How to Read the Bible (Without Switching Off Your Brain)

Simon J. Taylor, Simon Taylor

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780281073801
• eBook ISBN: 9780281073818
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Bibles

This clear and practical approach will enable anyone to read the Bible better.

Tackles the key questions that people ask about the Bible. Courteous and humorous style helps break through preconceptions. Explains all its references (and, indeed, how the Bible is referred to).

Suitable for individual use or in study or book groups Bible reading for everyone - that's what this book offers! It will speak to those who already read the Bible but find themselves asking why; and to those who don't read the Bible but would like to if only it weren't so strange.

It explains what the Bible is, offers an overview of what is found in it, and addresses questions people ask, such as: Does science disprove the Bible? Why is there so much violence in the Bible? What does the Bible say about sex?

The author also presents an account of reading the Bible in the context of a life of faith and suggests how the Bible might be integrated with a life of prayer.

1

How to read the Bible

The Bible . . . is a book that has been read more, and examined less, than any book that ever existed.

Thomas Paine¹

Open up the Bible and you will find a talking snake, people living for hundreds of years, giants walking the earth, an elderly couple moving to live in a strange land, angels sitting down at table, a woman turning into salt, a man trying to sacrifice his own son, marriages on the basis of who a servant met at a well, a father who can’t tell the difference between his sons, a man tricked into marrying the elder sister of his intended, flocks of sheep that bore speckled and striped fleeces, and a slave falsely convicted of rape who becomes the second most powerful man in the kingdom. Through all of this, God is present. God speaks, gets angry, sends floods, protects people, makes promises, calls people to abandon all that they know, wrestles with a man through the night and guides his chosen people. And that is just the first book of the Bible!

The Bible is a strange book – it is supposed to be. There are things in it that date back thousands of years. There are things that speak of odd and difficult experiences. It is all right to find the Bible strange, difficult or odd. It is also a book that can speak powerfully to us. Because it is strange it can come into our world in an angular way and disrupt our normal patterns of looking and give us something new, something to learn. The Bible needs to be strange because it is trying to point beyond human experience to God, and God is not part of our world. Perhaps it is only through the strange, surprising and puzzling that we can be told something about God.

Chapter and verse

Before we begin to look at how to read this strange and fascinating book we need to look at the numbers you will find in the margin or through the text of almost all Bibles. Each book of the Bible has been divided into chapters and verses in order to make it easier to navigate. The convention is to write the name of a book, a chapter and then a verse so that the reader can find things from larger divisions to small ones. So if I were to write ‘John 11.35’, to find this you would look at the Gospel of John. Then you would find chapter 11 and then verse 35. It reads ‘Jesus began to weep’ or in some translations ‘Jesus wept’. It is the shortest verse in the Bible.

These divisions are very helpful, and a chapter is usually a chunk that it makes sense to read together. Some care needs to be taken when reading, however, as the chapters and verses were not something the biblical writers included. They were added later. Chapters were added by a thirteenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton (1150–1228). Verses had to wait until the sixteenth century, when the system devised in 1551 by Robert Estienne, a French printer, was adopted. Just occasionally the chapter divisions of the Bible cut across the sense of a longer argument and may skew our understanding.

How not to read the Bible

The obvious way to read the Bible, and the downfall of many, would seem to be to pick it up, start on page one and finish at the end. That is how we normally approach a book. However, doing this will mean that you will struggle to reach the end of the book of Genesis (the first book of the Bible). If you make it through that you will almost certainly fail to finish the book of Leviticus (the third book). It is important to remember that the Bible is a library, and as such we can choose books from different places. There are books we wouldn’t dream of reading cover to cover, such as text- books and telephone directories. There are particular ways of making sense of these books, suited to the sort of book they are. The Bible also has ways of reading that are particular to itself. Beginning at page one is not one of them. I have nothing against the discipline of reading through the whole Bible – perhaps it is something every Bible reader should do at least once in their life. But it should not be the normal way.

Another way of engaging with the Bible to avoid is the ‘lucky dip’ approach, opening it at random and reading whatever you find. There is a cautionary tale of a man who opened his Bible and stuck a pin in the page to find the verse he would take as his reading for the day. One day he did this and the pin landed on Matthew 27.5. This tells of Judas despairing at having betrayed Jesus and says: ‘Throwing down the pieces of silver in the Temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself.’ Not finding this a great inspiration for the day ahead, the man tried again. This time the pin landed on Luke 10.37, the end of the parable of the Good Samaritan, ‘Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”’ Getting worried now, the man tried once more. This time the pin landed on John 13.27, and he read ‘Jesus said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do.”’ This story is a warning against using the Bible as a fortune teller. It is not a magic book, providing the right words at random. It is a book that embodies a conversation about God and his people. Random snippets of conversation rarely enlighten us but are very good at leading to misunderstandings!

None of this is to deny that at times particular verses stand out and seem to say something very particular and pertinent to us in the situations in which we find ourselves. Many Bible readers will attest to having been surprised and challenged, guided and helped by particular words or phrases. One great example is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor executed in 1945 for his part in a plot to assassinate Hitler. In June 1939 Bonhoeffer was in America. As war came closer his friends there and in Germany were telling him to remain in the United States for his own safety. Bonhoeffer, however, was reading the Bible – his diary for the month includes repeated mention of daily readings. The entry for 26 June says:

Today, by chance, I read II Tim. 4.21, ‘Do your best to come before winter’ – Paul’s request to Timothy. Timothy is to share the suffering of the Apostle and not to be ashamed. ‘Do your best to come before winter’ – otherwise it might be too late. That has been in my ears all day . . . ‘Do your best to come before winter’ – it is not a misuse of Scripture if I take that to be said to me.²

Bonhoeffer decided to return to Germany and to play his part in resisting the Nazi government. Clearly this verse, which Bonhoeffer took ‘to be said to me’, played an important part in confirming this decision, a chance reading that had this influence on him. Here we can see the power of particular parts of the Bible in saying important things to people. But it is not a random or a fortune-telling approach. Rather, Bonhoeffer read this verse in its own context and in his own context. Context is an important feature of good Bible reading, and it is worth spending some time examining how.

Context: Who? Where? When? Why?

When Bonhoeffer chanced upon that verse he didn’t simply take it as instruction, he also sees the context in which it was written. Paul is in prison, suffering. He has been deserted by his companions and longs for Timothy to come to him. All of this context is understood by Bonhoeffer as he reads that single verse. The context of isolation, suffering and longing come from the context of the writer. This enriches how Bonhoeffer can read it in his own context of the United States in 1939.

Reading his diaries is an insight into Bonhoeffer’s context. War is brewing in Europe and he is in America, safe but distant from those he loves and the fight against Hitler. His diary entries for the days around 26 June, when he read that verse, record his struggles with being in the United States and not knowing where to go. In fact he made the decision to return home on 20 June, but the tone of his entries changes after reading this verse from 2 Timothy. He stops agonizing about his decision and is more resolute in making plans for returning to Germany. Bonhoeffer’s context resonates with that of the verse from the Bible. He feels isolated, detached and knows that to return to Germany will lead to suffering. It is not an exact match, but awareness of both contexts makes for a much deeper and richer understanding of the Bible verse.

There are different contexts, then, for Bonhoeffer’s understanding of this verse – three in particular stand out. First there is the context in which the verse is written. Paul is in prison, and historians can tell us something about the conditions in which he might have been held. Second there is the context of the verse within the Bible and the book of the Bible (2 Timothy). It is part of the closing greetings of a letter, and there we learn of Paul being deserted and his longing for Timothy to be with him. Third there is the context in which Bonhoeffer reads the verse. Isolated and having decided to return to Germany, he finds much that speaks to his situation. He reads it in the light of the decision he has made and the likely consequences.

These contexts can also help us as we read the Bible. The more we know about each of these contexts, the better our understanding of the Bible passage will be. In terms of the first context (the context in which the Bible passage is written), here are some good questions to ask:

• Who wrote this, to whom and why?
• Where and when were they writing?

In terms of the second context (the context of the passage within the book and within the whole Bible), these are useful questions to ask:

• What sort of literature is this?
• How does this passage fit into the rest of the book and the whole of the Bible?

Not all of these questions can be answered in relation to every passage or book of the Bible. We don’t always know who wrote the books of the Bible or when or where they wrote them. Scholars may have speculated, often very convincingly, though that is far from certainty. But ask the questions you can, look around the passage and see where it is coming from and where it is going. That can make a huge difference to our understanding.

But equally important is looking at the third context (the context in which we read the Bible). I am a man, a husband and a father; I work for the Church; I live in a Derbyshire village; I have far more than the global average income. All of these, and more, affect the way I read the Bible and the presuppositions I bring to any passage from it. This is not to say that I need to change any of these factors in my life (although I may), but simply that each has an influence. The more I understand my own context and the better I understand myself, the more I will understand why I read the Bible in the way I do. Some good questions to ask might be:

• Whom do I naturally identify with in this passage?
• Are there things I find it hard to see because of where I read this from?

Reading the Bible well involves understanding something of how the Bible came to be; of what the Bible is; of who we are as readers. Bringing all of that together helps us to read the Bible well.

Ten ‘commandments’ for Bible reading

As well as attention to these three contexts, I want to offer ten ways of reading that will help us read the Bible well. They are all practical. Good Bible readers will use all of them at different times.

1 Pray

The Bible invites us to be part of a conversation about God and about God’s people. Even the book of Esther, which doesn’t mention God, is about God and his people. Praying, asking God to help us as we read, is simply about asking that we might join the conversation and see things that will help us understand our place in the conversation. If you are not a Christian you may choose not to pray, or you may decide that a prayer can’t hurt and pray anyway. Whether you are a believer or not, starting with prayer can help us to be surprised by what we find when we read. I recommend it. It won’t make you a professor of biblical studies overnight but it might help you to be open to something you hadn’t seen in the Bible before. In Chapter 6 we will look more closely at the interaction between the Bible and prayer. For now, let me suggest a prayer that might be useful before reading the Bible.

God of all knowledge,

help me now as I read from the Bible.

May I be surprised by what I read,

guided in where it takes me

and helped in my understanding.

I make this prayer in the name of Jesus Christ,

your living Word. Amen.

2 Find a good translation

The chances are that you will read the Bible in English; that is to say, in translation. One of the most important features of the Bible is that it is translatable, that it remains the Bible even when translated into another language. This is one of the key differences between the way Christians read the Bible and the way Muslims read the Qur’an which, to be t...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• About the author
• Title page
• Imprint
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword by Paula Gooder
• Introduction
• 1. How to read the Bible
• 2. What is the Bible?
• 3. The story of the Bible
• 4. The stories of Jesus
• 5. Praying with the Bible
• 6. ‘In the beginning’: creation in the Bible
• 7. Difficult subjects 1: money
• 8. Difficult subjects 2: sex
• 9. Difficult subjects 3: violence and the Bible
• 10. ‘Eat this book’: the Bible in our lives
• Notes