The Bible Is Dead! (I Expect Dead Quiet On That)
Frank A. Hilario
November 01, 2006
Dead. Having lost life; no longer alive. Marked for certain death; doomed; having the physical appearance of death. A corpse. From American Heritage Dictionary
I am not going to grieve. And I´m dead earnest when I say that. In fact, I am convinced the Bible should have died ages ago, in 1560 to be exact.
Today I can see the future. For now I see the glass darkly, the image of a colossal Bible upside down on top of a giant cross, rice straw stacked around and high up the cross, and someone striking a match and making a great fire that can be seen anywhere in the world to illuminate it. I say the Bible is its own excuse for burning. I believe the Bible is the very source of much of the conflicts in the Christian world today. It is time to bury the Bible. Let´s give peace a chance!
My thesis here is this: The Bible is the worst book ever published in the last 447 years it´s good as dead.. And I can give you 3 intelligent reasons why I shall not grieve over the death of the Bible:
(1) I grieve not for the Bible that is divisive.
(2) I grieve not for the Bible that is most unreadable.
(3) I grieve not for the Bible that encourages fragmentality.
The English Bible is a dead duck. My opinion of it goes back many years. Since 1991, when I returned to the Roman Catholic fold from my intellectual wanderings, I have bought about 10 different versions of it; so while the Bible has sold many millions of copies more, I know that the publication has not improved an inch. Divisive, as in creating dissension or discord (American Heritage Dictionary). Unreadable, as in too difficult or tedious to read (AllWords.com/). Fragmentality, as in piecemeal thinking (new theory and meaning by Frank A Hilario).
Dead load. I shall now proceed to describe to you the Bible that you may not have known you have had. I´m hesitant to present the corpus delicti but I will, what may not be good, pleasing and perfect – if I may borrow from the letter of St Paul to the Romans, which Tom Wright calls ´The Greatest Letter Ever Written´ (2001, Tabgha, stjohnadulted.org/). Paul´s epistle is powerfully unifying; in studying St Paul´s Romans, we shall see why the whole Bible is not.
(1) I GRIEVE NOT FOR THE BIBLE THAT IS DIVISIVE.
By itself and of itself, the English Bible of Christians creates enormous social gaps or massive fractures. No book in the history of the world has created so much unholy acrimony than that compilation of 80 books called the Holy Bible. In fact, we the Roman Catholics have 80 books we call the Bible, and they the Protestants have only 66 books, because they exclude 14 books they call the Apocrypha (Greek for hidden or secret, source unknown), considering them ´uninspired´ or ´non-canonical.´ The Catholics call them Deuterocanonical (Dave Armstrong 1996, ic.net/~erasmus/); Greek deutero, secondary, canonical, accepted by church council. That´s the first area of disagreement, a well-visited site.
That tells me the Catholics and Protestants cannot agree on the boundaries or senses of the meaning of the word ´inspired´ or ´canonical.´ Still, you may be interested to note that the first edition of the most popular Bible in the world, the King James Version (KJV) of 1611 – I still love its Elizabethan prose that I memorized in high school – contained the Apocrypha books; but in the KJV of 1885, they had been deleted (GS 2003, greatsite.com/). 275 years: What took them so long?
Another intriguing source of Catholic-Protestant dissonance is the so-called Ten Commandments (which, by the way, is a name not found in the Bible itself in any version). To compare, let us borrow from Austin Cline his parallel lists of the commandments in abbreviated form (2006, atheism.about.com/); I list them here one after the other for easy comparison.
The Ten Commandments
You shall have no other gods but me. (Protestant #1)
I, the Lord, am your God. You shall not have other gods beside me. (Catholic #1)
You shall not make unto you any graven images. (Protestant #2)
You shall not take the name of the Lord God in vain. (Catholic #2)
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. (Protestant #3)
Remember to keep holy the Lord´s Day. (Catholic #3)
You shall remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. (Protestant #4)
Honor your father and your mother. (Catholic #4)
Honor your mother and father. (Protestant #5)
You shall not kill. (Catholic #5)
You shall not murder. (Protestant #6)
You shall not commit adultery. (Catholic #6)
You shall not commit adultery. (Protestant #7)
You shall not steal. (Catholic #7)
You shall not steal. (Protestant #8)
You shall not bear false witness. (Catholic #8)
You shall not bear false witness. (Protestant #9)
You shall not covet your neighbor´s wife. (Catholic #9)
You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor. (Protestant #10)
You shall not covet your neighbor´s goods. (Catholic #10)
Now, do notice, essentially the Catholics and Protestants are deadlocked on 4 of the commandments: the first 2 and the last 2. The Catholic #1 is split into 2 by the Protestants, #1 and #2; the Protestant #10 is split into 2 by the Catholics, #9 and #10. That´s a high percentage of disagreement, 40%, and that´s ´statistically significant,´ as those who are numbers-minded will say. If you can´t agree on your assumptions, you can´t agree on your conclusions.
Now, how important are the Ten Commandments? If you don´t follow them, you´re good as dead. They were so important that God did not write them on paper, which is perishable, but on stone; on that I am sure the Catholics and Protestants agree. (On this note, when making a promise or pledge, a Filipino will solemnly say: ´Itaga mo sa bato!´ Etch that on stone! Meaning, you can depend on it.)
I´m surprised to know that, on one hand, the Lutherans agree with the Catholics in the wordings of The Ten Commandments or Decalogue! and on the other hand, those of the Orthodox agree with the other Protestants (J Dominguez 2006, biblia.com/).
About misunderstanding the whole Bible, Rev Charles Cooper puts it all in the form of a very blunt question: ´How can Christians read and study the same Bible, yet come away with opposite conclusions?´ (2006, solagroup.org/). You tell me. Hermeneutics is the reason, he says, or interpretation; based on differing experiences and knowledge, we interpret the Bible in our own way. The same words, phrases, expressions and jargon have different meanings to different groups of people.
Instead of uniting us, the Bible is separating us. The Bible is deadweight when it should be living water to all those who thirst after the truth.
We must learn the art of interpretation, says Cooper; ´We must learn to be aware of more possibilities than just a literal meaning.´ I don´t know if that is helpful and not just hopeful. I consider a major constraint to a common understanding of the Bible its having too many versions. BibleGateway.com lists 50 versions and translations by itself, the list including the Arabic Ebook Bible, Cebuano New Testament, La Bible du Emeur, Icelandic Bible, Biblia Tysiadecia, Chinese Union Version.
Tyndale lists 100 plus English versions alone (tyndale.cam.ac.uk/). That their number is legion is historical. The Geneva Bible alone had at least 144 editions between 1560 and 1644 (Gary DeMar 2006, americanvision.org/).
Too many versions, too many minds. What Paul Greenberg says of abortion applies to the Bible: ´It stirs too many feelings, it opens too many minds, it examines too many unexamined assumptions´ (1999, jewishworldreview.com/).
The Bible is divisive also because it encourages bias. A bias, says my favorite American Heritage Dictionary, is ´a preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial judgment; an unfair act or policy stemming from prejudice.´ A deadly sin.
The history of the Bible is a history of biases. In 1522, Martin Luther translated the Old Testament into German (GS 2003). Everybody knows that Luther was anti-Catholic; he had been excommunicated under Pope Leo in 1521 (Richard Hooker 1999, wsu.edu/). In 1560, the Geneva Bible was published, knowingly and deliberately produced without the imprimatur of either England or Rome, of course, because it was ´outspokenly anti-Roman Catholic´ (DeMar 2006).
King James of England rejected the Geneva Bible because of its Calvinistic leanings. Good old King James! Following the suggestion of the Puritan scholar John Reynolds, King James ordered a new translation, and this is what we now call the King James Version. Thank you, Your Highness.
Today, the King James Bible is acceptable to both Catholics and Protestants. Notwithstanding, there are many Roman Catholic and Protestant old and new versions of the Bible competing for attention and acceptance. The biases remain. Harold Camping tells us that when Bible teachers disagree on a doctrine, even using the exact same Bible, one of them will say, ´Well, he has his opinion, his interpretation, and I have mine.´ That is justifying one´s bias. Camping says of such mentality (1986, worldwide.familyradio.org/):
This is the thinking behind the writing of paraphrased Bibles; this is the thinking that has influenced some of the newer translations of the Bible. ¶ This makes man the ultimate judge and the final authority. It effectively declares that God has written words and phrases that we call the Bible but which depend upon us, as teachers, to decide what God means; thus, the reader has the final say as to what is truth.
This is individual bias. (Not of the Roman Catholic.) Everyone is dead set on his own bias. That kind of mentality, says Camping, is the one that ´has spawned cults and false gospels that prevail all over the world.´ Very convenient. ´A teacher interprets verses according to a preconceived idea and then (tries) to show that his Gospel is Bible-based.´ That is why we have, on the other side from the Catholics, the Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Congregationalists, Reformed Churches, Methodists, Episcopalians, Mennonites, Adventists, Jehovah´s Witnesses, Pentecostals, Anglicans, among more than 33,000 Protestant denominations in the US alone (itsjustdave1988 2005, bringyou.to/apologetics/) who will not agree with each other.
Nonetheless, I disagree with Camping when he says that the lack of rapprochement among churches results from ´the fact that the Bible is not fully relied upon as the source of absolute truth.´ The assumption is the Protestant dogma of sola scriptura, that the Scripture alone is the basis of truth. Sola scriptura is the Christian Dead Sea: It cannot support life. One of my objections to that dogma is that, with the proliferation of Bible versions, especially on the Protestant side, who will tell us which one is nearest to the truth? We will forever debate that; the brag will forever be like the American boast: ´My Bible can beat your Bible!´ That is why we need tradition as basis for universal truth; that is why the Roman Catholics also insist on the teaching authority of the Pope as a third basis for universal, apostolic, catholic truth. That is why we have only 1 Roman Catholic denomination and 1 common interpretation of the Bible anywhere in the world.
(2) I GRIEVE NOT FOR THE BIBLE THAT IS MOST UNREADABLE.
I say the Bible is the most unreadable book in the world! Wayne Leman, referring to Bible translations, as of course all English Bibles are, gives us a good idea what readability is all about; he says that it ´refers to how naturally and easily a translation can be read´ (2006, geocities.com/bible_translation/).
I will take that literally and prove to you that the English Bibles in millions upon millions of hands or homes right now cannot be read naturally and are difficult to read. You would think that the publishers of Bibles, Catholic and Protestant alike, didn´t care much about Bible readers except that they paid for their copy. You would also think that they didn´t really care whether the publishers gave the love and attention that the Word of God deserves. I say, ´Goodbye, Mr Cheap!´
I shall now describe to you the English Bible we should have said goodbye to hundreds of years ago.
(a) The Bible´s page layout is bad, very bad.
I´m looking at the New International Version of the Bible published by Zondervan (1987), the version with one of the best layouts I have seen, and I have seen quite a few. The NIV is in 2 columns and has subheads like your favorite newspaper. But in Bible publishing, even the best is not good enough. From what I have seen, they don´t appreciate white space, which adds to or subtracts from readability (2006, grantastic.designs.com/). Each Bible page is almost full of text, with only about 1.5 cm wrap-around white space, not enough to rest the eyes. And the line spacing is so dense no page invites you to browse, not to mention linger – all that text swims before your eyes but not tantalizingly. It´s a drowsy, monotonous landscape.
You may think that old-fashioned Scroogean publishers of the Linotype era ordered the typesetting and composing of the pages, thinking of cramming as much text into each page as possible. Their economics is good but their printwork is bad. Why can´t the Bible´s basic page approximate, for instance, the collegiate American Heritage Dictionary´s seductive beauty? It´s drop-dead gorgeous!
(b) The Bible´s fonts are hard on the eyes, very hard.
Elsewhere, they warn you: ´Read the fine print first before you sign.´ In the English Bible, fine print is the rule, not the exception. Not fine with me. The font size is too small – 8 pt? It is as if they don´t want you to be able to read the text so that you may not be able to understand, so they have it all in small print. There are of course large print editions, but you can count them on your fingers, and they are very expensive. Meanwhile, millions of us Bible readers have to be content with the affordable fine-print edition. Even pulp fiction is printed better. The best is yet to be!
You know why the page layout is bad and the text is in small print? As many words and lines have to be crammed as possible following space limitations dictated by the publisher. The publishers just happen to be giving what the customers want; the attitude of millions of Bible users (readers and owners) is this: The smaller the better. The explanation is also historical. In the ancient days of paper, parchment or papyrus was the writing material and it was hard to come by, so the writers had to scrimp on space (Daniel P Fuller 2006, fuller.edu/). Old historical habits die hard.
Pocket-size or compact Bibles are still very popular. Portability has always been the rule, not readability. (I have yet to read a complaint about any small-print English Bible; I´m probably the first to write about it and make known my distaste of it publicly.) Portable is easy to carry and, best of all, inexpensive. Consider that the Bible, printed in hard-to-read size, is still more than a thousand pages: with its single-column page format, the Jerusalem Bible (1966) has 2000 pages; with its 2-column page format, the New American Bible (1984) has 1355 pages, and the bigger book with the space-saving 2-column format, NIV (1987) still has 1112 pages. Zondervan´s newest version, Today´s New International Version (2005) has 2,496 pages at 5.6" x 8.5" x 1.9" (2005, zondervan.com/). I haven´t seen the TNIV myself but, if you have seen one, you have seen them all. They´re the same dead Bible, dead to the world.
The TNIV is worth special mention as its publisher, Zondervan, last year made ´the biggest Bible translation launch in history,´ carefully ´taking aim at the younger generation of Christians as well as the spiritually intrigued´ (2005, zondervan.com/). This is the version which practices gender equality, they say, satisfying the ladies who are running after their liberation. Much ado about nothing. Zondervan doesn´t realize it, but the TNIV is the dead-end street for all English Bibles. After this, all English Bibles are dead as dodos.
I hate to think that the publishers of Bibles are dead from the neck up, that they have never been educated about readability, or that all they are interested in is to publish a book that is designed as a second-rate reading material because that is what makes it a best-seller. The publishing of old-new Bibles should now come to a dead halt.
(3) I GRIEVE NOT FOR THE BIBLE THAT ENCOURAGES FRAGMENTALITY.
My thesis, like I said above, is this: ´The Bible is the worst book ever published in the last 447 years.´ Note that I did not say ´in the last 2000 years.´ I am referring to the English Bible only. The Bible (Old Testament and New Testament) completed publication in 1 AD, all in Greek. My 447 years comes from the fact that the Geneva Bible was first published in 1560, and it was the first English Bible with all the features that encourage the grasping of partial reality as the grasping of the whole reality itself. Since we have copied the features of the Geneva Bible, our biblical Fathers have dealt us a dead hand with the English Bible. I explain.
Worse than being divisive and being most unreadable, the Bible nurtures an intellectually bad habit, what I call here fragmentality, nurturing a tendency of the human mind to think in terms of the parts first to come up with or understand the whole next. This is what others call reductionism, ´a theory that asserts that the nature of complex things is reduced to the nature of sums of simpler or more fundamental things´ (en.wikipedia.org/): The whole is equal to the sum of its parts. I believe it is more than what the unknown Wikipedia author asserts. The Bible as published encourages reductionism, the philosophy that asserts that the parts are more important than the whole, that in fact, one can arrive at an understanding of the whole if one studied the parts and determine which of the parts can explain the observable overall behavior of the whole. In other words, the whole is less than the sum of the parts. That is fragmentality.
Fragmentality in essence is the scientific method which, by the way, denies the very validity of faith. Remember when Francis Crick & James Watson deduced the double-helix structure of DNA and claimed that they had discovered the secret of life? (Alun Rees, 2004, miqel.com/). That was fragmentalism, worth a Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1962.
And how does the Bible encourage fragmentality? Easy: It does it simply and unobtrusively by dividing Bible books into arbitrarily designated chapters and numbered verses. The present chapter divisions in our English Bibles were invented in 1205, no thanks to Stephen Langton, a Professor in Paris, later Archbishop of Canterbury (Fuller 2006). This is the original sin on the English Bible.
The first English Bible to add modern numbered verses to each chapter was the Geneva Bible, published in 1560 AD (GS 2003), as well as the first to add modern chapter divisions (William H Noah & David L Brown 2006, logosresourcepages.org/). Two sins in one. It was upon the advice of John Calvin that the Geneva Bible was divided into numbered verses (C Matthew McMahon 1998, apuritansmind.com/). Calvin was an intellectual giant, whether or not you agreed with him. Richard Hooker admires him (1999, wsu.edu/):
Calvin created the patterns and thought that would dominate Western culture throughout the modern period. American culture, in particular, is thoroughly Calvinist in some form or another; at the heart of the way Americans think and act, you´ll find this fierce and imposing reformer.
Me, I find something to criticize in American culture, just as I find Calvin´s advice on numbered verses ill-considered. And the reasons? Plenty. H Von Soden (cited by Fuller 2006), tells us:
The verse divisions … frequently do not do service to the sense of the text. There is no consistent method at work in this system. The verses sometimes coincide with a single sentence, and sometimes they include several sentences; sometimes a single sentence is divided into two verses, with the result that the reader is led to consider the second verse while forgetting the point of view of the first verse. Especially objectionable is the way in which words introducing a direct quotation sometimes belong to the preceding verse and sometimes to the verse in which the quotation is found.
Bad habits die badly, or not at all. If you can quote a thousand verses, you are considered an authority of the Bible and ought to be listened to. With fragmentality, in fact you may be full of disparate thoughts, incomplete links, misleading connections, and you often expound things out of context. That explains why we have so many preachers on TV and why they do not agree on many key concepts and vital issues.
The Geneva Bible was the principal English Bible initially brought to the United States and therefore early helped shape American life (DeMar 2006). And shaped how Americans (and us Filipinos, having been colonized by them), use the Bible at home, in church and in meetings.
If you are into the charismatic or revival movement, you have heard of book, chapter and verse bandied about when somebody wants to make a point during a Protestant preacher´s peroration, in a Bible study session or in the reflections on the Gospel in a Roman Catholic group prayer meeting.
What greater example of book, chapter and verse than Martin Luther´s favorite part of the Bible? The book of Romans, chapter 1, verse 17:
For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. King James Version (used by both Catholics & Protestants)
For in the Gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ´The righteous will live by faith.´ New International Version (also used by both Catholics & Protestants).
For in the Gospel is revealed the justice of God which begins and ends with faith; as Scripture says, ´The just man shall live by faith.´ New American Bible (Catholic)
In all versions, what the verse is saying is that the Christian is justified, or becomes righteous, or becomes upright, or is saved, through faith in God. That is rather very clear.
Now, this is the very verse that Martin Luther used to prove that his fragmentality was biblically accurate and wholesome. That is why I say that the Great Reformer is the best example of the worst thing that can happen when we fragmentalize the Bible. His treatise/theory that we are saved only by faith (sola fide) came about when he isolated Romans 1: 17 and took it out of context, even out of the context of the book of Romans itself. I quote from his writings (from What Luther Says, compiled by Edwald M Plass 2006, presenttruthmag.com/):
This doctrine (justification by faith) is the head and the cornerstone. It alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends the Church of God, and without it the Church of God cannot exist for one hour.
Martin Luther was dead set on finding his way out of the monastery. As quoted by Rev Brian Bill (2006, pontiacbible.org/), monk and Professor Martin Luther himself wrote about his own conversion out of Roman Catholicism after he had contemplated Romans 1: 17:
Night and day I pondered until ... I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself reborn ... When I understood that and when the concept of justification by faith alone burst through my mind, suddenly it was like the doors of paradise swung open and I walked through ... This passage of Paul became to me a gateway to heaven.
What Luther means is that faith alone is enough to save your soul and mine; we do not need to do good works. Our sins have been forgiven because we have already become believers in Christ. We will never lose that saving grace, that justification. Good works do not contribute to our justification.
Luther thought he was a dead shot; in fact, he had hit the nail right on the head – a doornail. Justification by faith is dead as a doornail.
The thought that led Luther to sola fide is the result of fragmentality, where you take something out of context and declare it to be the whole thing instead of just a part of it. Luther was guilty of fragmentality, what others call reductionism – and therefore, the whole Protestant ethic is based on reductionism.
That as far as I know is the Roman Catholic view. As things are developing today, that is the view of the Reformed Church in America (DeMar 2006). St Paul is saying that we are saved not by the Jewish laws of Moses but by our faith, and this faith must be sustained by good works (John A Battle 2006, wrs.edu/).
The context we need is the entire book of Romans, and not simply in that single favorite verse of Martin Luther. Reductionism is a good intellectual exercise if you want to drive home the point that the Catholics are wrong in insisting that we are saved not simply by faith alone but by faith and works. Context is what gives complete meaning to a word or idea; fragmentalism is giving meaning out of context.
Context! Let us go back to the book of Romans, chapter 1, verse 17. Now I want to emphasize the last 6 words:
The just shall live by faith. King James Version
The righteous will live by faith. New International Version
The just man shall live by faith. New American Bible
Luther is correct in interpreting that we are saved (justified or made righteous) by faith, as the three versions commonly are saying. But only by faith? Not by any means! There is no such word as ´alone´ or anything remotely related to it in those versions, and I have quoted you the two most popular Bibles, the KJV and NIV.
Not only that. I interpret ´shall live by faith´ and ´will live by faith´ both to mean you have to ´live your faith,´ not just revel in it, not just proclaim it, not just dance it, not just shout it to the world. Just do it!
To further demonstrate context, I will now lead you to my own favorite chapter, Romans 12, what I think is the very source of the very popular 1952 happiness poem Desiderata by Max Ehrmann (hoobes.ncsa.uiuc.edu/). Let me now list what St Paul is saying the Christian brothers must do, the necessary works (NIV):
Offer your bodies as living sacrifices.
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world.
Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought.
If a man´s gift is in prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.
If it is in serving, let him serve.
If it is teaching, let him teach.
If it is encouraging, let him encourage.
If it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously.
If it is leadership, let him govern diligently.
If it is in showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.
Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.
Honor one another above yourselves.
Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Share with God´s people who are in need.
Practice hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.
Live in harmony with one another.
Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.
Do not be conceited.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil.
Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.
If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God´s wrath.
If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Enough from Romans.
I believe I got that dead center. I have shown you that justification by faith alone, minus works, is in the book of Romans – out of context. Luther was converted out of Catholicism out of context! I invented fragmentality in hindsight; Martin Luther is the most famous practitioner of it all.
Where came Luther´s heresy? I blame it on fragmentality, encouraged by the Bible in those times, and in ours. The English language is not dead, but the English Bible as it is turns it into, as it were, a deadening sound.
THE BIBLE IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE BIBLE!
Right now, it´s the dead calm around us, the calm before the storm. Soon you will witness the death throes.
My dead reckoning is that the English Bible as we know it will be deadwood towards the end of next year, 2007. That´s my deadline. The death of the English Bible will be met with deathly silence.
I know we will not wait for the end of the Bible as we know it before we will do something. I know we are not dead beat when it comes to siring, conceiving, delivering a newborn English Bible.
In the meantime, now that we realize the English Bible is as good as dead, what shall we do with it? I say: Junk all those millions of copies. The Bible we have is a relic of the 20th century and now belongs only in museums of antiquity, fit to be displayed under a glass case and consulted once in a while for historical purposes. I like the idea of burning because we can have a ceremony of it, like they did when they burned the witches and the heretics in the olden days.
The Bible as it is discourages the understanding of wholes and encourages instead the understanding of parts – the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. Fragmentalism makes the whole world go round in dizzying circles. You breathe in dead air.
In-context and out-of-context: The nearest accessible and the greatest working model the world has ever known in accessing knowledge and in presenting the opportunity to any searcher to learn in context is the Internet. Imagine that you are reading this paragraph online and you notice that there are 4 words underlined with a blue text – each one is a hyperlink (hyper, easily stimulated + link), that is, a hypertext (hyper + text) that is cross-referenced and will take you (if you click it) to another document or file in the Internet. Since you have 4 hyperlinks, you have at least 4 chances to arrive at a greater context of this paragraph, clicking on the words model, knowledge, searcher and Internet.
Another example of context: When you google for the word model, you will get search results in many different contexts: model place, model technology, business model, model person, virtual model, model airplane, even model search engine. Context here is not simply a shade of meaning or sense but meaning as contained, expressed or impressed, within each document itself. Mere scanning of the documents will enrich your appreciation of the subject because your mind will be forced to make context shifts, paradigm shifts. I know it will help you become creative too.
Related to context is the most popular and most acceptable tool among Bible-based preachers, not to mention Bible readers: the concordance, which is an index of words in the whole Bible considered important by the compiler. The most popular concordance is that of Alexander Cruden, first published in 1737, who single-handedly compiled from the total 777,746 words of the King James Bible (Timothy Larsen 2005, ctlibrary.com/). If you didn´t know, if you are looking for a verse to say something about a word or idea, open your concordance and check the alphabetically listed word index. The index gives you any number of books, chapters, verses where you can find your keyword. You get your verses and you are happy with that. So you see, Cruden´s, or any other´s concordance for that matter, is another encourager of fragmentality, and we should get rid of it once and for all.
Also related to context is the use of the bookmark, and you may have one or two of them. The bookmark, whether a red ribbon or a student´s cardboard kind, encourages the preacher or sharer to simply look for a verse or two, insert that thing, and forget it – not remembering to expound on that verse in the context of the book in which he finds it, say Romans.
A Baptist himself, David Flick says about context (2001, txbc.org/):
Context is crucial whether it is interpreting the Bible, reading a news story, or hearing a sermon. People can misinterpret statements when they take them out of context. They can understand them correctly when statements are in context. ¶ Southern Baptists are noted for taking things out of context. They are noted also for not recognizing heresy when it occurs within the contexts of sermons and debates.
You get my drift? You get my context.
It´s time for a new Bible.
After all that, I´m deadly certain we will come out with a Bible without those verse numbers and without those run-out/run-in leading/misleading subheads that were not in the original anyway. We will not put up with fragmentality anymore.
I see the future now. We will donate all our Bibles to be recycled – as gifts of books to remote Africa, Alaska, the Americas and Asia, or as gifts of paper. Then we will produce what I call here The Reader´s Bible, an electronic Bible that anybody can download, either in Microsoft Word or OpenOffice Writer, preferably Word, because it´s used by millions upon millions for better or for worse, and because I have mastered it and I can manipulate it like crazy, if you know what I mean. But I´ll accept Writer.
We will produce that new Bible, all in one column, with no chapters, no verse numbers, and no marginal notes! Von Soden suggests that the chapter and verse divisions ´disappear from the text and ... put on the margin in as inconspicuous a place as possible´ (cited above). Not enough. Delete! I say. We will put all those cross-references, annotations whatever into your footnotes, so that they don´t get in the way when I just want to read the text. If I want to know more, I´ll go down to your level and read your endnotes.
The best that will ever happen to The Reader´s Bible? I can read in context! That is the best way to understand something you are reading.
With a downloadable Bible like that, I can columnize it – 2 columns, 3 columns, as I like. I can widen the space between columns, or narrow the space between. In a different context, I am reminded: ´Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way ... and few there be that find it.´ (Matthew 7: 14, KJV)
I can annotate The Reader´s Version myself, and in multi-colored text too. I can do the layout I like, and I can change it at will. I can search fast, and repeatedly, with the click of a mouse. I can copy and paste in just 2 steps. I can zoom in on any page, paragraph or text – I can resize the fonts to, say, 24 points to make all words very readable to me. I can create a concordance in less time than you can read this paragraph. I don´t need the thumb index; with The Reader´s Bible, I can create an index of words and ideas in half a day, and I can always add to it anytime. I can also add graphics and other images where I want when I want as long as I want.
With The Reader´s Version, I cannot do what I like with the Bible, but I can always do what I want with the text.
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