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.
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
In an increasingly secularised society few people have a good working knowledge of the Bible. Yet a great deal of our culture is built on stories or ideas that come from the Bible. Literature, art, music, language and even the fabric of our society - such as our justice system - are built on Christian concepts and biblical references. The Writing on the Wall provides a fascinating introduction to the Bible's best-known, and most influential, stories. Each chapter gives some background to the text of the Bible, and shows how the stories have become enmeshed in Western culture. Adam and Eve, the ten plagues of Egypt, The Prodigal Son and Mary Magdalene all feature - along with how the Bible has influenced everyone from Shakespeare to Monty Python, and Caravaggio to Banksy. 
Giving It Up explores the Lenten idea of 'giving up', taking it beyond the traditional idea of simply abstaining from something, and suggesting instead that what we need to give up is our existing ideas about God. With a daily readings for each day of Lent, from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, it follows the heroes of the Bible who had to give up their own too-small ideas about God.
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Thanks for the recommendation – I enjoyed it – and agreed with the criticisms you made. But still worth reading.
I’ve been looking for this book everywhere recently. I see that it’s now available on amazon and ships quickly (a while ago it was saying it would ship in a couple of weeks). Is it only just now starting to trickle into the UK bookstores? I’d love to read it…