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
4 Responses to “reading the bible is like flat hunting”
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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.
This is Maggi’s bestselling book of daily readings for each day of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. Advent is the beginning of the Church year, and marks the anticipation of the coming Messiah. These readings explore how beginnings and endings in our own lives are illuminated by the different Gospel narratives of Christ's coming.
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Isn’t it a bit more like a tent that has to be reassembled repeatedly wherever you are, conscious of the need for the right bit of clearing to pitch on. You have to use all the bits that are available but never in the same order and some bits can be interchangeable…And the tent’s never quite like home. If it’s too comfortable, you’re not really camping…
Deryck Sherriffs in his epic ‘The Friendship of the Lord: Spirituality of the Old Testament’ devotes the first chapter to this hermeneutical analogy. It’s getting harder to find the book but it’s possibly the most helpful I’ve found on OT spirituality and how he unpacks this metaphor is beautiful.
One of the increasing tensions in OT readings is between text, however interpreted, and history. New evidence from digs has raised questions concerning some of the OT’s most siginificant events. It would seem that at least in US scholarly quarters that the OT is increasingly treated as a composite narrative. Story seems to increasingly be the interprative focus. This would suggest that the ’surface’of the text is the center of gravity, but the meaning is perhaps more in the readers mind than the authors intention.
I think a large problem with the Bible has been many people treat it like they would treat a novel or a newspaper; you can maybe read it for 15 minutes, and if not, you toss it and read something simpler.
The great works of literature require patience and time to read and understand, and the Bible is no different. The Bible contains many layers of meaning and this is why great Christian thinkers in the past have read it in several ways. Generally Christian thinkers have prayed for Christ, the Logos, to enlighten the mind and to guide it in wisdom in uncovering the meaning. The monastic tradition is especially interesting in this regard, since monks and nuns learned to incorporate the bible into life as one of the symbols of God’s prescence.
One thing people forget is the need for God, who himself is incomprehensible in his own essence to anyone in this life, mediates himself to us by symbols. The use of symbolism and creative art to make appropriate symbols for invisible spiritual realities then has always been very important, and we can see the beauty which is formed from the icons in the Orthodox Church to Dante’s poems to the works of art in the Basilica in Rome. Many Christian thinkers liked to say there are two books for us to learn from about God; the book of nature (which shows God’s glory) and the word of God itself, the Bible.
In terms of numinous power, becoming spiritual is learning to see all things in terms of their sacredness because they participate in the goodness of God and creation. The Bible helps us in this, provided we carry the same sense of sacredness and holiness to places outside of the Bible and the Church.