First, a word to my students. To be a teacher is the noblest profession I know; to be recognized as a teacher is the greatest honor I can achieve. To be a teacher, one must have people willing to learn, willing to be taught. Please understand, though, that roles often reverse: the best students are teachers, just as the best teachers must be students. My students help me to shape my thoughts--theirs is the very essence of what is said in the words that follow. Together, we learn; together, we teach: the words which result have an in-breathed, shaping life.

For some time now, I have taught the Bible as literature. The very idea scares some of us: how can we approach a sacred book in this way? We may ask this in yet another way: how can anyone without spiritual aid understand the Bible? Our serious lack of knowledge--true often of those who go to church as well as those who do not -- concerning what the Bible contains spurs me to risk our learning at least something together! For those who need reasons to read the Bible, I propose minimally the following:

1. The inquiring mind would want to read the Old Testament to learn about three major world religions---Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. The Old Testament records the faith of the Hebrew people. It chronicles their growth into a nation, its successive captivities and exiles, its survival in the faith that gave birth to three world religions. The Hebrews acknowledged their creation as an act by Yahweh, who created them in Divine image. This natural, spiritual, and moral likeness meant for the Hebrews, and countless millions who have enlarged upon their faith, that creatures of intellect, will, and emotion commune with their Creator as regenerate beings.

2. The Bible contains a symbol system uniting the temporal and the eternal; it deserves at least the careful attention we would give any "good" literature. Literature consists of a system of meaningfully created symbols.

We use symbols to relate a progressive knowing to the already known. What we know, conditioned by our Western world experience, we limit to what can be experienced or demonstrated. We have used "revealed" to acknowledge our movement into meta-physics: our "felt" connection with a "Something" beyond logic. That which is revealed, we have expressed metaphorically: the infinite becomes God, Person, Father, Son, Spirit, Shepherd, Bread, Light, Word; in each utterance, the Eternally Transcendent, objective, distant and outside, reveals itself immanent, historically present with us now. Divine Force becomes Personal Presence.

3. As a symbol system, the Bible challenges our minds but satisfies our hearts. No matter how little or much we follow the call of our minds and study human thought, we end up sooner or later confronted with its limitations. Contained from the beginning, we have experienced our connection with that which contains us and which, necessarily, becomes our own outside. Western rationality has explored countless times the shapes of our containment, telling us what we can think and prescribing boundaries for that thinking; it has spurned metaphysics as the accounting of that "Outside" which cannot be known. It has left us empty and disillusioned or restless and seeking. The Bible from the outset acknowledges and responds to Outside Shaping Force, moving us metaphorically into relationship with a Divine Person, expressing our urgent response to an in-breathed Word. The breath of God is in the Bible a symbol of Creative Activity or Power: God by breath formed the heavens and "revealed" Divine Word. The "image of God" reflects just this creative activity: God and mortal speak! The Invisible etches itself in the face of Nature and speaks itself in the Word that was in the beginning God. In our examination of the Bible, we will need to suspend mere rational analysis and begin in the good will of "faith expressed." After all, what more can we do with a book which begins in primeval time--the creation of the world--and ends in the death of history and time itself--the Eternal? Still, given even this, the Bible clearly establishes itself as historical revelation, the acts of God in human history. In that history, the careful reader will explore to limits the rational systems erected over the centuries and see beyond the merely possible into the very necessary expression of faith. We can engage in no higher activity than pursuit of a knowledge of God!

4. The Bible, tightly unified in its own controlling themes, explores all the common questions of human existence. All the common subjects of literature are found in the Bible: individuals in nature, society, and in relation to God and other humans; growth and initiation, time, death, and alienation. Perhaps the most unifying theme of the Bible is that of relationship: human beings created by God in God's image for relationship and activity; this thread runs through all sixty-six books of the Bible, uniting them and providing an unparalleled explanation of what ultimately it means to be human and how humans should behave. The explanation is, of course, one we can accept or reject.

5. It's unlikely that we would ever exhaust the meaning unfolding itself in the Bible. I have discovered that my every reading of any portion of the Bible brings me new insight; just when I think I have gained a comprehensive understanding of its overall structure, themes, and history, I am startled by yet another revelation. For example, are you aware the oak tree holds importance for the Hebrews due to the Babylonians? Do you know the Bible uses a three-twelve paradigm: three major prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel) --twelve minor; three patriarchs-twelve sons; repeated in the twelve apostles and the twelve tribes at Qumran. Indeed, it must be admitted that this anthology of books gives the impression of a planned layout and represents to a large extent a complete literary unit in which the material is logically arranged and fairly strictly grouped together. Given the time covered, the number of writers, and the languages involved, one marvels at the Bible's overall unity. It's enough to lead one to the notion of Spirit superintending writers so that while writing in their own styles and personalities, the result was God's Word written--in this sense, authoritative, trustworthy, and in some ultimate way, without error!

Section B: Structured Approach to Understanding the Bible as Literature

Oxford Companion to the Bible

The most basic of all artistic principles is unity, and one of the things that has set off the literary approach to the Bible from other approaches is a preoccupation with unifying patterns and literary wholes. Literary unity consists of various things: the structure of a work or passage, a dominant theme, an image pattern, or progressive development of a motif. Whatever form it takes, unity is evidence of an artistic urge for order, shapeliness, and wholeness of effect.

The Literary Unity of the Bible. The central protagonist in the overall story of the Bible is God. The characterization of God is the central literary concern of the Bible, and it is pursued from beginning to end. Hardly anything is viewed apart from its relation to the deity.

The Bible is also unified by its religious orientation. It is pervaded by a consciousness of the presence of God. Human experience is constantly viewed in a religious and moral light. One result is that the literature of the Bible invests human experience with a sense of ultimacy. A vivid consciousness of values pervades biblical literature.

Literary archetypes also unify the Bible. Archetypes are master images that recur throughout the Bible and throughout literature. They are either images (light, water, hill), character types (hero, villain, king), or plot motifs (journey, rescue, temptation). The Bible is filled with such archetypes or master images, which lend an elemental quality to the Bible and make its world strongly unified in a reader's imagination.

An approach to the Bible as literature can be to build

1. an understanding of what kinds of literature are present in the Bible, what historical period this literature represents, and a knowledge of where samples of each can be found;

2. an overview of biblical chronology, major dates and happenings appropriate to understanding how to read the various books of the Bible;

3. an appreciation for the major civilizations contributing to the Hebrew-Christian tradition;

4. a repertoire of themes and subthemes important to understanding why the Bible can be viewed as a unified anthology; and, as time permits, a series of character studies which illuminate the general themes embraced by the Bible as a whole. Eventually, an appendices may include an approach to understanding the Apocrypha and perhaps a brief comparison of the Islamic, Jewish, and Christian faiths.

Methods of Bible Study

Religious Studies

Section C: An Introduction to Knowledge Structures

In beginning a study of the Bible, one discovers certain kinds of questions inevitable: What is the nature of reality? (Religion may be defined as a system requiring a belief in God or in a transcendent being). What is the role(s) of humans in the universe? What can we know? How is faith different from knowledge? What is the nature of human beings? Do they have a soul? How is the soul different from physical being? Is human life free or determined? How ought human beings to live? This latter question, of course, addresses morality and how people choose to act. Because the Bible contains instructions and codes, it must be studied as teaching right from wrong; many people base their behavior upon its rules. The rules, though, exist independently of the Bible, for they can be found in other religious systems, and certainly, a precedent for them can be found in all cultures. One can surely behave morally without being religious; genuine commitment to a religion, though, such as Judaism or Christianity cannot but affect one's moral choices.

Of course, if the above questions were to be fully answered in this introduction, we would never get to our destination: an introduction to studying the Bible. For a quick guiding structure of philosophical thought which underlies our study of the Bible, I reference Judith Boss's Ethics for Life and Perspectives on Ethics (Mayfield Publishing, 1998).

Philosophical theories can be divided into cognitive and noncognitive categories: cognitive theories maintain that statements can be either true or false, and these statements can be further divided into universalist and relativist theories. Relativist theories state that truth is different for different people, cultures; universalist theories insist that truth exists that is true for all people, is discovered, or derived from principles which exist independently of an individual's or society's opinions. At this point, it makes sense to identify whether, when we talk about truth, we are talking about Truth, or truth (big T, little t). Engaged in the study of the Bible, one should become aware of any unconscious or perhaps uncritically believed metaphysics; it will help, too, to keep separate the ideas of truth and belief. Metaphysics, simply put, is concerned with reality. To talk about God is to address a system of metaphysics; in fact, religion may be defined as an institutionalized system of values and beliefs.

In our thinking, we move, often uncritically, among at least three levels of thinking: the level of experience, the data provided to us by our senses; interpretation, where we try to make sense of our experiences in light of our own and collective or cultural experiences; and analysis, where we distinguish between descriptive fact and opinion. Western philosophical methodology has traditionally focused primarily on abstract, logical reasoning or the mode of analysis, so much so that it is accused of paying insufficient attention to practice. Logical analysis is accepted while sentiment, intuition, and collective consciousness-raising are rejected.

Metaphysical Dualism

Reality consists of two substances: material, physical body and nonmaterial mind. Mind is often referred to as soul or spirit. The body or material world is subject to causal laws; the mind is free because it is non-material and rational.

One Substance

1. Metaphysical materialism--physical matter is the only substance. Mind, soul, and morality must be explained in terms of physical matter. Determinism states that all events are governed by causal law. Existentialist philosophers argue, however, that humans are defined by their freedom in the absence of a God to determine their nature; existentialists also argue we are completely responsible for our actions.

2. Metaphysical idealism focuses on the mind, soul, or that which is non-material.

Epistemology

Epistemology deals with questions about the nature and limits of knowledge and how knowledge can be validated.

Sources of knowledge:

1. Reason--the power of understanding the connection between the general and particular.

2. Intuition--immediate and self-evident knowledge and do not need any proof.

3. Experience--all or most of human knowledge comes through the five senses. Positivism applies scientific observation to knowledge; it attributes moral judgments to emotivism.

The Path to Wisdom

A basic human need seems to be to find higher meaning and value. Humans achieve this by becoming autonomous--independent, self-governing entities; they also seek self-realization, or search for ultimate values.

1. The skeptic--refuses to accept beliefs until they can be justified and begins with doubts.

2. The cynic mocks the possibility of truth.

Relativism

Values are created by people--ethical subjectivism, cultural relativism.

Universalism

Values are the same for all people, and people discover the principles by which they are to govern their lives. Plato, for example, believed that truth was embodied in changeless universal form that could be discerned by reason. Other philosophers have a more organic and dynamic view of truth, seeing it as constantly revealing itself, being a living force that exists in relationship to things.

Why, you might ask, is all of this important at the beginning of a study of the Bible? The answer is simple: it makes a difference whether individuals see reality as "out there"--really out there as universal form, in the physical world for materialism, or subjectively constructed. What is the world-view we hold? What, for example, is our view of the nature of (B)being? Our notion of ontology?

To begin with, to utter God is to invoke the Other, that which is absolutely other: to be known only through reason, experience, or intuition, or perhaps in combination with all of these approaches. Perhaps we can address common human experience as including a "felt" experience of inside/outside. That is, I am something inside, internally, other than my body, and my body contains that which I am. In extreme, I could conclude I am a mind/spirit/ soul contained in body; the body is materialistic and determined, governed by causal laws; the mind, spirit, soul (the contained) is felt to be capable of roaming beyond bodily constraints--sculpturing, shaping, and creating its way of being in the world and leaping beyond its constraints.

Beginning with this common experience of the inside/outside dichotomy, I have used the metaphor of box and called it the space/time box which we as existing beings inhabit. The box functions as structure: walls beyond which everything is other. Inside this box, the nature of some individuals seems to be to test whether the walls can be expanded, moved from inside pressures to give or to resist and hold captive. Propelled by quest, inquiry rather than dogma, my destiny has always been to push against containing walls At any rate, it's simple to agree that we're all bound as existing beings to finite limits. We share a sense of destiny and movement into something beyond us, but recognize it is "beyond." We're inside the box and not willing to get outside in the only way that we see possible: namely, by dying, and thus, escaping the material body which we sense is fated to decay, and vanish as material objects must. But what of that we feel ourselves to be inside? Is this all breath? all just a warm heartbeat? all just an electro-psycho-physical impulse? Will the mind, with its boundary-defying flight, succumb? Is all the mediation, when all is said and done, simply the inside of the box to the inside? Or will death release what has been imprisoned in physical life?

Religion has one goal: being at one with God. There are limits to the physical aspects of mind, places where reason cannot go. The religious seeker must continue on, carried by faith. The religious path is always to the One. This path passes through several states of consciousness before establishing intimacy with its divine source, anthropomorphically addressed as Ancient One, Father, Friend, or Lover. To know the Other--this is the sense of urgency, destiny, the ultimacy which propels physical life forward into creating, and sustaining itself. Language itself becomes a tool for seeking to achieve higher consciousness. As symbol, language connects reality to reality and strains by analogy to construct a bridge from the known and familiar to that which is unknown, other, and strange. This can be referred to as losing oneself in the No-thingness--that which is beyond sense or imagination and apprehended in a moment of direct relationship -- or the Boundless Infinite, to be accomplished by the human being in the world of created things.

The Other-directedness of metaphysics and religion is a shared interest. As a result, both are preoccupied with highest Being. The interest of philosophy is rational and abstract; religion seeks fervent relationship. Their symbols are shared, too: a preoccupation with the overcoming of difference, the aspiration to unity and harmony. A prevailing metaphor is the quest or journey from darkness into light: recall Plato's allegory of the cave, where prisoners since childhood have been chained facing the back wall of a cave, seeing only shadows, hearing the sounds of the world outside the cave only as echoes. Unchained, one prisoner facing the front of the cave is frightened and blinded by the light but is met by a guide. Eventually out in the light, our prisoner's eyes adjust to the light, and he begins to see and learn truths not before imagined by him. Returning to cave, no one believes what it is our prisoner has experienced. He will now be faced by the choice of staying outside the cave in the light, returning to his old way, or staying in the cave and questing to share what he has learned. The same quest is seen in the Egyptian-Promised land metaphor, where the emancipated slave all too often returns to old ways. Another metaphor is expulsion from Paradise, Plato's descent into the forgetfulness of the stream Leathe. The quest is to achieve a New Jerusalem which comes down from heaven to earth. In one sense, the Bible addresses a movement from unity into unity; the journey in between is the finite and human one: the drama of creatures within the space/time box.

Atheism, Theism, and Agnosticism

A word about the inevitable -ism's of religion: atheism, theism, agnosticism. All three positions are, in fact, religious: that is, they take a position relative to God as Transcendent Being. Defined simply, atheism argues no God exists; theism argues God exists, and agnosticism concludes either position is possible, but human beings are not equipped to decide the existence definitively. Put simplistically, atheism asserts itself negatively; theism, positively; and agnosticism hedges itself in human limitations. The space/time box theory I allude to often in this work is also decidedly on the side of human limitation: humans are what they are: finite creatures; reason is what it is: a product of the finite creature. We use experience, interpret it, and analyze it to distinguish fact from opinion; we are rely upon sentiment, intuition, and collective consciousness-raising in making meaning of our lives. We push thinking to its utmost potential to find a right way to live and then live that way.

Herman Wouk in his This is My God (Little Brown and Company, 1988) says that for human beings "What matters is living with dignity, with decency, and without fear, in the way that best honors one's intelligence and one's birth." Let me quote Wouk farther on our need to commit, even if it means, rationally, jumping off into the dark:

There is no use in talking about religion with anybody who is sure that God does not exist... There had never been any decisive proof either way about God’s existence. Ours would be decidedly queer world if the Creator of it were as visible as say, a playwright at his opening night. Here is the, a dazzle of orderly wonders, which seems to imply a Maker. Here is human life, full of sadness and disaster and futility, ending always in black death, and it seems to many people to refute any notion that a God could exist. To assert anything about God--that he is there or that he is not, that we can know him or that we cannot--is to jump off into the dark, either way.
...
Now the belief in God may turn out at the last trump to be a mistake. Meantime, let us be quite clear, it is not merely the comfort of the simple--though it is that too, much to its glory--it is a formidable intellectual position with which most of the first-class minds of the human race, century in and century out, have concurred, each in his own way. We live in a time when non-belief is the fashion; it has been for about a hundred years. Hence the regular pulsing of rationalist books from popular book clubs and paperback publishers. But this popularity of one point of view should be enough to make any serious man suspicious. Sheep are sheep, whether they are leaping over the fence or all huddling in the fold (5).

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Jeanie C. Crain, Professor

Missouri Western State University

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Send mail to crain@missouriwestern.edu with questions or comments about this web site. Copyright © 2000 Jeanie C. Crain Last modified: October 20, 2005

Send mail to crain@missouriwestern.edu with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2000 Jeanie C. Crain
Last modified: October 20, 2005