What would ya’ll think about discovering the Bible again? Learning to read it and really hear it? Does that resonate with anyone? Discovery? Curiosity? We should not be looking for right or wrong answers. We should just be looking for ways we read and study the bible that makes it meaningful to us.
For example, I like to read different versions to see how differences in language and wording make passages sound different or more vibrant.
Some practical suggestions for reading the Bible again
I’m in full agreement with you. I think that a lot of people are beginning to sense again that the Bible is geniunely worth reading. I have some other practical suggestions for learning to read the Bible again and really hear it:
1. There is a lot to be gained from reading the Bible in large chunks - several chapters or whole books at a time - rather than in disconnected, context-free, bite-sized fragments; we have spent too much time looking at the trees and have missed the forest.
2. The New Testament is dense with allusions to the Jewish scriptures; we need to learn to read the whole narrative and argumentative context from which these quotations and allusions are drawn and understand how these stories are being retold, reworked, reapplied. The ‘authors’ of the New Testament, including Jesus, are creative theologians.
3. I think it would also help to read non-canonical writings such as the Maccabean literature, Jewish apocalyptic texts, Josephus, etc., so that we allow the Bible to speak within its historical environment.
4. It may sometimes be helpful to ‘suspend’ our direct personal interest in the Word of God and simply listen in on an ancient conversation between God and his people: what were their issues? what did they fear? what hopes did they hold? I have suggested elsewhere that we need to rediscover the irrelevance of scripture.
5. Read with someone who is not a believer and who doesn’t share our prejudices and preconceptions.
"Again"?
I’d start by questioning the “again” part, but that’s just me. (Wittgenstein’s aren’t the only books I’ve read to thorough lack of understanding.)
To Andrew’s suggestions I’d tentatively (I’m underqualified to do it myself, otherwise I would have) add another: reading either testament in roughly chronological order, to look at how we understand them in unfolding development across time differently than we understand them as arranged ensembles (and by extension how we understand the arrangement.)
Yes, that applies to me
Yes, that applies to me too… after 23 years as an adult Christian I have gone deeper in the last 2 years than before in studying the bible… I have found myself re-reading with new eyes, and have changed position on aspects of theolgy that I didn’t think I would… ..the early and middle years of being a Christian were vital…getting to know Jesus, by His Spirit, …but I realise now that I thought I knew the bible and theolgy/doctrine quite well…but no…ever more to learn… :) as long as we carry on learning in the Spirit..and not over-intellectualising, which can let pride in.. Word and Spirit married together…