Tips on How To Read the Bible
May 26, 2024
When one goes through the readings of today, one may notice in the first reading a promise from God that his people will prosper if they follow God’s commandments. However, in the second reading, we are told that we are called to share in Jesus’ sufferings before we can share in his glory, apparently in the next life. Then what happened to the prosperity promised in this life that the earlier reading spoke about? And then again, in the Gospel we are told to follow Jesus’ commandments, but there is no promise of prospering - a fact that is further confirmed in Jesus’ own life where one could hardly say he ‘prospered’ in the meaning of the first reading. In fact, in this Gospel reading, we have a Jesus who like Yahweh claims that all authority (often identified with power) has been given to him, but we know that in reality the authority he was referring to was not the kind of authority where he controlled everything, since he could not prevent his own crucifixion, nor could he prevent the suffering of all his disciples after his death. Aren’t these teachings/readings a bit contradictory?
In earlier blogs I have dealt with the idea that there are indeed contradictory messages in the Bible and this makes it very difficult for ordinary Christians, who do not have theological training, to understand the Scriptures. This difficulty was clearly something that Jesus realised in his own time. His own disciples, even till after his death, just could not understand how his own life made any sense in the context of what the Old Testament seemed to be teaching them. Thus we read that when he met the disciples who were running away to Emmaus (Luke 24:25-27) and again when he appeared to the disciples after that, he had to open “their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures” (Luke 24:25) and thus explain to them how his own life made sense within the context of those earlier Scriptural passages. The author of Mathew’s Gospel also realised this difficulty in trying to harmonise what Jesus taught with all that the Old Testament was teaching, and hence he makes great efforts to say that Jesus did this or said that ‘in order to fulfil the Scriptures’. The Jewish religious establishment, too, could make no sense of Jesus’ claims in the light of their own great and in-depth study of their own Scriptures. In fact, the Catholic Church was quite aware of this difficulty in understanding Scripture, and hence, for many centuries, refused to allow translations of the Bible into the vernaculars - i.e. languages spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region, - apparently out of a concern that it would confuse the ordinary Catholic.
But once the Bible was allowed to be translated, and the liturgy too began to be celebrated in the vernacular, an attempt was made to help people understand the Bible by offering online and face-to-face classes, that today many Christians choose to go to. While this, of course, is a good thing, one must remember that it is clear from even a cursory overview of what is being taught in different places that there is a whole range of views on what the Bible teaches, views that range along an extremely wide continuum from those who believe everything in the Bible is to be taken as literally true, to those who believe everything is purely symbolical.
So how do we know what the Bible is really teaching us? What messages can we take from the Biblical passages? How do we read the Bible?
There is, of course, no easy way to read the Bible. But there are a few general principles that could be gleaned from mainline Scripture scholars of various Christian traditions that could perhaps help an ordinary reader.
The first ‘guiding principle’ that the ‘ordinary’ Christian must keep in mind when reading the Bible is that the Bible is, as I have said above, the story of a journey. It is not an answer book or a study guide with all the right answers. So the practice of ‘dipping’ into Scripture by opening the Bible at a random page and looking for an answer is extremely dangerous, because every passage has a context. The well-known story of the six blind men and the elephant is a clear example where picking and choosing one aspect actually leads us completely into error. It must be remembered that each book of the Bible was chosen by the Jewish/Christian community out of many other potential ‘books’, each reflecting a particular author’s reflection on his/her journey of relating with God. Out of these many, it is the community that finally gave its stamp of approval on those writings that most closely reflected the community’s collective understanding of that stage of its journey. So while individual quotes may resonate with us, and clear dos and donts may make it easier to live our lives, the fact is that all this actually truly becomes the Word of God for us only if we understand the entire collective message that the entire journey teaches us, otherwise it remains the perspective of one particular author or school of thought.
However, since the journey/pilgrimmage described in the Bible is a long one and it is not always possible to read the whole story to get the context of one passage, the Catholic Church, by including three readings at every Sunday Mass, tries to offer us a complete overview of what is known as the history of salvation over three liturgical years. Thus, the three different readings that we have every Sunday have been chosen so that almost always, the first reading is taken from the Old Testament, the second reading from the non-Gospel parts of the New Testament, and the third (Gospel) reading is taken from one of the four Gospels. Moreover, the selections are such that, more often than not, the first and third readings are ‘connected’. Today, for example, in both the first and third reading (Gospel), as mentioned earlier, we have the power and authority of God being referred to - though the two readings are so different that they seem to indicate that there is clearly a pilgrimmage of growth and understanding of these terms between the times when these two readings were written.
Secondly, since we know that these Biblical passages cannot or rather should not be taken in isolation, one thing that can be helpful when reading the Bible is to look for themes that come repeatedly in the Bible at different places. Thus, as I have mentioned in a previous blog, when we are exploring the meaning of suffering, we will find this theme coming repeatedly at various points in the Bible (How Do We Make Sense of Suffering?). Or when we are trying to understand an event like the Resurrection, we must realise that this is described differently in different parts of the New Testament (Having an Adult Faith) It is only within the context of these different passages on the same theme that we can hope to find the meaning of the individual Biblical passage we read.
A third principle that is increasingly becoming important today as human knowledge and our understanding of other religions expand, is that we must remember that the books of the Bible do not constitute the end of our pilgrimmage. Hence, we need to bring an inquisitive mind to the Biblical passages that we choose to read, a mind that takes our own real-life experience seriously, and also all the ‘truths’’ we can get from all other human sources of knowledge that we have, and even from other religious insights in as much as we have knowledge of them. In other words, we do not try to understand what could be the message of the Biblical passage in a blind and passive manner. As Vatican 2 confirms, we need to be constantly open to the signs of our times, for God continues to speak to us in many and various ways. For who are we to control God’s willingness and capability to continue to speak to us? We must use the Bible as a take-off point, not denying the lessons we have learnt from it, the insights we have gained from it, but equally not allowing it to become a straitjacket so that we cannot think beyond it. After all, ultimately truth, wherever it comes from, will always lead us to God, for God is ultimate TRUTH.
(For a reflection on the Trinity see my blog - Is My Relationship With the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit)
First Reading: Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40
'Put this question, then, to the ages that are past, that have gone before you, from when God created the human race on earth: Was there ever a word so majestic, from one end of heaven to the other? Was anything like it ever heard? Did ever a people hear the voice of the living God speaking from the heart of the fire, as you have heard it, and remain alive? Has it ever been known before that any god took action himself to bring one nation out of another one, by ordeals, signs, wonders, war with mighty hand and outstretched arm, by fearsome terrors -- all of which things Yahweh your God has done for you before your eyes in Egypt?
'Hence, grasp this today and meditate on it carefully: Yahweh is the true God, in heaven above as on earth beneath, he and no other. Keep his laws and commandments as I give them to you today, so that you and your children after you may prosper and live long in the country that Yahweh your God is giving you for ever.'
Reading 2, Romans 8:14-17
All who are guided by the Spirit of God are sons of God; for what you received was not the spirit of slavery to bring you back into fear; you received the Spirit of adoption, enabling us to cry out, 'Abba, Father!' The Spirit himself joins with our spirit to bear witness that we are children of God. And if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, provided that we share his suffering, so as to share his glory.
Meanwhile the eleven disciples set out for Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had arranged to meet them.
When they saw him they fell down before him, though some hesitated. Jesus came up and spoke to them. He said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And look, I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.'
Comments
Post a Comment