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I suppose Easter, the season of our Lord's dying and rising, has invited a number of good articles about reading the Bible, and I will let a few of them trot about on this page, so that you may ride them or else let them run free as you scroll yonder.
The first article, by Kristin Swenson, brings out the argument that, even if you are not a believer, if you do not care to be literate in the Biblescape, you can find yourself left out of a lot of hot, trending topics of cultural discussion:
True, not long ago, I was pushing for the simpler New Living translation, which is the kind of translation that Hitchens disdains as so much dull gruel, but I offered it for beginners who have not been able to get a foothold in the Bible and wanted to do so. After all, if you are somebody who doesn't care to have anything to do with Shakespeare, for instance, then the King James version is only likely to leave you cold and feeling that it would be better to try Buddhism again.
Nevertheless, such is the literary witchery of Hitchens that he has reawakened my interest in in the KJV, though this means having to face up to the issue of the King James version versus the New King James version, but all my problems should be such.
The first article, by Kristin Swenson, brings out the argument that, even if you are not a believer, if you do not care to be literate in the Biblescape, you can find yourself left out of a lot of hot, trending topics of cultural discussion:
If you're not biblically literate, you can get along all right, but you're missing out. It's like a cocktail party with raucous conversation. You're invited, but until you know something about the Bible, you'll be stuck talking about the weather at the punch bowl.At least that's true if you are living in America. Timothy Beal gives us a more involved discussion about why a lot of would-be readers turn cold on the holy Scriptures. He posits that many curious seekers come to the Bible with a particular, iconic conception that it is suppose to have THE ANSWER to all of life's great and burning questions, but the Bible is not a Magic 8 Ball. It is a resource filled with many voices, and they are not all saying the same thing. In order to appreciate the Bible, one should not come in the expectation of getting a quick and ready answer. One does better to come to it to be immersed in a way of thinking and seeing. It is a philosophical and spiritual discipline:
The ninth-century Zen master Lin Chi is remembered for saying, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him"—meaning kill your attachment to the Buddha. Nurturing an attachment, even to the master of detachment, prevents spiritual growth.Then, for those of us who don't know Hebrew or Greek, there is the question of what translation to use in approaching these mysteries of faith and life. And what a delightful, laughing surprise to have Christopher Hitchens chiming in so poetically and beautifully on behalf of the King James version.
Attachment to the cultural icon of the Bible is similarly debilitating. It's a false image, an idol. If you see it, kill it. The Bible is dead; long live the Bible. Not as the book of answers but as a library of questions, not as a wellspring of truth but as a pool of imagination, a place that hosts our explorations, rich in ambiguity, contradiction, and argument. A place that, in its failure to give clear answers and its refusal to be contained by any synopsis or conclusion, points beyond itself to mystery, which is at the heart of the life of faith.
True, not long ago, I was pushing for the simpler New Living translation, which is the kind of translation that Hitchens disdains as so much dull gruel, but I offered it for beginners who have not been able to get a foothold in the Bible and wanted to do so. After all, if you are somebody who doesn't care to have anything to do with Shakespeare, for instance, then the King James version is only likely to leave you cold and feeling that it would be better to try Buddhism again.
Nevertheless, such is the literary witchery of Hitchens that he has reawakened my interest in in the KJV, though this means having to face up to the issue of the King James version versus the New King James version, but all my problems should be such.
