gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) (07/16/90)
There seems to be a controversy over how one should read the bible and
how much guidance one needs to avoid going off the deep end
exegetically.
C. Wingate writes:
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In the third place, protestant though I am, I reject the notion that
you can sit down by yourself with a unannotated bible and do useful
studying. One thing I've discovered in watching fringe preachers on
one hand and net.atheists on the other: interpretation outside the
church is very frequently unguided, leading into old heresies and
nonchristian religion at every turn.
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The way I would put it is that interpreting the bible must be done
both individually and in fellowship with other Christians. I don't
know what Charley Wingate meant when he said ``interpretation outside
the church;'' if he meant interpretation uninformed by ministers or
other professional Christians, I must disagree. But if he meant that
our interpretations of the bible must be brought among the fellowship
of the believers for examination then I agree.
My own experience has been shaped from two sources: reading
literature (my undergrad degree was in English literature) and the
Inter Varsity manuscript studies. In these, the student gets supplied
with a manuscript containing neither chapter or verse numbers. The
intention is to confront the raw text. The main aid is a bible
dictionary to allow looking up the hard words.
I found this method to be very effective because one reads the text
differently if it is not broken up into chapters and verses. One gets
into the flow of the text, the progression of ideas. One also reads
differently when the text doesn't appear in a book with thin,
guilt-edged paper with the word `Holy' on it.
I tried this recently with some children I teach in church-school. I
had them read 5 chapters of John out loud together in one sitting,
then in other sessions we discussed the ideas and themes and important
words we found. I asked some of them if they liked reading it out
loud in big chunks like that and one of the girls said that she
understood it a lot better that way (as opposed to verse-by-verse). I
also got some good responses later from some of the boys. These were
junior high kids.
In the time I have been a Christian, I have heard a lot of sermons and
read a lot of Christian books. I have generally found that the
interpretations of the bible by ministers and writers of Christian
books is sadly lacking in perceptiveness and depth. But what disturbs
me most is that they tend to be uniform. I find that there is a set
of stock interpretations that come up over and over again that are
shallow or even erroneous.
Is it possible that the reason these interpretations come up so often
is that they are all using the same study materials?
--
Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com
So long as the heaven of THOU is spread out over me the winds of
causality cower at my heels, and the whirlpool of fate stays its
course. -Martin Buberbob@morningstar.com (Bob Sutterfield) (07/18/90)
In article <Jul.16.02.42.29.1990.14494@athos.rutgers.edu> gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) writes:
In [the Inter Varsity manuscript studies], the student gets
supplied with a manuscript containing neither chapter or verse
numbers. The intention is to confront the raw text... I found this
method to be very effective because one reads the text differently
if it is not broken up into chapters and verses. One gets into the
flow of the text, the progression of ideas. One also reads
differently when the text doesn't appear in a book with thin,
guilt-edged paper with the word `Holy' on it.
I agree, this is a very helpful technique. A few years back, I set
the text of Galatians in LaTeX; with wide interlinear spacing, very
wide margins, and only page and line numbers for coordinating guides
(which is all that chapter/verse divisions were invented for in the
first place). Then we attacked it with several colors of highlighter
markers, each of us adopting our own marginal annotation and color
coding schemes.
By the time we finished the study several months later, each of our
copies were nearly illegible for all our marking on the front and back
of each page. But we had a much better grip on the message than if we
had just sat around with books open on our laps, and the text on the
paper wasn't as important any more because we had it essentially
memorized. Even though I scribble in my Bibles, the effect of having
lots of sturdy white paper was remarkably freeing.
The only problem with this approach is when I quote a section of the
text from memory and am challenged to cite the source, but I don't
have the standard chapter/verse delineations memorized. Since nobody
else would know "page five, line seven, the orange part" I must resort
to something along the lines of "...in the section where Paul's
arguing for such-and-such position..."hall@vice.ico.tek.com (Hal Lillywhite) (07/20/90)
[Fred Gilham, Charlie Wingate and others have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of commentaries etc. in scripture study.] Well, the number of ideas on how to study scripture probably exceeds the number of Christian denominations in the world today. :-) I suspect we would all agree that the ultimate goal is to understand what God meant when He revealed these words. However, there is little agreement on how to go about it (and less on what the results are). Nevertheless, I will throw in my opinion for what it's worth. I believe Henry Ward Beecher said something to the effect that comming to the Bible through commentaries is like looking at a landscape through a window in which generations of spiders have been allowed to spin their webs unmolested - you see only the part the commentators point out. I think there is a great deal of truth in this. When we subordinate our scripture study to what someone else says the scripture says, we will never go beyond what the commentator did and we will likely fall into the same errors he did. Since no man knows as much as God does no commentator is likely to grasp the full meaning of God's word. It is therefore important to read the word itself, not just what somebody else says it says. I think that the scriptures themselves should be our primary source. However, I must also realize that I myself am limited in the same way the commentators are (and in many ways more so). Therefore I should expect that a commentator will be able to point out things I have missed. In fact even other "ordinary people" may notice something I've overlooked - who has not had the experience of sitting in a Sunday School class and having another student mention something he has not noticed before? Furthermore, few of us are expert in the original languages or the historical context in which the scriptures were given. Such knowledge can often add to our understanding of the subject. I would suggest an approach similar to the following which I have tried to put in the order of importance: 1. The scripture itself. I believe we should read it carefully and pray about it. 2. The Holy Ghost. If we read, ponder, and pray I believe the Holy Spirit will help us understand. 3. Language references, particularly a good analytical concordance. Translation is difficult at best even between modern languages, a word or phrase may have several possible translations and the translator must pick the one he believes best. Inevitably imperfect translators make mistakes. Furthermore it is possible for the writer to intend a word to be taken in more than one sense. Knowing how a passage might have been translated differently can help us see various possible meanings. 4. Historical commentaries. Often scripture was given in response to a particular historical situation or uses such a situation as an example or metaphor. 5. Literary commentaries. An understanding of the literary techniques used by the writers (often different from those in common use today) can help us see what they were trying to say. 6. "Interpretive" commentaries. Both professional commentators and other normal students of the scripture can give us insights we might otherwise overlook. While these should not be our primary source of information, I believe we should accept knowledge where it is available. However, I do not believe we should automatically accept a commentator's interpretation as the only or even a correct interpretation. Of course most commentaries do not limit themselves to only history, literature, or interpretation but have elements of all 3 (and often language comments as well). However, I think we do well to be aware of what tools a commentator is using and making available to us. The point is that all these tools (and likely some I have overlooked) can work together to help us get closer to a true understanding of God's word.