The Lectionary.
A lectionary is a list of readings. As a spiritual discipline, a person may simply open The Bible at the beginning, and start reading. They might read a chapter or more each day. The weakness of this kind of reading is that it is the reading style of our time, the method for reading a novel, or even a text book. It assumes a narrative thread from beginning to end. However, a text book is often not read from cover to cover. It may be designed as a resource with discrete sections to be consulted at appropriate times.
The Bible is even less novel-like. With 39 "books" in the Hebrew Scriptures, and 27 in the Christian Scriptures, there are multiple authors, times, geographic locations, and theological perspectives represented. This considers only the main collection (Canon) of the books common to most Christian traditions. There are also the books not present in the Hebrew Scriptures or "Old Testament" which are often known as the deutero-canonical books. How does one read all this and make sense of it?
Christian groups have traditionally created lists of texts that are considered important to read. They sketch out some of the key planks of that group's tradition, and its understanding of the Christian faith.
One well known modern lectionary is the Revised Common Lectionary, which is used by many churches world wide. It divides the bible over a three year period, based around the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The readings are chosen to reflect the cycle of church year as it progresses from the hope for a Messiah (Advent), through Christmas, and on to Easter. Each week also has a reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Psalms, and from the letters of the New Testament. The Gospel of John is used in each year around the times of the major festivals. There are often readings assigned for special days which do not occur on a Sunday.
Many ministers preach from a lectionary. It provides a discipline which works against the temptation to avoid uncomfortable subjects and concentrate on favourite themes.
A lectionary provides an overview of the Christian tradition. Unfortunately, it also represents a particular theological and historical outlook. Some people point out, for example, that women's stories, often already marginalised in Scripture are further submerged by the RCL . The lectionary is also constructed of short readings, excerpts from the whole, so that some parts of the bible will never be read in public worship under this scheme. It also means that the wider flow of a narrative is interrupted, and perhaps divided in ways never anticipated by the authors. In their own devotions, many people will at least read from the end of the previous week's readings to the end of the designated readings of the current week, in some attempt to overcome this disintegration of the narrative.
Loose Script Sinks Radio Ship Flick
Loose script sinks radio ship flick
So goes the headline of David Stratton's review of the film The Boat that Rocked in The Australian newspaper of April 11 2009. Stratton contends that a lazy, ill-planned script, sinks a great idea for a movie. The headline sums it up nicely.
The headline sounds good; read it out loud to hear the assonance.
The headline is clever. Ships sink, so does this script about a ship, apparently.
Now imagine how difficult it would be to translate this headline from English into Greek, and maintain the clever nuances and assonance.
Then consider the cultural history informing the headline. There was a security mantra In the days of World War Two, which said "Loose Lips Sink Ships." The headline is a play, almost a pun, on this mantra.
Now go back to your Greek translation, and re-do it, so that you also carry this nuance of Mr Stratton's headline, over to your Greek readers. The problem of translation is immediately much greater.
The greatness increases. I am aged 54, born a decade after the end of the war. It was only on the second or third reading of the headline, (my son leaves the review section of the paper on the toilet floor,) that I made the connection to the old saying about loose lips. I wonder if my son, born another three decades later, will make the connection and see the wit. He is well read. Many, perhaps most, of his contemporaries will miss that witty content in the headline.
My last sentence is important. The headline has content. There is wit which works on the the clever apposition of sound, not to mention flirting with bad manners: How do you titillate an ocelot? Answer: You oscillate its tits a lot. But there is also wit which carries content. The wit is intended to sharpen, or highlight, the content. That's what our Loose script... headline is doing. In fact, the wit is part of the content.
Let's go to something very basic, like maths. Is it culturally independent? Surely 1 + 1 = 2 is as pure as it gets. We don't need to translate anything. Everyone gets this. But even with something this basic, we cannot go very far before culture intervenes. My friend Alan was having no success teaching division and decimals to a group of tribal men. The concepts seemed totally foreign; I think all sides of the equation were becoming very frustrated.
One day, at an engine workshop, the visiting tutor examined a crank shaft, decided it was worn out, and tossed it aside. One of the men looked at it; he could see no problem. The tutor picked up a micrometre and showed him how it worked. He talked about mechanical tolerances. Alan said by the end of the morning, everyone could do long division. If even such basic "hard" and objective knowledge, is so dependent on culture and experience, how much more dependent is the "fluid" territory of philosophy, theology, and behaviour!
Religion is not a science like biological evolution, weighing facts and fossils. These are up at the maths end of the spectrum, for all the variability of biology. In religion, we are working with the experience of the Divine, and the meaning and purpose of life. We are far off at the deeply enculturated end of human knowledge.
The Bible is a religious response to the Divine. It is a collection of stories and writings collected across at least a millennium. The written product we use today dates to at least 1700 years before our time, translated from diverse manuscripts, with some original word meanings unclear, and other portions of text in dispute. Essentially, the bible is people, and communities, saying "I met God. This is my response. This is what I think it means. This is how I think I should respond. This is my story as I have tried to live out my response."
It's not a text book written by God. It's not the scientific history of creation. It is a book of people's response to the meeting of God. It is thus true to say scripture is inspired by God. If we will struggle with it , let it challenge us, and listen to its criticism of our lives, it will change us. We will find those aha! moments, where we say, "Yes, I know what you mean! That's what I found, too!"
If we seriously wish to do this, we are confronted by the need for biblical studies. Otherwise, at best, we miss the richness of what we are reading. "My Lord and God" is a political as well as a religious statement. "One week later," is not the same as "on the eighth day." If we do not study the nature of meals, how much "food" will we miss when we read the feeding stories?
At worst, if we shun biblical studies, our headline may be Creation science reliance on wrong reading. Or the corker deeply imprinted on in red biro on an untidy essay: This is not exegesis, this is eyesore Jesus!
Andrew Prior
Direct Biblical quotations in this page are taken from The New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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