Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Bible Study (was Bible versions) Message-ID: Date: 16 Jul 90 06:42:33 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 59 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu There seems to be a controversy over how one should read the bible and how much guidance one needs to avoid going off the deep end exegetically. C. Wingate writes: ---------------------------------------- In the third place, protestant though I am, I reject the notion that you can sit down by yourself with a unannotated bible and do useful studying. One thing I've discovered in watching fringe preachers on one hand and net.atheists on the other: interpretation outside the church is very frequently unguided, leading into old heresies and nonchristian religion at every turn. ---------------------------------------- The way I would put it is that interpreting the bible must be done both individually and in fellowship with other Christians. I don't know what Charley Wingate meant when he said ``interpretation outside the church;'' if he meant interpretation uninformed by ministers or other professional Christians, I must disagree. But if he meant that our interpretations of the bible must be brought among the fellowship of the believers for examination then I agree. My own experience has been shaped from two sources: reading literature (my undergrad degree was in English literature) and the Inter Varsity manuscript studies. In these, the student gets supplied with a manuscript containing neither chapter or verse numbers. The intention is to confront the raw text. The main aid is a bible dictionary to allow looking up the hard words. I found this method to be very effective because one reads the text differently if it is not broken up into chapters and verses. One gets into the flow of the text, the progression of ideas. One also reads differently when the text doesn't appear in a book with thin, guilt-edged paper with the word `Holy' on it. I tried this recently with some children I teach in church-school. I had them read 5 chapters of John out loud together in one sitting, then in other sessions we discussed the ideas and themes and important words we found. I asked some of them if they liked reading it out loud in big chunks like that and one of the girls said that she understood it a lot better that way (as opposed to verse-by-verse). I also got some good responses later from some of the boys. These were junior high kids. In the time I have been a Christian, I have heard a lot of sermons and read a lot of Christian books. I have generally found that the interpretations of the bible by ministers and writers of Christian books is sadly lacking in perceptiveness and depth. But what disturbs me most is that they tend to be uniform. I find that there is a set of stock interpretations that come up over and over again that are shallow or even erroneous. Is it possible that the reason these interpretations come up so often is that they are all using the same study materials? -- Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com So long as the heaven of THOU is spread out over me the winds of causality cower at my heels, and the whirlpool of fate stays its course. -Martin Buber