Biblioblogophiles
Dormouse just called my attention to Slate’s Blogging the Bible project (subtitled “What Happens When an Ignoramus Reads the Good Book?”). It’s not biblical scholarship, just the honest reactions and questions of a man reading the Hebrew scriptures closely for the first time. AND he invites reader responses. Pop Otter, calm yourself. You can’t spend all your time posting ten-page answers to his questions.
Now seems like as good a time as any to reflect upon a life surrounded by Bible-philes. Let’s start off with a little illustrative anecdote. I think it was maybe the second or third time I brought Porpoise—then my boyfriend—home from college to visit my family. On a lazy Saturday morning, Mama Chipmunk*, Porpoise, and I were relaxing after breakfast when Pop Otter bounded into the living room, dropped a stack of books on the coffee table, and asked, “Want to help me review commentaries on Leviticus?”
I’m not sure about this, but somehow I don’t think that’s the question most girls fear their fathers will ask when they bring a boy home.
We were each to select a passage from Leviticus, so that we could compare how it was explicated in the various commentaries. Mama Chipmunk immediately piped up, “I want the passage about mildew regulations! Can I have mildew regulations?”
Well, stunningly, despite this experience, Porpoise married me anyway and is now part of the whole insane crew—and, trust me, he has his own brand of insanity, too.
Recently, he’s begun playing with my interlinear Bible and my basic biblical Greek textbook. It’s partly for work, but he is enjoying what he’s learning. So is the Cherub. Look—here she is sitting next to the interlinear Bible, looking very scholarly.
In short, I am surrounded by people who love reading the Bible. Yet I do not like reading the Bible. I make myself read it anyway (well, I try), and I think, for me, part of faith is trusting that this will somehow help me know God better, even if I don’t “feel” anything. I do appreciate learning things about the original languages and literary forms, things that have often been obscured in translation. But most of the time I feel like I learn more about God’s nature and the Christian journey obliquely—through other books that I read (particularly, of course, The Lord of the Rings).
And then I realize that I wouldn’t be able to see God in fiction and poetry—at least not in the same way—if I hadn’t already read about God in the scriptures.
Anyway, for someone who’s read the Bible enough that she’s bored with it and yet still has so much to learn about it, it’s interesting to read the questions of a self-proclaimed “ignoramus.” I think I’ll be following the Blogging the Bible project—maybe it will be a good balance with looking at the scriptures in light of their original context, which is what I usually try to do (along with lectio divina, which I really like but have a hard time settling down for). If nothing else, it will at least provide a few good chuckles.
*Mom hasn’t chosen her own moniker for the blog, but, when I was two, I informed everyone that she was a chipmunk. Don’t know why—maybe because she hoards sunflower seeds. So Mama Chipmunk she is.
Add comment June 7th, 2006