G
Gaber
Guest
I agree with this as a first step. You always give your informant a chance to say his piece. But step two of step one is that then you get very critical in analysis and learn about both yourself and the Bible as phenomena and artifact. I like Dorothy Parker’s statement: “This is a novel that should not be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force!” Of course we wouldn’t come to that kind of conclusion about the Bible unless we are an atheist and hav those reasons for doing so. But in the mean time as alleged Christians, we have then the responsibility, if we don’t take the easy way out, to not take things on simple faith and actually do a background check on the material we are reading and its presenters. That, as I’m sure you rightly know, can be very revalatory! And that certainly applies to the first three hundred years of our Church. It may not exactly be what it was then. You knw the reasons if you’ve done youor homework and aren’t looking through the lense of uncritical piety.HOW SHOULD I READ THE BIBLE?
Part One
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1.** Read uncritically.** I know very little about art, but I am quite sure that at the first sight of a picture one should not go very close to it and concentrate on some detail; one should stand away from it and let the picture as a whole make its impression upon one’s mind. So I suggest we should read St. Mark’s Gospel right through, if possible at a sitting, glossing over the difficulties. Say to yourself concerning them, ‘I will come back and examine them later’, but first of all read uncritically, so that you see not details, but a Person at work in a human setting and dealing with men and woman like ourselves. Just try to let the whole picture of Jesus which Mark gives us make its own impression upon your mind. That is of tremendous importance, because afterwards you will judge all your Bible reading by your picture of Jesus. And so it is all-important to have your central picture of Jesus clear in your mind. If we are perfectly sure of Jesus we can be content to be uncertain about a lot of other matters.
And this goes for art as well. In my work I’m often asked to critique work. And while you are right that at first I look at it and let it soak in, that is only so that I might take on as a hypothesis the position of the artist who produced the work. But then there are lines of uestioning about the ground, the light, the medium, the intent, the context, the person of the artist, and many other considerations.
Similarly, with the Bible, we look into the nature of communication, written and spoken, the nature of collections and canons, then and now, the “rules” of writing and reportage then and now, translation and its abilities and short comings, meaning and its meaning, the cultural context of what was written, epistemology, history, phenomenology, semantics, symbolic logic, the influence of other ideas, religions and philoasophies, the nature of spiritual insight, such ideas as the “structural differential” and the “four quadrents,” etc, etc, etc. So no, we don’t just uncritically accept what is presented as a simple first impression as a informative guide or model for accepting wholesale what follows in subsequent readings, Nor do we use it as a panacea for erasiing questions raised by contradictions, inconsistencies, or dissonance.