maggi dawn

Hermeneutics quiz

Will at Rambling Red Rose flagged up a hermeneutics quiz featured in Christianity today. I did the quiz over my morning tea today. 

My PhD research fell more or less into the category of theology known as hermeneutics - which, for the uninitiated, simply means the art/science of interpreting texts, especially though not exclusively the Bible.  Despite (or perhaps because of) being over-qualified in the subject, I didn't get quite a bit of what the quiz was aiming at. And intriguingly several of the multiple choice answers were very ambiguous - perhaps this was a deliberate hermeneutic trick?  My score of 98 indicated an almost off-the-chart progressive.  Although it must be said that the three categories (conservative, moderate and progressive) might have been better termed conservative, moderate and "other", since the progressive category would have included critical realists, traditional liberals, postmodernists, non-realists... 

It's still worth a tea-break, though, just as a bit of fun and a quick thought-provoker on your own assumptions about how you/we read and interpret the Bible.

digital Ignatius

Crafty Curate revisits the Ignatian idea of placing yourself within the story as you read, using "camera angles" in 3D software. It's not how I would imagine the story... But it gives you instant access to the concept of Ignatian reading... clever stuff.  Thanks Richard! 

The Evangelical Hermeneutic

Rev Lamblove in interesting form again, about how the Evangelical culture trains people to read the Bible

Words and the word: the family bible

Stonewall Jackson's family Bible

The idea that the family bible would be owned, and read, by the family has a venerable history. But it is not altogether clear how much the Bibles were actually read. The value of the Family Bible was sometimes seen less in its being a book to read, and more in its role as a safekeeper of family history, and a sign of God's blessing on the household. It became the tradition to inscribe significant family dates in the opening pages - x married y; list of their children's births and baptisms, etc. This gave the Family Bible the air of a talisman - that its presence in the house was more important than reading or understanding the texts within it.

All kinds of things are prone to taking on the status of an artefact - they become more important as a symbol of what they represent than as what they are in themsleves. And the Bible has been supremely prone to this kind of veneration. Unfortunately, it has the effect, in Christianity, of ossifying the religion to which it pertains. When the book becomes a talisman, and has superstitious value, then faith in the living God may easily be diminished. There's a fine line between symbolism, metaphor, understanding of truth-through-beauty, and the kind of superstition that places faith in an object, not in the wider truth perceived in and through a work of art, music, literature. Symbolism enriches faith; superstition ossifies it.

There are faiths, of course, in which the book itself really is deemed to be an object of faith. Sikhism (a most attractive religion in many ways) treats its scriptures as literally Holy; the scriptures are only handled (and then very respectfully) by people appointed to the task; the book is put in its little shrine-like place each day, and at night - almost with the reverence of putting it into its bed - it is tucked into soft fabrics and put away for the night.<>

But the Bible cannot be treated with the same veneration, because within our belief system the scriptures are not a Holy BOOK as such. Rather, they are a collection of books that convey the knowledge of something, someone, Holy. The book is a medium of communication, a source of authority in matters of faith and practice, a book that is valued above other books for its role in our faith.  Ultimately the book itself it is dispensible, because it is not deemed to be the words (literally) of God, but a witness to the Word of God (Jesus Christ). There will be no Bible on a stand in Heaven.

reading the bible is like flat hunting

Here's an interesting analogy for interpreting the Bible:

One of my lecturers has used the analogy of a young couple looking to rent a flat to describe the dilemma. There is a tension between the original state of the property as the lease agreement was signed, and the degree to which the couple may alter the flat to make it their own. A subjective reading of the OT takes the view of the tenant, but when does the re-decorating of the original become a distortion and not an enhancement. A more objective reading would take the view of the landlord; that the apartment should stay as originally designed without any alterations or modifications, leaving the tenants without a homely environment.

hat tip to Jon  

100-minute Bible

A bible you can read in one hour and forty minutes? It was featured on the Today programme this morning. Good things about it: it gives the main plot (in someone's POV!) without all the begats, food laws, etc; it may well serve as a "trailer" for the main show (each section comes with a note as to where you can find it in the full length version).  Bad things: it flattens all the literary variety - what began as 66 books in a mix of poetry, law, history, narrative, polemic, epistle, apocalyptic and so on, is now one narrative in one style. And as every student of literature knows, if you change the form, you change the meaning too.

I am constantly horrified at how many undergraduates arrive in Cambridge - even those who have come to read literature, history or theology - without ever having read the Bible. You cannot assume, even among the better-read of our youth, that they will know what you mean if you mention Cain and Abel, the fall of Jericho, the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, or what happened at Easter. How the next generation is going to understand their Shakespeare, Donne, Chaucer or Milton, I can't imagine. If the 100-minute Bible at least whets a few appetites, and persuades a few to read the real thing, that could only be good.

dissonant bible

I love the Bible. And I hate the way its capacity for meaning gets reduced and narrowed. SO I'm looking forward to reading this new blog by Mark, who writes and thinks in v. interesting ways about the texts. Go read!

proof-texting for idiots...

Greenflame puts his finger on one of the problems of "using" bible text to back up your theological argument...

TNIV - a feminist agenda?

Don't make me laugh...
report here from Ekklesia

TNIV

interesting post from Hugo on hermeneutics and the TNIV.  He's right that the words we read completely affect the ideas we create. Unless we are willing to get fascinated with language we'll miss half the ideas that are out there - and a whole slice of the reality of God.