Customer Reviews

The Art of Reading Scripture

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In an intellectual climate where to be a "Bible scholar" often means to stand in suspicion of the texts under investigation, it is a rare occasion when scholars "come out of the closet" and confess their stance as disciples of Jesus Christ. Postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonial theory are all very important perspectives with which to reveal the ways in which biblical narratives, like any "sacred" texts, can be abused by people seeking power over others. However, when this revealing is the endpoint of exegesis, readers are left wondering why bother with reading the Bible at all, except to consign it to the dust bin of history.

The alternative is all too often an un-critical fundamentalism, wherein the Bible is "preserved" from the critics by an irrational literalism. This stance is, of course, itself a reaction growing out of the Enlightenment and postmodernism, whether such readers are aware of it or not.

In the midst of these extremes comes this wonderful collection of essays by a broadly ecumenical group of scholars. It begins with a series of principles to which the authors ascribe by which the Bible, in their collective view, should be approached. The essays then unpack these principles, not systematically but episodically. Some articles are reflective theory: how to deal with the uncomfortable texts in the Bible; how to read Hebrew Scripture as a Christian without supersessionism, and so forth. Others take specific texts (such as the Akedah, Gen 22; or the story of Joseph) and listen to them within the wider and longer narrative of the Bible.

The result is a rich feast for thought for the Christian who, in the words of Marcus Borg (not represented in this volume), "take the Bible seriously, but not literally." One will not likely agree with all of the passionately argued positions, but formulating one's basis for disagreement is itself a fruitful exercise.

My one criticism is that the authors have not, by and large, taken into account the situation of the church today in the locus imperii: we must read not simply as followers of Jesus in the abstract, but in a particular historical moment in which human Empire threatens the planet with climate change, massive poverty and systemic violence. Quite a few scholars in recent years have been engaging both the challenge of reading the Bible as disciples and also the imperial context of our lives, such as, most recently, Neil Elliott's The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire (Paul in Critical Contexts).

But for many ordinary Christians who are seeking a closer knowledge of the Word, that is a second step, after coming to grips with the preliminary issues so ably engaged in these essays. Read it as an act of prayer!

From the cover of this book I was really dreading reading it. The collection of essays has turned out to be really quite good. Very unexpected.