The Book That Reads Us

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This blog tries to help skeptics connect with God and religion, and that’s no easy task.

According to studies, many young people, and not-so-young people, are tepid about God and shun traditional religions. Though I know many people’s objections to religion go much deeper than language, I try not to be “churchy,” avoiding religious terms that may be “off” buttons. It’s hard to write about Christianity, or Judaism for that matter, without mentioning the Bible, however.

Just about all of what we know about God is from the Bible or from people – modern or ancient, scholars or religious leaders – who have tried to gain insight into the Bible and share that insight with us.

At some point in a search for God, however, you should read the Bible for yourself. And that could be a problem. It was written over a period of 1,500 years, the last contribution thought to have been written about 1,900 years ago. So it isn’t exactly like reading the newspaper, or even as “easy” as reading Shakespeare.

Furthermore, it was written in at least three languages, Hebrew, Aramaic (the day-to-day language in Judea at the time of Jesus) and Greek, and unless we have training in these languages, we’re stuck with translations.

A few preliminary facts. First, the Bible is not really a “book” but more like a library. The number of books depends on whom you ask. Traditionally, there are 24 books in the Bible used by Jews; 66 books in the “Protestant” Bible, 73 in the “Catholic” Bible, and 78 in the Greek Orthodox Bible. Other Orthodox groups, and Mormons, have still different numbers. The Bible of the non-Jewish groups includes both the Old and New Testaments, referred to by many today as the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible.

I know, it’s confusing, but it’s all about which books each religion believes is “canonical;” that is, which are considered part of the Bible.

Second, Jews and Christians traditionally believe that the Bible is “inspired” by God. That doesn’t mean that God dictated the words to the authors but that he/she put thoughts into their heads that they expressed in their own words. That’s why the Bible is sometimes called “the word of God in the words of men.”

None of this makes the Bible easy to read and understand, so if you don’t have much interest to begin with, chances are you’re not going to read it. But trying to do so is worth it. Start with the “easier” books in the Christian Bible (assuming you lean toward Christianity), which would be the Acts of the Apostles and letters like those to the Corinthians and Ephesians.

Eugene Peterson
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Regarding ease of readership and understanding, it also makes a big difference which translation you read. I’ve recently discovered a relatively new one that is not only easy to read, but actually beautiful in parts. It’s called The Message, The Bible in Contemporary Language.

Right off, I should say that it’s controversial. Some people are upset if a translation isn’t as close to literal as possible. Others are happy with easy-to-read translations. I think it depends on the use. If you want to analyze the text, translations like the Jerusalem Bible and The New American Bible are for you. If you’re reading for inspiration or insight, The Message fills the bill nicely.

Says William Griffin, who recently translated the “Catholic” portions of the Bible for The Message, “The scholars want to be faithful to the original words; we translators want to be faithful to the original meaning.” Both are important.

Griffin describes The Message, mostly translated by Eugene Peterson – a long-time Presbyterian pastor and Scripture scholar – as a “fresh, compelling, insightful, challenging, faith-filled paraphrase of the Bible into contemporary idiomatic American English.”

Author Joyce Rupp (a long-time friend of mine) describes it this way: “Reading The Message is like walking into a familiar room where the furniture has been creatively rearranged and the walls newly painted.”

In his introduction, Peterson writes about reading the Bible. “As we read, and the longer we read, we begin to ‘get it’ – we are in a conversation with God. We find ourselves listening and answering in matters that most concern us: who we are, where we came from, where we are going, what makes us tick, the texture of the world and the communities we live in, and – most of all – the incredible love of God among us, doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.” It is, he wrote, “…a book that reads us even as we read it.”

Here’s a sample from the famous passage about love in the First Letter to the Corinthians.

“If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rustic gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.”

Even skeptics can relate to that.