March 4, 2024 - #mondaymoment
Happy Monday, my friends! Recently, I began my journey as a church pastor and this very new experience has caused me to reflect on how I interpret the Bible. I want to share with you some of my thoughts on hermeneutics and how we can interpret this library of books called the Bible.
Hermeneutics is a word that pastors, preachers, social scientists, and scholars in general like to use. I’m sure I’ve used it before in Monday Moments and I utilized it extensively in my dissertation. Despite it being another “big word,” its meaning is pretty simple. Hermeneutics are the way or ways in which people make sense of their world and experiences or items in that world. In religious and faith-based spaces we most often discuss hermeneutics in terms of how we interpret our sacred texts. In fact, at times we even discuss how we interpret other people’s interpretations. Begging some grace from my friends who are scholars of Judaism, hermeneutics are often applied to the Talmud which is itself a hermeneutical text commenting on the Torah and other sacred Jewish writings. So too in Christianity, despite various groups arguing for Biblical inerrancy, there are distinct traditions of hermeneutics throughout Christianity.
Think back to your earliest memory with the Bible. What do you remember? The earliest and most vivid memory I can recall was a large Bible with a tan cover which sat open on a small table in the corner of the room where I attended the first grade. Because that room was in the church part of our church and school campus, on Sundays the lay ministers would gather there to talk and check-in for mass. It was a gathering space that I’m sure I experienced before first grade and would for many years later. As Roman Catholics, the Bible didn’t make many appearances at home, but I can recall my mother’s Bible given to her when she was young in some Baptist church with its blue cover and gilt edges. I don’t remember my father having a distinct Bible, but he did have a copy of the New Testament which a priest from his home parish had given him. I have that copy now in my collection of Bibles. Friends have joked that there is always a Bible within six feet of you in my apartment. My current apartment is no exception. I’d imagine more than a few of you are in a similar situation.
The Bible is clearly an important book for Christians, yet outside of seminaries and divinity schools we rarely are critical about our reading of it. Yes, many of us are critical of the Bible and point out its contradictions, endorsements of violence and outright murder, and the many depictions of what we would often call sin throughout its pages. But then we gloss over verses and passages which deserve just as much, if not more, careful analysis. We focus on one issue in the text, and we miss other issues which are just as important. Perhaps the best example of this is how we discuss and perceive the Bible itself. Among the early reformers, Martin Luther constructed a hermeneutic which read the Bible as a single, unified text to be interpreted consistently throughout. Couple this tradition with the printing of nearly all modern Bibles as single books and we know why we have come to view the Bible as a single, coherent text. In fact, the Bible is not a book, but a library of disparate books composed over a great deal of time and subject to inclusion or exclusion based on the wishes and whims of church bodies. Christians were one of the first groups to use the codex—loosely bound sheets of papyrus—instead of parchment scrolls made from sheepskin. In 2024 there is still no one accepted canonical Bible among all Christians. There is not even scholarly agreement about when, how, and the extent that source material was used in the composition if the four Gospels in our modern Bibles.
In this fluid textual landscape, it is for the reader and the interpreter, who can be one-in-the-same, to determine their interpretation of the Bible. For people indoctrinated in traditions where interpretation was disallowed or could only come from particular people, the idea that one can interpret the Bible for oneself is confusing, if not terrifying. Yet, the Bible itself calls for engagement both spiritual and critical. As a roughly assembled codex rather than a neatly produced scroll, it has always been open for addition, subtraction, revision, and definitely interpretation.
What does it mean to you to be able to interpret the Bible for yourself? What interpretations do you find most helpful?
Let us pray: Jesus, while you ministered on earth, even you interpreted sacred texts. Guide us as we make sense of Bible and interpret it faithfully in our time and through our identities and knowledge. Give us the wisdom to see your word through our various hermeneutics and to understand that you, your word, and your truth is vast enough to accommodate more than the total of our interpretations. We ask this knowing of your gracious favor and guidance to all. Amen.
Blessings on your weeks, my friends! Let me know if there is anything I can do for you.
Faithfully,
Ben
Comments