Participatory Bible Study Blog

I use the term “participatory” to describe the method of Bible study that I teach. To be more precise I might say that’s the umbrella concept under which I teach any number of different methods, while urging people to also find their own.

When people first hear the word “participatory” they either say “huh” or quite often think of a study group in which each person participates in the study. That is a form of participatory study. But I’m subtly altering the use of the term. I use it to refer to becoming a part of the Bible story yourself.

There are many ways to do this. I like to do it through stories, such as those I post on my Jevlir Caravansary blog in poetry and short stories. I don’t claim these are professional. What they do is help me express the feeling of a Biblical passage or of the time and place it happened.

Recently I’ve been starting to follow David Ker’s Cyber Psalms. His latest one is Cyber Psalm 37. These Psalms are an example of “participating in the Bible” though I’m certain David didn’t work on them because of any method I proposed. I’m just claiming them as a useful example. My idea is hardly original. It actually has substantial echoes of lectio divina in it.

My challenge to any Bible students out there is to find the method that lets you personally get inside the story. Much of this isn’t about exegesis; it’s about getting on board. Of course, the ultimate getting on board is getting out and active accomplishing the gospel commission. That’s one aspect of the final stage of the method as I propose it–sharing. Your approach doesn’t have to be the same as anyone else’s.

My pastor today, preaching on Pentecost, commented that if the Holy Spirit gets hold of you he may send you around the world, or he may send you across the street. Saying yes to that call to get involved is participating, becoming part of the story.

Welcome to the Christian Carnival, tabernacle edition.

Why use the tabernacle? In my teaching I have found that the tabernacle and its services are almost infinitely useful, often illustrating things that one might not assume from the text. I identify as carefully as I can when I’m being strictly exegetical, and when I’m using the imagery to help get across other lessons. As an example, see my talk The Sin of Getting Stuck, in which I use the tabernacle as an illustration of progress in one’s Christian walk–clearly not exegetical, yet the tabernacle lends itself to this. (Note that this is a little over an hour long video, so unless you’re patient, skip it! Audio is also an option.)

I have attached posts to various sections. There is no greater and lesser holiness implied. For example, Outside the Camp is for posts about witness and our relationship to the world. The camp itself is for daily living. In front of the gate is where many debates and confrontations took place. In the courtyard was a place for learning as the Israelites carried out God’s great teaching program. I reserve At the Altar of Sacrifice for items related to atonement and salvation, and The Holy Place for worship related items. Hopefully I’ve placed your post well.

The pictures here are from http://koti.phnet.fi/petripaavola/Tabernacle, whose author gives kind permission to use them non-commercially on each page. I have only chosen a very small number, and I’ve had to reduce their resolution, so I recommend going and looking at the results of his hard work.

In the Camp

Rodney Olsen presents Keeping Pets in Perspective posted at RodneyOlsen.net. As Christians, what should our attitudes be towards pets?

William Meisheid presents Seeking Solidarity posted at Beyond The Rim…. A critique of Peggy Noonan’s article on the Wright-Obama controversy.

Richard H. Anderson presents Rewriting Tabitha posted at dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos Theophilos.

GP presents Fear is your Friend posted at Innstyle Montana- Your Home on the Range. Horses teach us Isaiah 41:10 (look it up!).

In the Courtyard

Ade Sobanjo presents 5 Reasons why Sex before Marriage is dangerous !!! posted at Celebration of Love.

Jeremy Pierce presents Adam and Eve’s Race posted at Parableman. Is it meaningful to ask what race Adam and Eve were?

Trevor McKay presents Dating And Courting… What’s The Difference? posted at The Christian Dating Chronicles.

Pete presents Money and your prayer life: Do you pray about your finances? posted at Bible Money Matters. Is it important to pray about your finances?

Weekend Fisher presents Scoring the books of the canon: cumulative scores at Heart, Mind, Soul, and Strength After looking at a series of early lists of Christian writings, here Weekend Fisher shows the cumulative scores for how well attested each book is. The final answer on which books are best-attested historically will be no surprise to Christians — but may disturb conspiracy theorists who claim that the canon of Scripture was nothing more than an exercise in political power or an arbitrary set of books that could easily have been otherwise.

I present here my post Hosting Bible Translations Wiki right here at Participatory Bible Study Blog. This is an open invitation to sign up and get involved in creating a solid encyclopedia of Bible translations, editions, canon, and topics related to creating the Bible edition you use.

Outside the Camp

Crystal Nichols presents 7 ways to live in harmony with your coworkers posted at Christian in the Corporate World. We are commanded to love each other, that includes our coworkers, too! Here are some easy ways to show Christ’s love to you coworkers.

Angela Williams Duea presents Go With God, Immigrant posted at angelawd. Illegal immigration is a loaded topic, but we’re still challenged to love the individuals God places before us.

Jody Neufeld presents Are you challenged to THINK on Sunday mornings? which is actually an introduction to her three part series on witnessing which she wrote after she heard a particularly challenging sermon on the subject.

At the Altar of Sacrifice

Scott Clair presents Is the recog​nitio​n of sin impor​tant?​ posted at Anticipating the King. This article deals with whether or not the recognition of sin is important when evangelizing.

Ken Brown presents On Sin and Atonement posted at C.Orthodoxy.
A review of the film Atonement, focusing on its elucidation of the corporate nature of evil and the impossibility of atoning for one’s own sins.

John at Brain Cramps for God writes On Depravity and Obedience. It seems many times folks just do not understand what “total depravity” really means; nor do they understand why Christians actually strive to obey the “rules”.

David Porter presents Shall we continue to sin or can we change? posted at A Boomer in the Pew.

At the Gate

simplyeddie presents First Principles posted at Simple Life In Christ. He says: “Hope you like this article! It’s my first submission to Blog Carnival.” Welcome Eddie!

Diane R presents Angry Young Christians? posted at Crossroads: Where Faith and Inquiry Meet. Why are there so many angry young adult Christians nowadays?

Holy Place

Chad Dalton presents There is a place posted at Living Stone Bible Church Blog.

I’m hosting Christian Carnival CCXXIII here. It will be posted later today. I actually cut off submissions this morning, so if you had your post in any time last night, it will get in there.

I’ll be posting from somewhere out of my office, so corrections will have to wait at least until evening.

Updated: I added one more topic for the wiki, and also changed the links to point to mybibleversion.com which is where I think this belongs. The old URLs are redirected.

Before I discuss this, it is not a diversion from personalizing the MyBibleVersion.com site. In fact, it is now a part of that process.

“This” is my creation is a Bible Translations Wiki, which will be hosted at Energion.com, the same physical site as hosts MyBibleVersion.com. I have wanted to do this for some time in order to enhance the available information. I had a small database of definitions, but it is nothing like what could be done with a Wiki specific to Bible translations.

Associated with the Wiki is a forum. In order to be a user of the Wiki, users will register in the forum, and the same registration will be useful for both. This is why I installed the Wiki and the Forum first. The same registration will also be used when you create Bible translation profiles on MyBibleVersion.com.

What will go into this Wiki?

1. Definitions of terms related to Bible translation
2. Basic information on Bible versions
3. Reference sources, including books, blogs, and web sites
4. General information to which you might need to link in discussing Bible translations
5. Translation discussions for specific texts and issues

I’ll be trying to avoid duplicating Wikipedia and writing more specialized materials. I will also be setting up style guides to divide information into general user sections and separate advanced sections.

I have left this open so that anyone can contribute. Just create your account and start adding entries. I will be an editor, and I’m looking for a few others who would like to help edit. I do hope that many people will contribute. I don’t want the Wiki to be a form of self-expression for me. I have blogs to to that! I hope it will be a community project of value to those interested in Bible translation.

While the software is stable, WikiMedia and phpBB, the installation should be considered in its very early stages. There aren’t many pages yet, and most of the needed help and introductory pages are still blank. I just thought it would be worthwhile letting people know and seeing if anyone was interested before I tried to spruce everything up.

Go on over and check it out.

James McGrath has posted a Challenge to Anti-Intellectual Christian Fundamentalists. I think it’s a good one. I posted on this before, though from a different angle.

I want to highlight here an important question. Where in scripture or Christian tradition do we get a high value for intellectual independence? Certainly there is a value for independence in thought, but that is a reasonably balanced idea, in which independence helps with creation of new ideas and the testing of old ones, but in which one is free to recognize dependence. I simply cannot count the myriads of ways in which I, at this very moment, am dependent on the intellectual and physical product of others.

But the Christian ideal is often expressed as a body with many parts, or as a family. Neither of these metaphors suggests some sort of absolute intellectual independence as a value.

I like to know. I like to check things for myself. But at the same time, I must acknowledge dependence, and I should be very grateful to those who have done the hard work on which I base what I write and teach.

Since Psalm 104 is in the lectionary for Pentecost (May 11), I thought I’d take this opportunity to link again to my essay on that Psalm which dates from when I was working on my MA.

I created a critical (or reconstructed) Hebrew text, provided a translation and notes, and did some analysis on the structure. Most of my conclusions I would still support today, even though more years have passed than I care to number.

It’s a wonderful Psalm, and I hope my work on it will be of help to someone who is studying it along with the lectionary.

Via Exploring Our Matrix, I found this post at Think Christian. Many Christians believe that one should never question the Bible, especially if one is a Bible teacher.

I know this to be true, because I’m a Bible teacher, and I question the Bible with some vigor, and not only do I not answer all the questions I raise, I frequently emphasize that we don’t actually need answers to all our questions. Unanswered questions are the engine that drives an intellectually and spiritually full life.

The claim that one does not question the Bible is often taken as an expression of great faith. The person who doesn’t question has anchored their faith so firmly that they no longer need or want to question. But I think it’s precisely the opposite. The person who has stopped questioning and wants to prevent others from doing so has become spiritually and intellectually dead. Their faith is not incredibly great; rather, it is weak and easily threatened by questions. It takes no faith to believe in an unquestioned God. Faith comes into play when we challenge God with our doubts, our fears, and our questions.

Some of the greatest examples of faith in the Bible questioned God. Abraham did. Moses did. And what is questioning the Bible to questioning its ultimate divine source?

I want to be a Bible teacher who questions and who challenges others to question. I want to study with other teachers who question and challenge me to question. I do not exclude anything in my life from examination and questioning.

In a comment to a previous post, someone brought up the case of Saul and the seer. In this passage we have the parenthetical note following the reference by one of the characters to a seer, indicating that a prophet was formerly called a seer. This was provided as an example of how to handle archaic words in the KJV–just explain them, or as this commenter suggested, look them up in an 1828 Noah Webster’s!

In my response I indicated that I didn’t see anything new and referred readers to my Bible Translations FAQ, but it turns out that in this case while I have responded to someone on this issue before, probably on the Compuserve Religion Forum, I failed to include the answer in my FAQ file. In addition, I wanted to comment on an exegetical point. You can get the full context of the story by reading 1 Samuel 9:1-14.

My exegetical point is a simple one. Any principle of interpretation you use should be one that can be applied consistently. The application of a principle–I’ll hold off trying to express it–that we see here is the observation that a Bible writer took a particular action, so that action is normative for similar circumstances. I would guess that the best way to express this principle would be that in comparable circumstances, one should consider the actions of a Biblical writer to be normative.

Now here’s where I tend to annoy KJV-Only advocates and other extreme Biblical literalists. I would ask how they would apply that principle in other cases. For example, should we take the literary forms of the Bible as normative for the way in which we should write other material? It’s hard to respond precisely, because I have never seen anyone try to express this as a principle. Whenever I ask someone to express it that way or to apply it to other circumstances, they say I’m not staying on the subject. But I think that when interpreting the Bible, principles of interpretation are always relevant.

A related approach is often used for other Bible stories. If a Bible character, normally limited to one of the good guys, did it, then it’s a good idea. Of course, until it isn’t. Because this “story” approach to Biblical norms is very rarely applied with any consistency.

Can we get information from Bible stories? Indeed we can. For example, I believe that God calls women to leadership. One Biblical support for that position is the call of Deborah. But in that case I’m working with a clear statement that Deborah was a prophetess, and the blessing of God on her action. Further, I use the story not to create a common practice directly, as in “God called Deborah, a woman, to be a prophetess, so all women are called to be prophetesses.” Rather, I use the story to establish that any claim that God excludes women from his call runs up against this clear counter-example.

Interpreting stories requires a good deal of thought and effort, and it is useful to be consistent. I have an essay on interpreting stories for those who are interested in some basic ideas.

But let’s look at this specific case. There are several important points that I would note.

1. The parenthetical comment provides historical information to the reader that is relevant to the story. Archaic words in the KJV provide knowledge of 17th century English, but provide no knowledge relevant to the story. The actual word used by the ancient Hebrews does not appear in the KJV here or elsewhere. I would suggest that if one consistently used this principle, one should enter in the translation every term with any technical element, and then explain it in a parenthetical comment. (The Complete Jewish Bible heads in this direction.)
2. This type of comment is extremely rare in scripture. It doesn’t involve the relearning of an entire dialect so that people can have the privilege of using archaic language.
3. While I’m sure using an 1828 dictionary is exciting to someone, I don’t plan on recommending purchase of such a dictionary to go with any Bible purchase. That is simply another barrier to hearing the word.
4. In the New Testament we see Hebrew ideas primarily presented in Greek words. The very occasional transliterations (with translation) are for specific purposes.
5. Finally, any argument in favor of forcing people to learn the language of the KJV applies with greater force to urging them to learn Greek and Hebrew.

The problem here is an ad hoc interpretation desperately grabbed and applied to the KJV. The foundation of such an argument is the assumption that the KJV must be right, therefore we must find the way to preserve it. But other than as a great artifact of English language and literature, I fail to see any reason to try to do that.

The Bible wasn’t written in English. It was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. KJV-Only advocates seem to have trouble understanding that, but it remains a fact.

Just how does one go about determining how to read these chapters? I’ve talked in previous posts about literary types and historicity, but this is more about approach.

I have both heard and read places where people state that these chapters are obviously narrative history because they “sound like it.” But how should one’s ears, or eyes, be trained in order to discern this in ancient literature? I would suggest that if you go to the passage with a modern set of genres, you will often be led astray.

Imagine for a moment that there is no Hebrew Bible, and you are an archaeologist. You carefully dig into a chamber that has been covered for millenia, and it is filled with clay tablets. There’s writing on the tablets. You don’t know what culture this material came from and you don’t know what it is. You set about deciphering the script and discovering the language, and there in your hands is the text of what we call Genesis 1-11.

What do you call this text? How will you decide just what it is? Well, we have much precedent for this sort of thing. One looks at the texts from surrounding culture, giving greater weight to texts that are closer in time and culture, and one tries to fit it into categories. If it is sufficiently different, one may create new categories.

In the case of Genesis 1-11 let me suggest two things. First, if we didn’t have it, but discovered it as a new text, we would have no problem categorizing it as an origin myth. Basically, that is. Second, we would be very exciting by this text, because there are unique characteristics that make it very different from other origin myths. So we would spend a great deal of time cataloging those differences.

Of course, things happened in reverse. We discovered Babylonian and Sumerian myths, while we already had Genesis. This is unfortunate in some ways, because we get very tense in categorizing Biblical literature. In popular understanding, the debate is always over whether something was copied or not. Was Genesis 1 copied from the Babylonian or Sumerian myths? Liberals say yes, conservatives say no. Which, of course, oversimplifies everything!

What’s really more interesting is looking at how the various documents might be related in terms of thought, vocabulary, cosmology, literary structure, and so forth. Two written works may be related without being copied. For example, if one writes a romance novel, one is using a literary genre, and there is a relationship between that work and others of the same genre. You may find similarities in vocabulary and style that fall far below the threshold for copying, but which nonetheless indicate influence, common knowledge, or even common culture.

These are better questions regarding Genesis 1-11. It is clearly not copied, in my view, but it is also clearly not unrelated. I will comment further on why I believe this in later posts.

I haven’t posted about the changes to MyBibleVersion.com for some time, so I thought I’d let you all know I’m still working on it. I don’t expect to roll it out until my site is moved to a new, upgraded physical server which should happen any day now. It’s been “any day now” for a few weeks, however, so don’t hold your breath.

Here’s what I’ve decided to do:

1. User registration.
   It won’t be required to use the site, but it will be necessary if you want to personalize it. See below.
2. Some real help files.
   I think some people still leave because of complexity, so I want to include better explanations of how to use the site and also of the characteristics and how the numbers relate to reality.
3. Customized data.
   Registered users will be able to create their own profile sets, then set the site to display their entries when they are using it. Other users can choose to use anyone’s profiles rather than mine if they so choose. Unregistered users will get my material in the same way as they do now.

   Users don’t have to use just the list of translations I include. You could include less versions, for example if you wanted to help people choose between the top ten versions, in your view. You can also add your own.

4. Commenting.
   I will not roll this out initially, but I plan to add commenting capability, specific to each version profile and profile set. For example, if user “Fred” creates a profile of a version, you can comment on his work, or you can comment on mine or anyone else’s.
5. Voting.
   I will add a function for registered users to vote on versions for a list of purposes. I haven’t decided on the details, except that there will be only one version list for this purpose, which I will create. Users can e-mail me to add versions. This is to avoid things like the Satanic Bible being added as happened on another service. Basically I’ll list things like “Pew Bible”, “Public Reading”, “Serious Study” and so forth, and users will be able to rank versions in terms of their usefulness for that purpose.

Any suggestions are welcome. I’ll post here when I roll this stuff out.