Reading for Comprehension?
Back in November, at the beginning of Advent, I proposed a challenge to myself which was to read the Gospels as if I had never read them before and to read them without commentaries or out of a bible with footnotes (I'm not sure if I spelled all that out in the challenge, but those were the rules I set for myself). In all honesty, I didn't expect the challenge to take too long.
I was wrong.
I was wrong because I found that almost immediately I had a notebook filling up with questions and comments. Deliberately trying to put blinders on as I read the Gospel of Matthew was enlightening. I was thrown almost immediately by how much I, as a pastor (and probably more so as a Christian) take for granted. Let me give you an example.
Right away in the Gospel of Matthew we read that Jesus is the Son of David and the Son of Abraham. Now, I know how those two phrases are supposed to be understood. However, if I did not, I would be utterly confused. Is Jesus' dad named David or Abraham? Of course the next verse says that Abraham was the father of Isaac - not Jesus. And then it mentions David whose son is...not Jesus. What am I supposed to gather from this? The author seems to make some tremendous presumptions as to what I am supposed to already know about Jesus. I have made those assumptions most of my life, and it was only when I deliberately read them without those traditional filters on that I found how quickly their absence began to become a hindrance to my reading.
And I haven't even gotten to what Jesus said.
Some years ago I picked up a copy of the Book of Mormon and started reading it - I have read pieces of it over the years. I found I was quickly zoning out of the passages. Much of that had to do with the total absence of context. When was this taking place? What was going on? Then, a few months ago I had a church member ask me how many years there were between the time of Elijah and Jesus. He posited a few numbers: 25? 30? 40? When I replied that it was several hundred, his face seemed to be on the verge of the blue screen of death. It didn't make sense to him. The idea that hundreds of years passed between the book of Kings and the Gospel of Matthew totally flummoxed him.
And why not? I've spend most of my adult life studying the history, context, and content of the Bible. I have the commentaries and the articles and the books at my disposal. This man had nothing other than a small Bible with no study notes, footnotes, or charts of Biblical history. It hit me: why would he think there was more than 25 years between Elijah and Jesus? There is little in the way of context within the Bible to give the reader a sense of time. There is next to nothing to let you know that the page between the end of Malachi and the beginning of Matthew represents a period of around 400 years of which there is no Biblical record (there are apocryphal books, such as Maccabees, that fill in some of the gaps, but if you don't have the Apocrypha in your Bible, good luck figuring the jump from Malachi's setting to the time of the Roman Empire).
So for as much as certain branches of Christianity want to tout the plain and simple meaning of the Bible and the 'Bible is all you need' message of the 'road to salvation' usually have to take a lot of time explaining the clear meaning because without some kind of context, clarity isn't readily present. That's not to say Jesus' teachings won't make sense if I don't know much about Roman occupied Israel, but there is so much else that will truly befuddle the reader.
So I plan to keep reading. I do have to admit that I have slowed down considerably as I read to make sure I record my thoughts and questions - which I am almost embarrassed to say are growing and growing.
I was wrong.
I was wrong because I found that almost immediately I had a notebook filling up with questions and comments. Deliberately trying to put blinders on as I read the Gospel of Matthew was enlightening. I was thrown almost immediately by how much I, as a pastor (and probably more so as a Christian) take for granted. Let me give you an example.
Right away in the Gospel of Matthew we read that Jesus is the Son of David and the Son of Abraham. Now, I know how those two phrases are supposed to be understood. However, if I did not, I would be utterly confused. Is Jesus' dad named David or Abraham? Of course the next verse says that Abraham was the father of Isaac - not Jesus. And then it mentions David whose son is...not Jesus. What am I supposed to gather from this? The author seems to make some tremendous presumptions as to what I am supposed to already know about Jesus. I have made those assumptions most of my life, and it was only when I deliberately read them without those traditional filters on that I found how quickly their absence began to become a hindrance to my reading.
And I haven't even gotten to what Jesus said.
Some years ago I picked up a copy of the Book of Mormon and started reading it - I have read pieces of it over the years. I found I was quickly zoning out of the passages. Much of that had to do with the total absence of context. When was this taking place? What was going on? Then, a few months ago I had a church member ask me how many years there were between the time of Elijah and Jesus. He posited a few numbers: 25? 30? 40? When I replied that it was several hundred, his face seemed to be on the verge of the blue screen of death. It didn't make sense to him. The idea that hundreds of years passed between the book of Kings and the Gospel of Matthew totally flummoxed him.
And why not? I've spend most of my adult life studying the history, context, and content of the Bible. I have the commentaries and the articles and the books at my disposal. This man had nothing other than a small Bible with no study notes, footnotes, or charts of Biblical history. It hit me: why would he think there was more than 25 years between Elijah and Jesus? There is little in the way of context within the Bible to give the reader a sense of time. There is next to nothing to let you know that the page between the end of Malachi and the beginning of Matthew represents a period of around 400 years of which there is no Biblical record (there are apocryphal books, such as Maccabees, that fill in some of the gaps, but if you don't have the Apocrypha in your Bible, good luck figuring the jump from Malachi's setting to the time of the Roman Empire).
So for as much as certain branches of Christianity want to tout the plain and simple meaning of the Bible and the 'Bible is all you need' message of the 'road to salvation' usually have to take a lot of time explaining the clear meaning because without some kind of context, clarity isn't readily present. That's not to say Jesus' teachings won't make sense if I don't know much about Roman occupied Israel, but there is so much else that will truly befuddle the reader.
So I plan to keep reading. I do have to admit that I have slowed down considerably as I read to make sure I record my thoughts and questions - which I am almost embarrassed to say are growing and growing.
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