When reading the Bible, do you really understand?

When looking through some old files, I found an envelope labeled “Hermeneutics.” It contained material that I had written some years back when I was trying to sort through what the Bible said and did not say about homosexuality.

“I cannot accept the view that makes Bible injunctions into necessarily eternal truths independent of their historical and cultural context.” When I wrote those words, I was drawing from the writings of Professor Robin Scroggs, then professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary.

That simple and straightforward statement affirms the Bible is a collection of writings that are rooted in real history and were written by real, live human beings who had motivations and purposes for writing. To rip any of the Bible writings from their historical context is a disservice to the authors who wrote. Placing the Bible writings into context has become a guiding rule that I use every time I read the Bible. It is a hermeneutic, a rule or principle for Bible interpretation.

I never read the Bible without asking at least five questions. Who wrote it? When did he write it? To and for whom did he write it? What were the circumstances in which he wrote? What literary device did he use in writing the material? If he was writing poetry, I should read it as poetry. I should expect high symbolism. If it is a letter to a person or to a group or to a nation, I want to know it. Reading someone else’s mail does not mean that the letter is addressed to me 2,000 years later. If the writer was simply telling a story, I need to recognize it as a story and not read it as history.

I have a significant list of hermeneutics that guide my Bible reading and interpretations.

In my Baptist tradition, every individual believer is free and has a responsibility to read and interpret the Bible. Churches, pastors, teachers and scholarly writings are welcome sources of information, but nothing takes away the privilege and responsibility of reading and interpreting the Bible for one’s own self. I have lived with the Bible writings all my life. I love the material. I want everyone to read the poetry, stories, letters and history that is bound together in one volume that we call the “Bible.” I want everyone to read the Bible with the highest level of understanding possible.

In the book of Acts, the writer is telling a version of the story of the spread of Christian faith. According to the story, Phillip, a disciple of Jesus, saw an Ethiopian sitting alongside the road south of Jerusalem. He is described as a eunuch, so the man was or had been a slave. Phillip approached him and found he was reading from an Isaiah scroll. This is clearly a story, not history. As a castrated black slave, it is highly unlikely he could read. Scrolls of the Isaiah writings were few in number. For a black castrated slave making his way south to Egypt and possibly to Ethiopia to be sitting on the roadside reading an Isaiah scroll is unlikely beyond speculation. It is a story, but a story with a purpose. First, it is a powerful statement that black Ethiopian slaves without social standing were acceptable in Christian communities. Second, it was a statement that Christianity was universal and included Africa in its domain. The third purpose was to set up a story situation in which a crucial question could be asked. Phillip asked the eunuch, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

In its early years, the infant Christian churches embraced the Old Testament literature as their own. The claim of early Christians was that the Israelite priests and scribes were not reading the sacred documents properly. They were reading the writings of the prophets without understanding. The question that was posed by Phillip to the eunuch was a question they were asking every Scripture reader: Do you understand what you are reading?

That question must be asked over and over again, especially when literary masterpieces are read. It is a question that must be asked of every reader of the Bible material.

Have you ever set the narratives of the birth of Jesus side-by-side and tried to reconcile the two accounts as found in Matthew and Luke? Have you ever set the four narratives of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead side-by-side and tried to reconcile the accounts as found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? If treated as history, reconciliation of the versions of these two events cannot be made.

Does this mean that the birth and resurrection stories of the Gospels are flawed and in error? My response is no, but they cannot be read as history. The flaws are not in the narratives, but in the hermeneutic that is being used. Story cannot be read as history. When story is read as history, the message of the story will be compromised or missed completely.

I want everyone to read the Bible material. I want people to grasp the underlying messages of love, justice, hope and reconciliation. In this information age the material needed to construct useful hermeneutics is readily available. Just now I would ask the critical question: When reading the Bible, do you understand what you are reading?

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.

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