which surprised me a bit.
First, method. I deliberately read "naively." That may seem like an oxymoron but what I mean is that I tried as much as possible to set aside what I know of Biblical scholarship and historicity in order to read outside of that context and simply meet the immediacy of the text as it is. It's not entirely possible--although I'm aided by the fact that my knowledge of Biblical scholarship is, at best, crude--but clearly some knowledge informed my reading. I'm also not naive enough to think we find information "in" the text alone, but I was attempting, all the same, to do something akin to a New Critical reading in the sense of consciously excluding reliance on secondary source material.
There are several reasons for this. One, as we know, our Biblical scholarship is ever-changing, and how we interpret secondary sources and the light they shed on the Bible is filtered through the lens of our culture and our unconscious prejudices. I have seen too many people in my time over-rely on secondary sources to the point of distorting the Scriptures. For example, I've watched people treat Crossan's conclusions about the "historical Jesus," which he qualifies as very much his own opinions, as truth. More broadly, reading the Jesus Creed blog has brought home to me how until recent years (say, the last 60) often unconscious anti-semitism led Western Biblical scholars to read the New Testament through the lens of Greek thought, missing the obvious connections with Judaism. So I wonder what distortions we "read in" these days when we become overly reliant on the latest in scholarly thought.
Second, the Quakers would not have had the benefits of modern scholarship, and I wanted to read as an early Quaker would have, conscious, of course, of the very different cultural context I live in, but trusting that the leadings of the Holy Spirit are the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. I wanted this to be more of a lectio divina reading than a "two lines and four pages of footnotes" approach. This feeds into what I alluded to above, which is my sense that many people don't wrestle with the raw material of the Bible enough, but tend to fall back far too quickly on received authority, which dilutes the power of the word itself. I've found that's there a great deal to be mined just by reading the text in an engaged and active way.
I also understood that reading this way--which I call a "flat" way and visualize as a sort of Grandma Moses tableau, introduces its own distortions. So be it. I wanted to be smacked with the immediacy of the text itself.
In the next post, I will get to the text! My question is: How do you read the Bible? How much do you rely on scholarship, what scholars have the most credibility to you and how much do you rely on the text?
Showing posts with label one year Bible read. Show all posts
Showing posts with label one year Bible read. Show all posts
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Reading the Bible in 20 months: cowardice and peace ..
When I was reading the Bible straight through a hierarchy I had never seen before emerged. By this I mean that some forms of social organization worked better than others. I never "got" this big picture context when I jumped in and out of stories.
Every so often during the last decade an e-mail has circulated ( now that mass e-mails seem to be out of favor, maybe not anymore) in which a person, with feigned naivete, asks if he can enact various elements of the Mosaic law, along the lines of, do I really have to kill my neighbor for wearing clothes woven of two different fabrics, do I have to stone my neighbor for planting on a field that should have lain fallow or can I just kill him another way, and since I need to sell my daughter to raise money into slavery, what would be a fair price to ask? These e-mails are obviously meant to ridicule people who claim to be Bible literalists. They also carry the subtext of who would ever want to follow this faith other than an irrational nut?
Context is everything. Taken out of context, these laws do seem irrational and barbaric. And while I was reading the Bible straight through, the strictness of the law in the early days and the severity of punishment caused a few shocks to my system. ("my nerves, my nerves" as Aunt Pittypat would say.)
As I continued reading, however, my view began to shift. After the early days, Israel rises to greatness under David, an ascent that probably reaches its pinnacle under Solomon, who is both wealthy and wise. (At least this is impression you I get from the Bible itself; the scholarship may disagree.) Solomon constructs the costly temple in Jerusalem, and the Jewish people seem to enjoy prosperity and peace.
At the same time, however, that Solomon is building the temple, he is sowing seeds of Israel's destruction by marrying a multitude of wives, apparently to solidify relationships with neighboring tribes. These wives lead Solomon in the direction of moral relativism, and introduce other forms of worship--including hill shrines to Baal--into the nation.
After Solomon dies, the country is ruled by a succession of weak kings and begins its slow, sad decline into dissolution. It loses its moral center as people move away from strict adherence to the Mosaic law and into more and more desperate attempts to appease the gods as their political situation increasingly unravels. More hill shrines spring up, child sacrifice appears, wooden idols are worshipped and a statue/pole (?) dedicated to Baal is actually erected in the temple. This is a depressing section (mostly Chronicles if I remember correctly), and not the stuff of standard Sunday School fare. In fact, although I have spent a great deal of time reading the Bible, there were sections here in Chronicles I had never read. And as I read, I found myself wishing God would appear in the middle of all this with a miracle. (He doesn't.)
Clearly, Israel is doomed. It's surrounded by increasingly powerful enemies and seems to have lost, along with its faith (of course, a few do keep the faith) its basic common sense, cohesion and courage. I found myself saying, no, no, no, what on earth can you be thinking? when the Israelites melt down the gold and silver implements in the temple and strip the gold and copper from the walls and send these to more powerful rivals to the buy them off from invading the country. Of course, once Israel has made itself poor and helpless, what's to prevent the invasion?
Anyway, the point is, I found myself, as I was reading, looking back with nostalgic longing to the days of the strict interpretation of the law. My view of those early days changed. Yes, at that early point the group might have been stoning people and casting them out for seemingly minor infractions, but they were a cohesive community with a moral center and a strong sense of purpose. Their acts of aggression against their enemies were hair-raising, but somehow not as bad as the slothful child sacrifice practices (victimizing the innocent) of the later years. At least, in the early years, a group that felt beleagured and threatened on all sides hung together and did what it believed it needed to do to survive, not just for the day but into future generations. The later Israelites seem a more contemptible lot, willing to sell off the fate of their descendants for a few years of immediate comfort. And this sounds uncomfortably like elements of our current society.
So the story as a whole left me pondering the hierarchy of social organization. While a peaceable kindgom ruled by God through his priestly emmisaries (or today, through the direction of the Holy Spirit written onto hearts without need of priests) might be the ideal, and a military king something that brings its own heartache and sorrow to the people, the story as a whole tells us that a strong warrior state centered around serving God (even if the people are misinterpreting how best to serve him) is preferable to a state whose center has collapsed into cowardice and moral confusion. This the hierarchy I came away with: Best: Peaceable kingdom centered on faith in God, not carnal weapons. People willing to die courageously rather than kill others. Not too bad: a strict military regime creating a cohesive community centered around following God's law and fighting to preserve themselves as a people of God, Questionable: a military state led by a warrior king who is partially following God's will and partially following the leader's (or the world's) own will and passions, Poor: a cowardly, slothful, uncohesive, morally relativistic nation state narrowly focused on preserving it's own comforts. Cowardice parading as peace.
As a pacifist myself, I was able to modify my views a bit to see militarism as not all bad. This helps me with things such as the totalizing debate over World War II. Going to war with Hitler might not have been the best thing, but it wasn't the worst thing. However, the challenge becomes how to develop past the warrior state to aim for the peaceable kingdom. And of course, we can't do it on our own.
Also, I am open to my "hierarchy" being amended. It's the result of a raw read of the Bible and a stab at seeing the world through God's eyes. What do others think?
Every so often during the last decade an e-mail has circulated ( now that mass e-mails seem to be out of favor, maybe not anymore) in which a person, with feigned naivete, asks if he can enact various elements of the Mosaic law, along the lines of, do I really have to kill my neighbor for wearing clothes woven of two different fabrics, do I have to stone my neighbor for planting on a field that should have lain fallow or can I just kill him another way, and since I need to sell my daughter to raise money into slavery, what would be a fair price to ask? These e-mails are obviously meant to ridicule people who claim to be Bible literalists. They also carry the subtext of who would ever want to follow this faith other than an irrational nut?
Context is everything. Taken out of context, these laws do seem irrational and barbaric. And while I was reading the Bible straight through, the strictness of the law in the early days and the severity of punishment caused a few shocks to my system. ("my nerves, my nerves" as Aunt Pittypat would say.)
As I continued reading, however, my view began to shift. After the early days, Israel rises to greatness under David, an ascent that probably reaches its pinnacle under Solomon, who is both wealthy and wise. (At least this is impression you I get from the Bible itself; the scholarship may disagree.) Solomon constructs the costly temple in Jerusalem, and the Jewish people seem to enjoy prosperity and peace.
At the same time, however, that Solomon is building the temple, he is sowing seeds of Israel's destruction by marrying a multitude of wives, apparently to solidify relationships with neighboring tribes. These wives lead Solomon in the direction of moral relativism, and introduce other forms of worship--including hill shrines to Baal--into the nation.
After Solomon dies, the country is ruled by a succession of weak kings and begins its slow, sad decline into dissolution. It loses its moral center as people move away from strict adherence to the Mosaic law and into more and more desperate attempts to appease the gods as their political situation increasingly unravels. More hill shrines spring up, child sacrifice appears, wooden idols are worshipped and a statue/pole (?) dedicated to Baal is actually erected in the temple. This is a depressing section (mostly Chronicles if I remember correctly), and not the stuff of standard Sunday School fare. In fact, although I have spent a great deal of time reading the Bible, there were sections here in Chronicles I had never read. And as I read, I found myself wishing God would appear in the middle of all this with a miracle. (He doesn't.)
Clearly, Israel is doomed. It's surrounded by increasingly powerful enemies and seems to have lost, along with its faith (of course, a few do keep the faith) its basic common sense, cohesion and courage. I found myself saying, no, no, no, what on earth can you be thinking? when the Israelites melt down the gold and silver implements in the temple and strip the gold and copper from the walls and send these to more powerful rivals to the buy them off from invading the country. Of course, once Israel has made itself poor and helpless, what's to prevent the invasion?
Anyway, the point is, I found myself, as I was reading, looking back with nostalgic longing to the days of the strict interpretation of the law. My view of those early days changed. Yes, at that early point the group might have been stoning people and casting them out for seemingly minor infractions, but they were a cohesive community with a moral center and a strong sense of purpose. Their acts of aggression against their enemies were hair-raising, but somehow not as bad as the slothful child sacrifice practices (victimizing the innocent) of the later years. At least, in the early years, a group that felt beleagured and threatened on all sides hung together and did what it believed it needed to do to survive, not just for the day but into future generations. The later Israelites seem a more contemptible lot, willing to sell off the fate of their descendants for a few years of immediate comfort. And this sounds uncomfortably like elements of our current society.
So the story as a whole left me pondering the hierarchy of social organization. While a peaceable kindgom ruled by God through his priestly emmisaries (or today, through the direction of the Holy Spirit written onto hearts without need of priests) might be the ideal, and a military king something that brings its own heartache and sorrow to the people, the story as a whole tells us that a strong warrior state centered around serving God (even if the people are misinterpreting how best to serve him) is preferable to a state whose center has collapsed into cowardice and moral confusion. This the hierarchy I came away with: Best: Peaceable kingdom centered on faith in God, not carnal weapons. People willing to die courageously rather than kill others. Not too bad: a strict military regime creating a cohesive community centered around following God's law and fighting to preserve themselves as a people of God, Questionable: a military state led by a warrior king who is partially following God's will and partially following the leader's (or the world's) own will and passions, Poor: a cowardly, slothful, uncohesive, morally relativistic nation state narrowly focused on preserving it's own comforts. Cowardice parading as peace.
As a pacifist myself, I was able to modify my views a bit to see militarism as not all bad. This helps me with things such as the totalizing debate over World War II. Going to war with Hitler might not have been the best thing, but it wasn't the worst thing. However, the challenge becomes how to develop past the warrior state to aim for the peaceable kingdom. And of course, we can't do it on our own.
Also, I am open to my "hierarchy" being amended. It's the result of a raw read of the Bible and a stab at seeing the world through God's eyes. What do others think?
Friday, April 17, 2009
Reading the Bible in 20 months: cowardice and peace
One of the things that can clear to me while I was reading the Bible straight through was the hierarchy that emerged. By this I mean that some forms of social organization worked better than others. I never "got" this big picture context when I jumped in and out of stories.
Every so often during the last decade an e-mail has circulated ( now that mass e-mails seem to be out of favor, maybe not anymore) in which a person, with feigned naivete, asks if he can enact various elements of the Mosaic law, along the lines of, do I really have to kill my neighbor for wearing clothes woven of two different fabrics, do I have to stone my neighbor for planting on a field that should have lain fallow or can I just kill him another way, and since I need to sell my daughter to raise money into slavery, what would be a fair price to ask? These e-mails are obviously meant to ridicule people who claim to be Bible literalists. They also carry the subtext of who would ever want to follow this faith other than an irrational nut?
Context is everything. Taken out of context, these laws do seem irrational and barbaric. And while I was reading the Bible straight through, the strictness of the law in the early days and the severity of punishment caused a few shocks to my system. ("my nerves, my nerves" as Aunt PittyPat would say.)
As I continued reading, however, my view began to shift. After the early days, Israel rises to greatness under David, an ascent that probably reaches its pinnacle under Solomon, who is both wealthy and wise. (At least this is impression you get from the Bible itself; the scholarship may disagree.) Solomon constructs the costly temple in Jerusalem and the Jewish people seem to enjoy prosperity and peace.
At the same time, however, that Solomon is building the temple, he is sowing seeds of Israel's destruction by marrying a multitude of wives, apparently to solidify relationships with neighboring tribes. These wives lead Solomon in the direction of moral relativism, and introduce other forms of worship--including hill shrines to Baal--into the nation.
After Solomon dies, the country is ruled by a succession of weak kings and begins its slow, sad decline into dissolution. It loses it's moral center as people move away from strict adherence to the Mosaic law and into more and more desperate attempts to appease the gods as their political situation increasingly unravels. More hill shrines spring up, child sacrifice appears, wooden idols are worshipped and a statue/pole (?) dedicated to Baal is actually erected in the temple. This is a depressing section (mostly Chronicles if I remember correctly), and not the stuff of standard Sunday School fare. In fact, although I have spent a great deal of time reading the Bible, there were sections here in Chronicles I had never read. And as I read, I found myself wishing God would appear in the middle of all this with a miracle.
Because clearly, Israel is doomed. It's surrounded by increasingly powerful enemies and seems to have lost, along with its faith (of course, a few do keep the faith) its basic common sense, cohesion and courage. I found myself saying, no, no, no, what on earth can you be thinking? when the Israelites melt down the gold and silver implements in the temple and strip the gold and copper from the walls and send these to more powerful rivals to the buy them off from invading the country. Of course, once Israel has made itself poor and helpless, what's to prevent the invasion?
Anyway, the point is, I found myself, as I was reading, looking back with nostalgic longing to the days of the strict interpretation of the law. My view of those early days changed. Yes, at that early point the group might have been stoning people and casting them out for seemingly minor infractions, but they were a cohesive community with a moral center and a strong sense of purpose. Their acts of aggression against their enemies were hair-raising, but somehow not as bad as the slothful child sacrifice practices (victimizing the innocent) of the later years. At least, in the early years, a group that felt beleagured and threatened on all sides hung together and did what it believed it needed to do to survive, not just for the day but into the future generations. The later Israelites seem a more contemptible lot, willing to sell off the fate of their descendants for a few years of immediate comfort. And this sounds uncomfortably like elements of our current society.
So the story as a whole left me pondering the hierarchy of social organization. While a peaceable kindgom ruled by God through his priestly emmisaries (or today, through the direction of the Holy Spirit written onto hearts without need of priests) might be the ideal, and a military king something that brings its own heartache and sorrow to the people, the story as a whole tells us that a strong warrior state centered around serving God (even if the people are misinterpreting how best to serve him) is preferable to a state whose center has collapsed into cowardice and moral confusion. This the hierarchy I came away with: Best: Peaceable kingdom centered on faith in God, not carnal weapons. People willing to die courageously rather than kill others. Not too bad: a strict military regime creating a cohesive community centered around following God's law and fighting to preserve themselves as a people of God, Questionable: a military state led by a warrior king who is partially following God's will and partially following the leader's (or the world's) own will and passions, Poor: a cowardly, slothful, uncohesive, morally relativistic nation state narrowly focused on preserving it's own comforts. Cowardice parading as peace.
As a pacifist myself, I was able to modify my views a bit to see militarism as not all bad. This helps me with things such as the totalizing debate over World War II. Going to war with Hitler might not have been the best thing, but it was hardly the worst thing. However, the challenge becomes how to develop past the warrior state to aim for the peaceable kingdom. And of course, we can't do it on our own.
Also, I am open to my "hierarchy" being amended. It's the result of a raw read of the Bible and a stab at seeing the world through God's eyes. What do others think?
Every so often during the last decade an e-mail has circulated ( now that mass e-mails seem to be out of favor, maybe not anymore) in which a person, with feigned naivete, asks if he can enact various elements of the Mosaic law, along the lines of, do I really have to kill my neighbor for wearing clothes woven of two different fabrics, do I have to stone my neighbor for planting on a field that should have lain fallow or can I just kill him another way, and since I need to sell my daughter to raise money into slavery, what would be a fair price to ask? These e-mails are obviously meant to ridicule people who claim to be Bible literalists. They also carry the subtext of who would ever want to follow this faith other than an irrational nut?
Context is everything. Taken out of context, these laws do seem irrational and barbaric. And while I was reading the Bible straight through, the strictness of the law in the early days and the severity of punishment caused a few shocks to my system. ("my nerves, my nerves" as Aunt PittyPat would say.)
As I continued reading, however, my view began to shift. After the early days, Israel rises to greatness under David, an ascent that probably reaches its pinnacle under Solomon, who is both wealthy and wise. (At least this is impression you get from the Bible itself; the scholarship may disagree.) Solomon constructs the costly temple in Jerusalem and the Jewish people seem to enjoy prosperity and peace.
At the same time, however, that Solomon is building the temple, he is sowing seeds of Israel's destruction by marrying a multitude of wives, apparently to solidify relationships with neighboring tribes. These wives lead Solomon in the direction of moral relativism, and introduce other forms of worship--including hill shrines to Baal--into the nation.
After Solomon dies, the country is ruled by a succession of weak kings and begins its slow, sad decline into dissolution. It loses it's moral center as people move away from strict adherence to the Mosaic law and into more and more desperate attempts to appease the gods as their political situation increasingly unravels. More hill shrines spring up, child sacrifice appears, wooden idols are worshipped and a statue/pole (?) dedicated to Baal is actually erected in the temple. This is a depressing section (mostly Chronicles if I remember correctly), and not the stuff of standard Sunday School fare. In fact, although I have spent a great deal of time reading the Bible, there were sections here in Chronicles I had never read. And as I read, I found myself wishing God would appear in the middle of all this with a miracle.
Because clearly, Israel is doomed. It's surrounded by increasingly powerful enemies and seems to have lost, along with its faith (of course, a few do keep the faith) its basic common sense, cohesion and courage. I found myself saying, no, no, no, what on earth can you be thinking? when the Israelites melt down the gold and silver implements in the temple and strip the gold and copper from the walls and send these to more powerful rivals to the buy them off from invading the country. Of course, once Israel has made itself poor and helpless, what's to prevent the invasion?
Anyway, the point is, I found myself, as I was reading, looking back with nostalgic longing to the days of the strict interpretation of the law. My view of those early days changed. Yes, at that early point the group might have been stoning people and casting them out for seemingly minor infractions, but they were a cohesive community with a moral center and a strong sense of purpose. Their acts of aggression against their enemies were hair-raising, but somehow not as bad as the slothful child sacrifice practices (victimizing the innocent) of the later years. At least, in the early years, a group that felt beleagured and threatened on all sides hung together and did what it believed it needed to do to survive, not just for the day but into the future generations. The later Israelites seem a more contemptible lot, willing to sell off the fate of their descendants for a few years of immediate comfort. And this sounds uncomfortably like elements of our current society.
So the story as a whole left me pondering the hierarchy of social organization. While a peaceable kindgom ruled by God through his priestly emmisaries (or today, through the direction of the Holy Spirit written onto hearts without need of priests) might be the ideal, and a military king something that brings its own heartache and sorrow to the people, the story as a whole tells us that a strong warrior state centered around serving God (even if the people are misinterpreting how best to serve him) is preferable to a state whose center has collapsed into cowardice and moral confusion. This the hierarchy I came away with: Best: Peaceable kingdom centered on faith in God, not carnal weapons. People willing to die courageously rather than kill others. Not too bad: a strict military regime creating a cohesive community centered around following God's law and fighting to preserve themselves as a people of God, Questionable: a military state led by a warrior king who is partially following God's will and partially following the leader's (or the world's) own will and passions, Poor: a cowardly, slothful, uncohesive, morally relativistic nation state narrowly focused on preserving it's own comforts. Cowardice parading as peace.
As a pacifist myself, I was able to modify my views a bit to see militarism as not all bad. This helps me with things such as the totalizing debate over World War II. Going to war with Hitler might not have been the best thing, but it was hardly the worst thing. However, the challenge becomes how to develop past the warrior state to aim for the peaceable kingdom. And of course, we can't do it on our own.
Also, I am open to my "hierarchy" being amended. It's the result of a raw read of the Bible and a stab at seeing the world through God's eyes. What do others think?
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Reading the Bible in 20 months: peace in the OT
Often in the past when I read in the Bible, I wanted to force it to fit the grid I'd placed over it.
Controlling the Bible, however, is like trying to hold a living, hopping frog in my hand: The only way I can control it is to kill it. We often do kill frogs--this is in science class-- and pin them down and cut them open and catalogue their insides. This can be interesting, once we get over that we've killed a sentient being. But the key thing is that once the frog is dead, you can catalogue it's parts, but whatever made it a living being is gone. It's lost its essential frogness.
Thus, you can dissect the Bible, but once you do that, whatever makes it alive goes away. And you are left, I think, with a lot of pieces that can never really be put back together again. Somewhere, the spirit is lost or distorted.
When I understood that the Bible was alive and that to try to control it was to kill it, that changed my relationship to it. I suddenly didn't need to control it. I didn't need to force it into my pattern. I could just let it hop around (well, sometimes I could do this). I also understood that the term "living Bible," which I had often heard and thought was some sort of evangelical weirdness, was actually descriptive.
When I embarked on my one year (actually 20 month) Bible read, I decided to approach the bible with as open a mind as possible. For me, this meant an old-fashioned New Critical reading: What do I learn from what's "in" the text? (Yes, I know, I know, there is no "in," that's a metaphor, etc, etc). Nevertheless, I have found the old-fashioned New Critical approach to be fruitful. Without much scholarship (and I know I am reacting to people who over-rely on the flavor du jour book "on" the Bible), I can glean an amazing amount of information and wisdom, as long as I read attentively. I also find that the Bible teaches me how to read it. I don't need an external guide. So, while, of course, I have a little background in secondary sources, history, etc,, as almost everybody does who hasn't grown up in a complete vacuum, I chose to read the Bible straight through primarily as a standalone document. I found this a Quakerly and useful approach.
Now, naturally, there were parts of the Bible that caused me to glaze over, such as the genealogies, but I tried to find ways to stay engaged even in those ... and my stratgies didn't always work. It took me 20 rather than 12 months because my attention would flag --or there was too much to absorb-- or I would become too horrified-- so I would put down a reading in the middle and pick it up the next day. And even with all my attempts to stay attentive, there were days when my eyes would scan the words and nothing would penetrate, and so I'd go back and reread the same section the next day.
What does this have to do with peace in the Old Testament? I'll have to save that for another entry, as this blog is getting too long.
Controlling the Bible, however, is like trying to hold a living, hopping frog in my hand: The only way I can control it is to kill it. We often do kill frogs--this is in science class-- and pin them down and cut them open and catalogue their insides. This can be interesting, once we get over that we've killed a sentient being. But the key thing is that once the frog is dead, you can catalogue it's parts, but whatever made it a living being is gone. It's lost its essential frogness.
Thus, you can dissect the Bible, but once you do that, whatever makes it alive goes away. And you are left, I think, with a lot of pieces that can never really be put back together again. Somewhere, the spirit is lost or distorted.
When I understood that the Bible was alive and that to try to control it was to kill it, that changed my relationship to it. I suddenly didn't need to control it. I didn't need to force it into my pattern. I could just let it hop around (well, sometimes I could do this). I also understood that the term "living Bible," which I had often heard and thought was some sort of evangelical weirdness, was actually descriptive.
When I embarked on my one year (actually 20 month) Bible read, I decided to approach the bible with as open a mind as possible. For me, this meant an old-fashioned New Critical reading: What do I learn from what's "in" the text? (Yes, I know, I know, there is no "in," that's a metaphor, etc, etc). Nevertheless, I have found the old-fashioned New Critical approach to be fruitful. Without much scholarship (and I know I am reacting to people who over-rely on the flavor du jour book "on" the Bible), I can glean an amazing amount of information and wisdom, as long as I read attentively. I also find that the Bible teaches me how to read it. I don't need an external guide. So, while, of course, I have a little background in secondary sources, history, etc,, as almost everybody does who hasn't grown up in a complete vacuum, I chose to read the Bible straight through primarily as a standalone document. I found this a Quakerly and useful approach.
Now, naturally, there were parts of the Bible that caused me to glaze over, such as the genealogies, but I tried to find ways to stay engaged even in those ... and my stratgies didn't always work. It took me 20 rather than 12 months because my attention would flag --or there was too much to absorb-- or I would become too horrified-- so I would put down a reading in the middle and pick it up the next day. And even with all my attempts to stay attentive, there were days when my eyes would scan the words and nothing would penetrate, and so I'd go back and reread the same section the next day.
What does this have to do with peace in the Old Testament? I'll have to save that for another entry, as this blog is getting too long.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Reading the Bible in 20 months:violence
One thing that struck me while reading the Bible straight through during a 20 month (supposedly one year) period was how saturated it is in violence. The levels of violence are truly mind-boggling, from Jael hammering a tent peg through an enemy's head to mass slaughter, genocide, murder, mass murder, rape, child sacrifice (this is after Solomon, when the Israelites have lost their moorings), mutilation ... the head reels after a time.
Most, if not all, of the revered figures in the Old or First Testament, are violent: Moses murders a man, Saul slaughters the Amalekites, David kills people for insbordination at the slightest provocation, slaughters his enemies, has his friend killed so he can marry his wife ... Elijah kills the 450 priests of Baal .... To be a player, a leader, as opposed to a prophet or observer like Isaiah, almost inevitably seems to involve hair-raisingly barbarous behavior.
And then, in the New Testament, it stops. Jesus is clearly a player, not a prophet, and is explicitly embedded in a Moses-David-Elijah narrative. He's seen as the second David, the new Messiah. Yet he is nothing like anyone who came before. I don't think I "got" this fully until I read the Bible straight through. People often point to Jesus' throwing the moneylenders out of the Temple with a whip of knotted cords as proof that he was willing to engage in violence, but this action is nothing, nothing!!, in comparison to do his predecessors. Not one person is killed and nobody, apparently, is serioulsy injured. In fact, it's possible nobody was injured at all. Jesus scares people and knocks over tables, scattering a crowd. After the bloodbath of the Old Testament, this is like tapping someone on the shoulder and asking them politely to leave to room.
So in the New Testament, we get a new thing. Jesus' story, at the end of his life, is saturated in ultra-violence, but none of it is his doing. He is the willing sacrificial victim, modeling a new way of confronting violence and oppression. After his death and resurrection, his followers are also dogged by violence. We especially remember Stephen's stoning. Paul is pursued in violent ways. But as we proceed through the New Testament, we see the newness. Rather than being preoccupied with violence and how to protect and defend against violent aggressors (which is what most of the Old Testament is about, with the Jehovah God central to that protection), the New Testament shifts to focus on building a nonviolent community based on love, equality, integrity, compassion and imitation of Christ. The violence is out there, but it becomes increasingly peripheral to the concerns of this new community living a new covenant. It's not through the New Testament, but through other historical accounts that we learn that Paul is beheaded, Peter and Andrew apparently crucified, many ordinary Christ followers killed by the state in gruesome ways. These are not the central concerns of the New Testament writers. They are concerned with how to live out Jesus' gospel of love. It is stunning.
How did this happen? If you have read the Bible straight through, have you had illuminations?
Most, if not all, of the revered figures in the Old or First Testament, are violent: Moses murders a man, Saul slaughters the Amalekites, David kills people for insbordination at the slightest provocation, slaughters his enemies, has his friend killed so he can marry his wife ... Elijah kills the 450 priests of Baal .... To be a player, a leader, as opposed to a prophet or observer like Isaiah, almost inevitably seems to involve hair-raisingly barbarous behavior.
And then, in the New Testament, it stops. Jesus is clearly a player, not a prophet, and is explicitly embedded in a Moses-David-Elijah narrative. He's seen as the second David, the new Messiah. Yet he is nothing like anyone who came before. I don't think I "got" this fully until I read the Bible straight through. People often point to Jesus' throwing the moneylenders out of the Temple with a whip of knotted cords as proof that he was willing to engage in violence, but this action is nothing, nothing!!, in comparison to do his predecessors. Not one person is killed and nobody, apparently, is serioulsy injured. In fact, it's possible nobody was injured at all. Jesus scares people and knocks over tables, scattering a crowd. After the bloodbath of the Old Testament, this is like tapping someone on the shoulder and asking them politely to leave to room.
So in the New Testament, we get a new thing. Jesus' story, at the end of his life, is saturated in ultra-violence, but none of it is his doing. He is the willing sacrificial victim, modeling a new way of confronting violence and oppression. After his death and resurrection, his followers are also dogged by violence. We especially remember Stephen's stoning. Paul is pursued in violent ways. But as we proceed through the New Testament, we see the newness. Rather than being preoccupied with violence and how to protect and defend against violent aggressors (which is what most of the Old Testament is about, with the Jehovah God central to that protection), the New Testament shifts to focus on building a nonviolent community based on love, equality, integrity, compassion and imitation of Christ. The violence is out there, but it becomes increasingly peripheral to the concerns of this new community living a new covenant. It's not through the New Testament, but through other historical accounts that we learn that Paul is beheaded, Peter and Andrew apparently crucified, many ordinary Christ followers killed by the state in gruesome ways. These are not the central concerns of the New Testament writers. They are concerned with how to live out Jesus' gospel of love. It is stunning.
How did this happen? If you have read the Bible straight through, have you had illuminations?
Sunday, February 15, 2009
On Miracles: Reading the Bible in One Year
QuakerRanter Martin Kelly has fallen a couple of days behind on his one-year Bible read, which brings to mind that two years ago, I embarked on the same journey, and I too fell behind. It took me 20 months to complete a 12-month Bible devotional.
All the same, reading the Bible straight through, as one big sequential story, illuminated it for me in surprising ways. It was a remarkable undertaking. Here are a few things I discovered, which I will cover over the course of several days:
On Miracles
1. We tend to overrepresent the miracles in the Bible. Yes, there are miracles -- but more often than not, we read long, dismal stretches of history when we long for a miracle. Anything to lighten the bleakness. But no miracles occur, just a slow spiral into darkness.
2. The miracles tend to cluster around short, special periods, most notably the period of exodus from Egypt and the period around Jesus’ life. These are also, incidentally, periods that changed world history. Hhhmmm.
3. Even in the periods of miracle, the miracles aren’t as plentiful or magnificent as they could be. Frankly, they're fairly spare and austere. God parts the Red Sea and gives the Israelites their daily manna from heaven, but he doesn’t flood them with feasts or build them jeweled cities. Likewise, Jesus feeds the five thousand bread and fish, but not a sumptuous feast. God seems to give his people just enough miracle to get by and no more. Plain miracles. Almost dull miracles. I thought about this when I toured a mosque with a Quaker group. One of our tour guides, trying to stress the similarities between Christianity and Islam, told us the story from the Koran of the baby Jesus speaking at a few days old to rebuke people who were accusing his mother Mary of being a woman of ill-repute. It struck me that the Bible contains no similar fantastic stories of a talking infant Jesus. In fact, according to the biblical account, the only remarkable thing Jesus does as a child is to display wisdom in the temple at age 11 or 12. Notable, but hardly miraculous.
4. To me, the long stretches without miracles and the austerity of those that occur lend credibility to the miracles in the Bible. In the context of the whole Bible, they stand out like beautiful gems. You appreciate them more because they are rare. And although some people say the Bible is a fairytale, if you read it straight through, it’s much more a story of suffering, punctuated on occasion by the sparing but sparkling presence of God. While there are a few trickster tales and fables in the Bible, it’s mostly a depressing story of people who most of the time can’t get right with God and couldn't grab on to a miracle if it hit them over the head. If the "Bible" writers were going to “make it up,” you think they’d come up with something a little more entertaining.
So what do you think? Why do you think so many people are so "down" on Biblical miracles?
All the same, reading the Bible straight through, as one big sequential story, illuminated it for me in surprising ways. It was a remarkable undertaking. Here are a few things I discovered, which I will cover over the course of several days:
On Miracles
1. We tend to overrepresent the miracles in the Bible. Yes, there are miracles -- but more often than not, we read long, dismal stretches of history when we long for a miracle. Anything to lighten the bleakness. But no miracles occur, just a slow spiral into darkness.
2. The miracles tend to cluster around short, special periods, most notably the period of exodus from Egypt and the period around Jesus’ life. These are also, incidentally, periods that changed world history. Hhhmmm.
3. Even in the periods of miracle, the miracles aren’t as plentiful or magnificent as they could be. Frankly, they're fairly spare and austere. God parts the Red Sea and gives the Israelites their daily manna from heaven, but he doesn’t flood them with feasts or build them jeweled cities. Likewise, Jesus feeds the five thousand bread and fish, but not a sumptuous feast. God seems to give his people just enough miracle to get by and no more. Plain miracles. Almost dull miracles. I thought about this when I toured a mosque with a Quaker group. One of our tour guides, trying to stress the similarities between Christianity and Islam, told us the story from the Koran of the baby Jesus speaking at a few days old to rebuke people who were accusing his mother Mary of being a woman of ill-repute. It struck me that the Bible contains no similar fantastic stories of a talking infant Jesus. In fact, according to the biblical account, the only remarkable thing Jesus does as a child is to display wisdom in the temple at age 11 or 12. Notable, but hardly miraculous.
4. To me, the long stretches without miracles and the austerity of those that occur lend credibility to the miracles in the Bible. In the context of the whole Bible, they stand out like beautiful gems. You appreciate them more because they are rare. And although some people say the Bible is a fairytale, if you read it straight through, it’s much more a story of suffering, punctuated on occasion by the sparing but sparkling presence of God. While there are a few trickster tales and fables in the Bible, it’s mostly a depressing story of people who most of the time can’t get right with God and couldn't grab on to a miracle if it hit them over the head. If the "Bible" writers were going to “make it up,” you think they’d come up with something a little more entertaining.
So what do you think? Why do you think so many people are so "down" on Biblical miracles?
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