PsalterMark

The word Bible derives from the Greek word biblion which originally meant scroll. Over time the word Bible came to mean a collection of books of religious significance. In modern English the word tends to have a wider meaning as a massive tome providing comprehensive coverage of a topic. The object considered in this series of posts defies any simple attempt at classification. A key background issue to this series of posts is the differences of opinion on just what the Hebrew Bible is.

When we read the Hebrew Bible we interpret what is says having already made a decision as to what it is. This is the classic conundrum of interpreting any text—interpretation requires a starting point or to put it formally, presuppositions. The challenge of good reading is to allow the object to challenge these presuppositions.

Two polar presuppositions are worth considering in order to illustrate this point. The most conservative Christian readings perceive the Bible as the final word on matters beyond those of religion or doctrine to include history and science. Such a stance does not invite the possibility of reading the Bible and expecting to have this view challenged, modified or refined. Any apparent tensions or contradictions with secular accounts of history, geology, physics, psychology, etc. are explained in terms of the failings of the alternatives not as either limitations of the Bible or the possibility that the Bible has been interpreted inappropriately. At the other end of the presuppositional spectrum, the convinced atheist will tend to read the Bible in a similar but opposite fashion—such a reading reveals numerous discrepancies within the Bible. Such ‘discrpencies’ are especially apparent if the Hebrew Bible is read as a mechanical propositional account of the universe. I am not suggesting that either atheists or conservative Christians are deliberately closed to critical thinking or changing their minds, rather I am suggesting that these polar positions mean that the Bible is understood in a rigid way that resists adaption to a new understanding.

Both approaches have a tendency to flatten the Bible into propositional truth and ignore the poetic devices, literary forms and the nuances invited by the different genres of literature which comprise the Hebrew Bible. To make matters worse, some who read in this manner describe their readings as ‘literal’ when in fact they have removed the Bible a priori from the realm of literature.

My view of the Bible (either the whole Christian Bible or the Hebrew Bible) is that it is neither (i)  the product of cultures who imagined a God and sought to collect writings to testify to this claim in a haphazard and unconvincing manner, nor (ii) handed down from heaven as the final word on faith, science and history. This series of posts starts with the premise that this is a thoroughly human book—written over centuries, subject to editing and selection, diverse in genre and resistant to definition. This premise does not preclude either of the views mentioned above being correct in their judgement of the Bible’s veracity. It is, however, a starting point for what could in principle a more open journey to either theism or atheism. I have spent more than thirty years reading the Bible and am still ‘happy’ with the messy human premise but equally convinced that God was at work in the events that inspired the biblical authors, and working providentially in the authorship, collecting and editing of the constituent parts of the Bible. Year-on-year I find myself revising the details of my understanding of the nature of scripture and want to remain open to finding out from the Bible itself, just what it actually is. Perhaps this latter point is still an act of faith—believing that the Bible can change readers, can teach, can transform. But it can also be seen as a working hypothesis which is constantly being tested.