Scripture Readings:  Exodus 20: 1-17, Matthew 5: 17-19

This month, we are reflecting together on why we believe what we believe about God … about Jesus … about our faith – not just so we can get our beliefs “straight” – if that is even possible – but more importantly, so that we can live more faithful lives.  The framework we are using for our reflections is one suggested by a Methodist pastor and theologian named John Wesley.  He believed that our theological reflections – why we do and don’t believe particular things about God, or about our faith – should be guided by four sources:  tradition, Scripture, reason, and experience.

            Last week, we considered the role of tradition in shaping our faith understandings.  We reflected on how tradition can serve us well, or can serve us badly when it comes to the realm of faithful living.  This week, we are turning to a second guideline for reflection:  Holy Scripture.  And specifically, to the Scripture that Christians call “holy,” The Holy Bible.

            My guess is that much of what most of us believe about God, or Jesus, or other things of faith comes directly – or at least we think it comes directly – from that collection of writings that we know as The Bible.  For example, most of us believe – or “know” – that the primary guidelines for human behavior, according to the Old Testament, are found in that passage you heard a few minutes ago – that basic list we call “the 10 Commandments.”  Based on that small section of Biblical text, most of us believe – or “know” – that it is wrong to steal, to kill, to tell lies about other people, or to substitute anything– money, position, fame, anything else – for God.  Most of us also know that in the New Testament, Jesus summed up these 10 guidelines – and the additional 603 that comprise the whole Holy Law according to the O.T. – in just two commandments:  “You shall love God with all your heart, and soul, and mind, and strength,” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt. 22: 37-39; Mk. 12: 30-31).  

            As another example, most of us believe – or “know” – that Moses, with the help of his sister Miriam and his brother Aaron, led the enslaved Israelites from captivity in Egypt, across a miraculously-divided Red Sea – to freedom in the new land that God had given them.  And we believe that – or “know” those things – because they are in the Bible.

            As a third example, as one of my family members who was a pastor from another denomination often reminded the rest of us, many people of faith believe – or “know” – that faithful people should not drink alcoholic beverages.  And we believe – or “know” – that, because in the Bible, too.  We think.

            Now, I’m guessing that somewhere in that small set of examples, at least some of you found yourselves fidgeting just a little … perhaps because you actually don’t believe one or more of those things I listed.  Or you’re uncomfortable because you know enough about Biblical scholarship to know that some of those things, in fact, are not in the Bible.  Or you’re concerned because, as UCC folk, you don’t believe in a literal understanding of the Bible, even though in the UCC we do affirm the power and importance of Scripture in forming our faith, and in informing our lives.  Or perhaps, you’re distressed because you believe that all those things are in the Bible – but you don’t believe them – and you’re feeling guilty because you think as a person of faith you ought to.  Recognizing that there are people sitting here this morning with every one of those mind-sets – and no doubt, more that I haven’t described – I invite us to enter into some reflection about how we read Biblical texts, and how we might or might not integrate them into our faith understandings.

            Ray Brown, an outstanding (and sadly, now-deceased) Biblical scholar suggested that we might read the Bible similarly to the way we read the newspaper.  So, how many of you had the chance to read a newspaper this morning?  (The Sentinel, The New York Times, or whatever your paper of choice is.)  Or perhaps read a paper last night?

            My guess is that every one of us who reads a newspaper fairly regularly understands that there are different rules of “reading” – or of “interpretation” – for different sections of the newspaper.  For example, when we read the headlines on the front page, most of us assume (or hope) that what we’re reading is factually accurate.  When we read the editorial page, or the letters to the editor section, most of us know that what we’re reading are individuals’ personal opinions about issues – which may or may not be based on facts.  When we read the advertisements, whether in the glossy color-printed inserts, or in the classifieds, we know that they may contain exaggerations or even totally fictional statements. 

            And cognitively – psychologically – intellectually – because we know something about each of those kinds of information, we do different things with each type.  Factual information may get stored in our long-term memory.  We may want to remember, for example,  how a particular candidate voted on a certain issue for future reference when voting-time next rolls around; or we may want to remember about the new diabetes treatment that has been discovered, so we can share it with our diabetic friend.  On the other hand, advertising claims like “just one little pill lets you lose 10 pounds a week, with no dieting or exercise” or “this simple little device will cut your energy bills in half, and it only costs $19.95” (“plus, we’ll throw in a free set of Ginzu knives”),we may simply smile at, or shake our heads at, and we almost certainly do not put those so-called “facts” into our long-term memories.

Well, my friends, in some ways, the Bible is not all that different from our daily newspaper, in that it also contains many different kinds of content.   We know that some of the Bible does contain factual history, about people and events of long ago.  And some of it contains fictional, metaphorical accounts of events that happened, or of how the people of that day understood those events.  And some of it is poetry.  And some of it is proverbial wisdom sayings.  And so on.

            We also know that much of what is in the Bible is symbolic, which changes how we understand its meaning.  For example, we know that throughout the Gospels, Jesus deliberately and often used symbolic language in his teaching.  Instead of offering his followers breaking-news accounts of the week’s events, or summaries of world history up to that point in time as historians had recorded it, Jesus offered his followers stories – parables.  He talked about women who lose coins, and stir up the dust in the house every which way until they find them.  He talks about crooked businessmen, and untrustworthy managers, and parents with runaway children, all so that his hearers could better understand the deeper theological points he was trying to make.  And while parables – and symbols – and metaphors are often beautiful, and helpful ways to describe God, or God’s activity, as a rule, they are not meant to be taken as literally accurate any more than that newspaper ad that promises instant easy weight-loss or drastically-reduced electric bills.

            So, when we read Scripture, it is helpful to pay attention to what kind of text we’re reading, and how that might influence our understanding or interpretation of it.

            Our ancestors in faith understood these complexities many centuries – perhaps even several millennia – ago.  In Judaism, as the rabbinical tradition developed, rabbis – teachers – scholars of the Hebrew Bible (what we call the Old Testament) took into account some of these factors that make Biblical understanding and interpretation more challenging.  Many of them realized that different kinds of texts have degrees of what we might call “factual reality.”  They understood that the Bible was not written by a whole group of “objective scholars” who all sat down one day to write the Scriptural story, and six months later, everyone had finished their part, and all the results were simply collated into the Hebrew Bible.  Rather, it was written over a period of hundreds of years, and rewritten by folks who followed the original authors.

            Some books were written by multiple authors (like the book of Isaiah, for example), and some seem to have been written by whole communities of people.  Texts were written by authors living in different places, at different times in history, and so they had different points of view, and different agendas.  (And – lest you think this is only true for the “older” part of the Bible – the Old Testament – I assure you that exactly the same thing happened as the New Testament was written.)

            Because they understood this, “when the Jewish rabbis studied the OT, they were not looking for the meaning of a particular passage.  Rather, their method was to discuss (and often argue about – remember “Yentl?”) each passage, with each rabbi giving his interpretation.  These varying points of view were recorded in the Talmud (a collection of Jewish rabbinical interpretations of scripture), and the whole conversation was regarded as part of an ongoing interpretation of the passage[1].”

            But in the Christian tradition, the approach to Scripture was very different.  Instead of considering the possibility that more than one point of view or interpretation might be correct, most scholars in our tradition have been focused on figuring out Biblical “truth” – e.g., how historically valid a text is or is not – or whether Jesus actually said this or that thing, or, what the “correct meaning” of a given passage is.

            The good news is that this approach has spawned a whole new set of methods – yes, including scientific methods – for examining texts and for interpreting them.  And some of those methods have revealed new things about the Bible that are a bit disconcerting, and others that feel graciously welcome.

            Among the somewhat disquieting things these scholars have discovered, is that as of right now in 2010, there are no known copies of any original Scripture texts in existence.  The one possible exception is some tiny fragments of part of the book of Isaiah which were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Other than that, we have no original text of the book of Genesis – or Exodus – or Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John – or any of the other books that comprise our Bible.

            What we have are copies – of copies – of fragments of text.  What we have are some “best guesses” about the meaning of words or phrases that no longer exist, and for which there are no translation tools (like the Rosetta Stone, which helped Egyptologists translate Egyptian hieroglyphics).  What we have are whole missing chunks of text, whose contents and meaning can only be supplied by educated guesses – hypotheses.  And of course what we also have are hopes – and I’m one of those hoping – that a new cache of manuscripts, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the Nag Hammadi library, will be found that will in fact provide even better versions of the texts to draw from, and a better understanding of the texts we have.  In the meantime, what we do not have is a single, perfect, scientifically-verifiable version of “the Bible,” that so many people seem to think we do.

            Now, at least a few of you are wondering, but what about the King James Version (the “Authorized Version”) of the Bible?  Isn’t it accurate?  Isn’t it “the Bible” that is our best and most reliable reference?  In fact, when people say, “we need to go back to the Bible” to decide whether women can be ordained to the ministry, or whether divorced people should be welcome in church, or whether marriage ought to be available to all committed couples, many of them mean “we need to go back to the King James Version” of the Bible.  And yet, what many people don’t realize is that the King James Version was actually a fairly late translation … of a redaction (an edited version) … of an interpretation. 

            It didn’t come along until 1611 C.E. – at least 1500 years after the first versions of the earliest parts of the New Testament were written.  And it was preceded by several equally important, valid, and authoritative Bibles.

            Like the Septuagint, which was the first translation of the Hebrew Bible (the OT) from Hebrew into Greek, about three centuries before Jesus lived.  And the Latin Vulgate, written around 400 years after Jesus’ time, which translated both the Old and New Testaments into Latin, and which was the Bible of the Western Church through the Middle Ages.  And the Wycliffe Bible, written some 1000 years after the Vulgate, which translated most (not all) of the Bible from Latin into vernacular, medieval English.  And many, many more.

            The King James Version was, in fact, neither the only, nor the best, nor the first English version of the Bible.  It was rejected by many when it was introduced, including by our Puritan forebears.  Yet over time, it became the only version of the Bible printed by the King’s Printer – and so, by default, became the “official” Bible of the Church of England.

            But it was, and is, far from a perfect Bible.  There’s a wonderful book called God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson, which describes “the forces that produced the KJV of the Bible… (and) will give you a greater appreciation for what the translators accomplished in an era rife with political skullduggery and dispute.”

            This book makes it clear that the KJV was not quickly accepted, as you might expect  – e.g., the Puritans rejected the KJ Bible and used a translation called the Geneva Bible instead when they came to the New World – but even so, the King James Bible became the standard for all the English speaking world, and is a translation that is still one of the most loved and trusted by many Christians today.  As Nicolson notes, “And that (popularity is) in spite of its many short-comings, and even errors.  As a printed work, the new Bible was “riddled with misprints, ‘hoopes’ for ‘hookes,’ ‘she’ for ‘he’… and alarmingly ‘Judas” for ‘Jesus’ in one of the Gospels.  None of these was quite so catastrophic as a misprint … in a 1631 edition (of the KJV), the so-called Wicked Bible, which failed to put the word ‘not’ in Exodus 20:14, giving the reading ‘Thou shalt commit adultery…’ When, finally, in the 19^th century, Dr. F. Scrivener, a scholar working to modern standards, attempted to collate all the editions of (just) the KJ Bible then in circulation, he found more than 24,000 variations between them.  The curious fact is that no one such thing as “The KJ Bible’ – agreed, consistent and whole – has ever existed[2].”

            And the King James Version was not the final translation or interpretation of the Bible either.  “Modern” Bibles – those written since 1800 – include any number of translations that you have probably never heard of:  like the Moulton – and the Moffat – and the Chicago – Bibles, each written in the first half of the 20^th century, and each with its own biases and flaws.  Not to mention the Revised Standard Version (RSV), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), the New International Version, the Jerusalem Bible, and several thousand – yes, that’s right, thousand – other versions of the Bible in print today.

            All of which raises a deeply critical question for us as would-be faithful people:  given that we know the Bible is what it is – a product of many different, humanly-limited, humanly-opinionated, some well-informed, some not-so-well-informed writers, written, changed, and rewritten over a several-thousand-year period – what do we do with it?  What authority do we – or don’t we – give it, as one of those four sources on which we might base our faith?

            One possibility is to simply ignore all this scholarship and history stuff, and accept the Bible as it is as the inspired and literal word of God, apparently transparent in meaning to anyone who is able to read.  A second possibility is to take into account all this scholarship and history stuff, and reject the Bible out of hand, as a flawed, useless, outdated bunch of writing.  And a third possibility is to accept what the scholars have discovered so far, and also accept the Bible as a living – albeit imperfect – document that offers us some crucial faith insights and understandings.

            Personally, I have opted for choice number three.  I love this book, with all its flaws and oddities and imperfections.  And I don’t find that they get in the way of the Bible’s usefulness in reflecting on my faith, or how to live it out.  I love the way a Biblical text can say one thing to us on one day, in one set of circumstances, and say something else to us on another day in another set of circumstances.  I love it that it recognizes – and validates – and blesses – an enormous range of human experience.  And I love it that we can trust, if we choose to, that through this written Word,             as well as through tradition … and reason … and experience … that God is still speaking.

            My hope for you is that you will also read Scripture as carefully … as thoughtfully … and as seriously – if not a great deal more so – as you read your morning newspaper.  And that you think, and pray, and draw on those other three sources, and reach your own faith conclusions.  Amen.