Bible Reading Project: How to Read the Bible
How to read the Bible
By Adrian Peetoom.
Over the centuries hundreds of books have tackled this topic. I own about a dozen different ones. But for this effort to get to know the Old Testament my advice is simple: read the narrative parts like you would read a novel! Get engrossed in the stories and push away doubts about details.
- What? Is this not a book of theology, ancient history, distant geography, precise science?
No indeed. If we read them out of those perspectives, our modern minds require the precision we have come to expect of those disciplines. But the writers (redactors, compilers) were composers whose minds had been shaped in very different ways. Even though they produced stories grounded in history and geography, they were focused on meaning, not on accuracy of related facts for which they had reliable sources. Their sources consisted mostly of oral traditions passed on from one generation to another, with some records available in written form. As for theology, there have been major attempts to create a consistent and non-contradictory theology out of the Old Testament writings, with little success. Too many paradoxes and verbal anomalies. As for science, those writers had no idea what science writing was like.
I suggest that you can hear and read it as a child would. Some of the tales are spectacular! Some of the events almost unbelievable! Of course the question arises whether children should get to know the stories of violence and punishments, of wars and killings. Let me reassure you. Both Johanna and I were subjected to those stories as children, and we loved them! Ah, Noah, Barak, Samson, David. And we didn’t turn into violent people. We absorbed the truth that these people lived in different times, and we also learned that Jesus called a halt to what in earlier times had seemed normal to his ancestors by stressing non-violence and turning the other cheek in the new age he announced, the age of the Kingdom of God. Recently a mother of young children who has taken her family through the Old Testament more than once also assured me, that her children receive these tales as they do those of the Brothers Grimm, which in their originals weren’t all that genteel either.
But I do suggest you keep this one facet in mind as you tackle the reading. As one writer taught me, treat these writings as sacraments. That is, approach these books with the thought that God will speak through them to you and to his people. I don’t mean that you should feel disappointed if you’re not aware of God speaking to you every time you open Scripture. But if you commit yourself to the thought that God uses this book for the benefit of his Church, then you will experience conscious moments, moments of illumination and closeness to God. Go ahead, try it and see what happens.
And here is a promise. If you persist the day will come when you are easily able to rank the following names in a more or less reliable chronological sequence: Ezekiel, David, Ruth, Aaron, Rebekah, Ahab, Gideon, Eve, Noah, Joshua, Solomon, Jonah, Isaac, Samuel, Josiah, Saul, Esau, Joseph, Ahab, Miriam, Nehemiah, Abel, Abner, Jeremiah, Naomi, Jacob, Eve, Samson, Micah, Elijah, Absalom, Judah, Elisha, Cain, Reuben, Abraham, and perhaps a few more. The day that task is easy is the day you can say: I know those two Grand Narratives. But perhaps you already can sort them properly. Good for you!
And another promise: you will then have a better grasp on the New Testament, which, plain and simple, utterly relies on what you have found in the Old Testament.