Comments keep coming in about scripture, puzzling over the way religious people attend to archaic texts. Here Frank Moloney adds to Melanie Landau’s reflection on reading scripture, from the perspective of someone who has spent seventy years (almost) reading and reflecting on the scriptures of his tradition:
I am very sensitive to the problem that many people have with reading Scripture. On the one hand there are many who regard it as pre-scientific, or even just silly: full of the world of a God who speaks to human beings, manipulates human history, works miracles, and even an incarnate Son of God who, though crucified, is reported as rising from the dead. How can such texts, especially such narrative texts (“stories”) claim to be in some way normative for anyone today?
On the other hand, there are many for whom the Bible is normative. They read texts, both the stories and the more didactic material, as if they were either 21st century texts reporting things exactly as they happened, or as if they are to be accepted as literal eye-witness reports, which thus cannot be challenged. To such readers, no critical question can or should be raised.
Most people fall in between, and simply do not bother with the Sacred Scriptures of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible. They are vaguely aware of some of the great stories (often through artistic representation), but would never take a word from Scripture as relevant to their lives.
This is a pity, because the Scriptures had their birth in “real life,” and need to be read in the light of our “real lives” in order to be better understood. None of the biblical authors thought of themselves as writing texts that would become normative for millennia. The authors of the first five books of the Bible (and there are several, as the books are made up of a number of traditions, assembled into their present form at a much later date) wanted to explain why there was so much evil and suffering about. Was God responsible? Does God exist? They wanted to know where the people of Israel came from, how they should live together. They wanted to know more about their choice to belong to only one God. So they thought about these things, prayed about them, told stories about them as they sat by the fire at night … and gradually their experiences began to surface in traditions that meant everything to them. These traditions remained alive, and were eventually shaped into the book of the Hebrew Scriptures.
It is respect for their questions and their experiences that must lead us beyond (and especially behind) a literal reading of a text that necessarily reflects its time and place. The questions that were asked then are asked by believers – and even non-believers – now. Across the centuries, we can sense the experience that we share with them, as they tell their stories, and reflect theologically upon those stories, as they tell of the prophets calling them back to their original faithfulness and so on.
But unless we respect where these experiences came from, and how they were shaped, then however we read (or do not read) Scripture, we miss the point. The biblical Word of God does not plummet into life and society with a “once and for all” response. It asks us to enter into a world where the presence of God has been felt, and asks if we share that experience.
The same must also be said for the Christian Testament. Gospels were written decades after the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is the experience of this tiny group of crazy people who believed that Jesus was alive and among them, that they were energised by his Spirit as they tried to live, love, die and rise as he did, that is found in those pages. That is why the four Gospels are such different “stories.” They reflect different experiences of the one determining event: the person of Jesus.
Unfortunately, fundamentalist biblical readers are the people most recognised in the broader discussion. They are courageous and they speak out. They are also members of powerful churches. Indeed, most church institutions are uncomfortable with the type of approach to the Scriptures that I have sketched: an approach that allows the Bible to reflect human experiences matching our own, “sets people free” from the institutions’ use of them for their own doctrinal and legal purposes.
It is important to remember that the experience of believing individuals and communities produced the Bible. Those individuals and communities both created the Bible, and – as institutions – keep it alive in their lives and liturgies. However, the Bible strikes back. Read properly, respecting where, why and how it was written, it is a problem for institutions. All human institutions want to control the Word. But the word bites back, and acts as a thorn in the side of any institution that wishes to be an end in itself.
In the end, this is the dangerous edge of a correct use of Scripture: it asks us to be what we claim to be. This is also a reason why many reject the Bible: it asks the questions they cannot – or do not wish to – answer.
Frank Moloney STL (PSU) SSL (PBI) DPhil (Oxon) STD Honoris Causa (St Mary’s Seminary and University, Baltimore, USA) FAHA has served as a member of the International Theological Commission to the Vatican.
and that’s the whole problem, liberal theists like the author realise that the bible can’t be taken literally, whilst many others don’t. Supposedly all christians follow the same one god from the same one bible, but a thousand different religions interpret the bible differently. Even within the same religious sect they don’t all agree how the bible should be interpreted. So why should anyone believe any of it is true or relevant?
The final sentence “This is also a reason why many reject the Bible: it asks the questions they cannot – or do not wish to – answer.” is wrong.
It should read: This is also a reason why many reject the Bible: it raises so many questions which cannot be answered.
The ‘right’ or ‘proper’ way to read the text: this is indeed the issue. But who determines what is right and proper? And how do they know this? It’s fine to critique the fundamentalist literalist, but the very same critique will be levelled by them against you: it is you who is reading it in the improper manner.
And I’m not sure what to make of your final comments, specifically, This is also a reason why many reject the Bible: it asks the questions they cannot – or do not wish to – answer. To whom is such a remark addressed? If other Christians, then fine, whatever. Apologia has little to no interest to me as an atheist. But if it is directed to atheists as one class of people who do not accept the Bible, then it seems to be a comment of high hubris. I’m also not sure what these questions are that are inspired by a reading of the Bible. But whatever these questions are, as I wrote in reply to Reading Scripture 1, there are plenty of sources where questions are raised in readers’ minds. The Bible is neither exceptional nor exhaustive in this regard.
“It asks us to enter into a world where the presence of God has been felt, and asks if we share that experience.”
No.
What has this got to do with the Global Atheist Convention?
Really .. I mean, every platform you can get is it?
This is just a platform for christian propaganda
I’ve got to agree with Davo.
While this is mostly unobjectionable drivel, what on earth has it got to do with the Convention?
‘This is also a reason why many reject the Bible: it asks the questions they cannot – or do not wish to – answer’
The real reason why many reject the bible: they’ve read it.
‘Read properly … correct use of Scripture’
Ouch.
Atheists love Biblical literalists, because they make for a consistent, fixed target. This is a great example:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/03/american-family-associati_n_484022.html
They are demanding exactly what the Bible unambiguously demands. They are demanding something that is unambiguously barmy. As a good atheist rationalist, bound by the constraints of logic and unable to imagine a non-scientific reality, I can express this as an equation:
What the Bible demands = What they are demanding = Barmy.
Or ‘What the Bible demands is barmy’.
The ‘correct way to read’ that passage is to laugh at it and question the sanity of the people that wrote it, let alone the people who’d follow it to the letter three thousand years on. Seriously – who needs straw men when you have Christian fundamentalists? We atheists could sit around for weeks brainstorming crazy things a fundamentalist might say, but it’s much easier just to go to fstdt.com to find out what they’re actually saying.
So, that’s the literalists out of the way. We all agree that they’re always barmy about everything.
‘This is also a reason why many reject the Bible: it asks the questions they cannot – or do not wish to – answer.’
There are some questions, like ‘why aren’t you stoning that whale to death?’, that don’t deserve an answer.
There’s no ‘metaphorical’ way to interpret Exodus 21:29, the ‘context’ is obvious – it’s a set of laws. It’s not church twisting doctrine for their own ends. There’s the ‘Jesus came along and he said we can pick and choose from the Old Testament’ card, but that’s about as biblically justified as saying that there’s a bit in the Bible where God says we should try to catch Avatar in the cinema because the 3D’s awesome.
You’re trying to have it both ways here. You’re trying to say that the Bible is broadly reliable, except for all the unreliable bits. It’s all literal apart from the metaphors. It’s all sensible, except the silly stuff. You’re talking about a ‘correct reading’ as if that’s all settled and there are just some awkward people who don’t know how to read it correctly, most of whom, you seem to be suggesting, are also Christians.
‘None of the biblical authors thought of themselves as writing texts that would become normative for millennia.’
And that’s a fantastically cynical way of spinning it. You know your history of the writing and codification of the Bible, so you know that what you said is true *but only because the people writing the Bible thought the apocalypse was imminent* and they thought that *because Jesus told them* and that as they came up with new Gospels *they had to do some frantic rewriting and editing and adding to explain why it hadn’t happened yet* and that a couple of hundred years down the line, they scrubbed as much of the apocalyptic stuff out as they could get away with, including at least half a dozen books early Christians saw as an essential part of Christian faith.
The fact Jesus predicted a series of things that then didn’t happen, at all, was enough to almost break even CS Lewis’s faith, and he wrestled with the problem all his life.
There is moral guidance in the Bible that’s worth following. There’s plenty more that’s nonsense – God thinks children should be torn apart by a she-bear for mocking baldness, for example. There’s plenty of ethical problems we face now that simply aren’t represented in the Bible. There’s ethical guidance in there that’s abhorrent, not simply absurd – Jesus says slavery’s fine as long as you’re nice to your slaves, God says we should ‘terrorize’ all animals.
The Bible says you shouldn’t pick and choose, it says that numerous times. It’s all or nothing, rough and smooth, His way or the highway. You don’t do that, you pick and choose. Everyone picks and chooses. The ‘correct’ way to read the Bible is the same way as the advice column in a women’s magazine: occasionally there’s a good tip, most of the stuff’s obvious, some of it’s actively absurd, following every piece of advice to the letter means you’ll be too fat, too thin, too judgmental, not judgmental enough, a sex maniac and a virgin.
The problem with Biblical advice is not ‘it raises so many questions which cannot be answered’ it’s that it’s possible to use it to justify every possible answer to any question. Or it gives barmy answers to sensible questions.
Yes Davo you are correct–this site altogether IS essentially a platform for Christian propaganda–with a nod to Judaism too.
Frank Moloney
Reading the bible as a teenager helped me lose my faith.
My faith never returned but I do still enjoy occasionally dipping into the bible. In fact I am the only non-believer I know who has a collection of them. I read it a little like you do by the sound of your post, as a kind of poetry, as a reflection of human experience expressed in metaphors and stories. It fascinates me to think that so many millions have pored over it and still do.
I note that Hithchens and Dawkins both like the KJV. But my favourite is “The Soldier’s Bible”, A Holman Christian Standard Bible with Special Prayer and Devotional Section for Army Personnel, clad in Army green with the Army emblem on the cover and a slide-tab enclosure.
It is a literate scholarly edition but some of its special content is a bit alarming. For example, David L Clark CSM (Ret) US Army Special Forces says: “When Satan killed the flesh of Jesus the Lamb, he unleashed the power of Christ the Lion of Judah. We have our orders spelled out in the Bible, the Holy, inerrant, infallible, Word of God. We know how we are supposed to train; we know how we are supposed to fight. So soldier on, my brothers, soldier on.”
To say the least, I don’t think CSM (Ret) Clark reads the bible like me, or you for that matter. Its a malleable text, the bible.
I bought the Soldier’s Bible at the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos, where the US maintains its nuclear weapons. Puts a new light on Revelation, I think.
Incidentally, I thoroughly enjoyed “The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot”. You did a great job adding the nuanced and erudite world of biblical scholarship to Jeffrey Archer’s work. Though I did think Archer made Judas a little too self conscious.
I guess you took part in that project with an ex-con to gain a wide audience of potential bible readers. From memory, you did get some publicity because Fr Paul Mankowski who had some official position in the Catholic Church hierarchy attacked you.
But I suspect I am an outlier, one of the few not in your community who read that book. That’s understandable. Time is short and ancient texts, even fake ones, are not every bodies first choice in reading, unless the author’s name is Dan Brown.
I do agree with your suggestion that sacred texts are distillations of human experience and longing. So are many non-sacred texts.
Knowing the little I do about the depth of your thinking and work, I wonder about your fit with your co-religionists.