Fr. Dave's Thoughts - February 21st, 2025

Dear Friends,

I want to embark on a journey with you over the next several months that may seem rather daunting. I am asked Biblical questions quite often, so over these next several months, I want to take a look at the Bible with you from a rather high, 10,000-foot view, just to give you a framework for how most Episcopalians understand our most sacred book. The textbook I am going to be using, and one that you might want to pick up for yourself, is entitled A Guide to Bible Basics written by Biblical scholar, Dr. Tyler Mayfield. He is the A. B. Rhodes Associate Professor of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Kentucky. This is a seminary of the Presbyterian Church USA, which historically has been the main body of Presbyterians in this country. There are large modern offshoots of the Presbyterian Church that are Presbyterian in their polity, but not necessarily Reformed in their theological orientation. Presbyterians are known for their Biblical scholarship and this book is as good as any I have seen. I believe that it is important for all of us to become a bit more literate when it comes to our Holy Scriptures.

By way of introduction, let me say that the vast majority of Episcopalians, or Mainline Protestants for that matter, do not take a literal approach to the Bible, and for good reason. Why do I say this? There are a number of reasons. First of all, within our Bible one can find poetry, prose, history, parables, apocalyptic imagery, prophesy, myth, and theology. All of these different genres are there within the Bible. I think you would agree with me that we do not read poetry or prose the same way we read history, prophesy or theology. To do so, would do damage to these texts, in my opinion.

To go a bit further, the Bible is set in an historical context that took place over thousands of years and in different parts of the world, engaging different cultures and people. It records people’s experience of the one true God who created all that is seen and unseen acting in human history and in human lives. The Bible is not so much a manual for living as it is the living, breathing Word of God that must be engaged and wrestled with in every generation and every context. Besides all of this, the idea that the Bible can actually be read literally, is, in and of itself problematic. In truth, we all bring our own perspectives to anything we read. That is, we bring our own culture, experiences and personal history to whatever we read and that, by definition, means that we are interpreting the text, not literally, but through the lens of our own life or cultural experiences. Which is why, even among those Christian traditions that claim the Bible to be the literal, inerrant Word of God, there is often disagreement and even dissention among them in how they read certain passages of scripture. I believe that we all bring our own prejudices, our own values, our own cultural norms to our reading of scripture and we need to attempt to put those things aside so we can understand what God is communicating through these texts. The art of hermeneutics is that branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, especially of sacred texts. I will write more about hermeneutics as we go along. Finally, it is important to say the there are many instances in our scriptures that seem contradictory. These contradictions need to be engaged and talked about rather than neglected or ignored. It is important to remember that the Old Testament was written down in Hebrew with the exception of a few sections of Ezra and Daniel that were written in the Aramaic, which is a closely related language to Hebrew. The New Testament was written down in Greek. So, the Bibles that we read today are all translations. Most Christians throughout history have only encountered the Bible through translation. This is important to recognize because not all languages can capture the essence of the original. Just a simple example of this can be found in Luke chapter 22:19 where we find Jesus sharing the last supper with the twelve disciples. “Then he (Jesus) took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you: do this in remembrance of me.’” You will recognize this from the words of institution in our eucharistic liturgy. The word remembrance here is from the Greek word anamnesis which has a much deeper meaning than our word remembrance. Anamnesis means to remember not just with the mind, but with the whole being; body, mind and soul. We all have memories that transport us to a different time and place, that evoke emotion. When we celebrate the eucharist, we are not just re-enacting the Last Supper from memory, we are doing something much more profound, we are awakening the spiritual part of us that communes with God. This is what the word anamnesis is attempting to convey, but to read it in English, we don’t get this sense. There are textual anomalies throughout the translated Bible that are important to work through if we are to get the heart of what the scripture is trying to convey to us. You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to work through them either, anyone can do it with a few good resources. I will be making recommendations on some of these resources as we go along.

Finally, just one last thing. I will use the terms, Bible, scripture(s) and Holy Scripture(s) synonymously throughout these coming weeks. This allows the writing to be a bit more interesting, hopefully.

I think this is enough for now. I look forward to your feedback as we work through this blog together over the next several months. And as always, thanks for reading it. I really appreciate it.

Peace,

Dave