Let's talk Bible today. What is this book that we use more extensively in our worship than does any other Christian tradition? Briefly, a collection of 46 books in the Jewish tradition, 27 Christian, for a total of 73 documents. They comprise a wide range of literature, from historiography to poetry, from collections of aphorisms to censuses, from Babylonian mythology to prophecy, and even apocalyptic, which George Bernard Shaw described as "impossible opium dreams." The collection was actually determined and declared Scripture for the first time by our bishops in 397 CE.
All of the books were, in some sense, inspired by God, but all were written by fallible humans with limited knowledge and understanding in a pre-scientific world. They contain errors, discrepancies, and contradicitons. All require serious discernment, using all the available methods to discern the historical and cultural contexts, resolve manuscript discrepancies, and to tackle issues of translation. Episcopal clergy are well-educated and trained in such disciplines, and so can be helpful to their congregants in conversation with the Bible.
With proper engagement, we gain alternative and new insights into Scripture. Let's take a lot at the matter of translation as applicable to today's New Testament pericope, II Timothy 3:14- 4:5. Here, in the NRSV translation we find the author declaring that "all Scripture is inspired by God and is useful..." so that "everyone who belongs to God may be proficient..." The Greek would equally allow the translation "all writing inspired by God is useful...," so that "the man of God may be proficient..." In fact, the alternative renderings seem a bit more logical, as the Jewish Canon was not closed in the lifetime of Paul (the putative author!) and the letter asserts itself as having been written from one bishop to Timothy, another bishop, hence the literal Greek "man of God" -- we might say clergy -- seems to fit the rest of the passage better. You decide.
In some cases failure to consider context results in a bad reading. For example, consider the story of the widow's mite. Most of us were raised to believe that the point was that the widow gave away everything she had to live on, and thus would rely on God's miraculous providence for her needs. In fact, Jesus has just been hammering the Pharisees and their homies for ripping off the poor and the vulnerable, widows especially. The point to the story is that the woman has been conned out of her living, in direct violation of a Commandment, and has now become dependent on others. In modern televangelical terms she has been convinced to make a "seed gift" she can't afford in order to qualify for miraculous blessings. This is exactly 180 degrees from what Jesus was trying to teach there.
In today's Gospel, Luke 18: 1-8, we see how theological reflection also affects reading Scripture. Here a helpless widow badgers an indifferent judge until she finally receives justice. In traditional interpretation, the unjust judge is God (being thus depicted as the capricious, ill-tempered deity of early Jewish imagination) and the women represents us who are called to badger our God until he gets tired of it and gives us what we want. Let's take another tack -- seeing the elderly woman as representing God and us his representatives who are being called on to attack the powers of unjust oppression, domination and imperialism for as long as necessary until justice is done. We call that building the Kingdom of God on earth, which was Jesus' agenda. This healthy approach treats God and us with condign dignity and makes the story resonate with the overall pattern of Jesus' teaching.
Thank God that we may and do engage in mature discernment of Scripture,
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