"Harper." "HarperCollins." "Collins."
When one reads the Bible again, for the first time, the discovery of a "new" Bible can be a truly serendipitous experience.
I have little understanding of the etymology of these words in the context of my Bibles. But whatever Collins has done to Harper, it was a very good thing.
My well-worn, leather-bound, thoroughly marked up study Bible is/was a Revised Standard Edition (1952 revision) published as the "Harper Study Bible" by Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Zondervan publishes a lot of material for the evangelical community.
The "foreword" in that Bible was written by Harold Lindsell and dated, July, 1964.
I bought that Bible in Walla Walla, WA at a stop-over on our move from Ft. Knox, KY to Ft, Wainwright, Alaska. That was in June of 1976.
That RSV "Harper Study Bible" has been a part of me for a long time. And it was a significant "upgrade" for me from my very well worn King James Version used in my college days.
And then, my introduction to and acquisition of The "NRSV HarperCollins Study Bible" in December of 2008. It uses the New Revised Standard Version text that was copyrighted in 1989. And published by a division of HarperCollins Publishers. A publisher that is known for its wide collection of Biblical research books.
This NRSV "HarperCollins Study Bible" itself has a copyright date of 2006.
It was my Serbian friend who alerted me to the HarperCollins, and it was I that bought two of them, one for each of us.
This NRSV Bible is new to me . . . not a part of me yet. But that is quickly changing.
Even though I have been reading the actual text, with their comprehensive footnote references, it was yesterday that I read the preface material in the NSRV Study Bible. For the first time. There are five significant essays of expository, background, and introductory material.
The first is "Strategies for Reading Scripture" by John Barton. I have been aware for a long time that "higher criticism" of the Bible was somewhat of an anathema to heresy. It was to take God out of the Bible, to denude it, to strip it of its inspiration and inerrancy. To leave the reader with a sense of nothing.
This essay provides a succinct compare-and-contrast of both of these ways to read the Bible . . . and suggests at the end, that both camps , the canonical-reading camp and the critical-reading camp, can and will find things of comfort in this particular edition of a study Bible.
As Barton explains the essence of "Canonical Reading" . . . . It is to read the Bible with the expectation that what is found is:
1. "True." Literal, historical, factual truth.
2. "Relevant." If it is there in the Bible, it is relevant to our instruction. No matter what.
3. "Important" and "Profound." No triviality, nothing is superficial or insignificant. Begats and abominations included.
4. "Self-Consistent." No matter what it says [within/between books], there is only one consistent voice and message that comes forth.
5. And this for the Catholics especially, the Bible is to be read so as to conform to the teachings of the church.
That canonical-reading of the Bible is the main paradigm of conservative and evangelical Christianity.
And then his explanation of the essence of "Critical Reading."
1. Bible reading/study is approached from a "literary" rather than a religious perspective. What "kind of" text each book of the Bible is. To read prophecy is different from reading the law, as it is different from reading historical narrative. The Gospels and Paul's letters are different. To understand the "when," the "why," the "who" with respect to the book's history . . . is to help understand the context. And to understand the context is begin to understand the message.
2. Critical reading brackets the question of the "truth of a text" until it has established what the text means. Instead of approaching the text with the correct predispositions and presuppositions, critical reading is to read the text "cold", without a prior commitment to its truth or ready-made truth (a church's teaching) within which it is read.
And so the critical readers have found inconsistencies between and within the various books of the Bible. And in some cases, come to radical conclusions . . . what was once thought "gospel" is now clearly recognized as "fiction." Examples include the books of Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Job. Purposeful fiction though! And that again, is a part of the critical-reading method, just how and what does that sacred fiction contribute to the message.
When I was first exposed to the authors and works of higher criticism in the mid 90's, I was aghast. I was staunchly in the canonical camp.
And so to read, today, a compare-and-contrast of the "Canonical Reading" and "Critical Reading" methodologies was not exactly new, but certainly clarifies these perspectives to me.
My old RSV "Harper Study Bible," in its preface material, denigrates the critical-reading approach.
Hence my, probably totally inappropriate, sense that "Harper" was a distinct fundamentalist. I suppose, using the critical-reading techniques, the Zondervan Publishing should have been a clue.
And even though my Harper RSV is a "Study Bible," there are not that many expository references in the preface material. However, there are extensive footnotes throughout the text. In reading the preface material for the Book of Genesis in each of these editions, it is truly a compare and contrast between canonical reading and critical reading. Harper is truly a canonical kind of guy.
A second essay in the preface material to the NSRV HarperCollins, "Israelite Religion" by Ronald Hendel, is to read a treatise of what a canonical-reader would call heresy. At least the "Harper" of my RSV Harper Study Bible would say so. Although Hendel doesn't go quite the distance of the Queer Bible Commentary in its critical-reading approach, it certainly points one in that direction, and for certain, to that possibility.
And then the preface material essay "The Bible and Archaeology" by Eric M. Meyers.
Back in the early 90's when I first read a book that a Jewish friend of my son gave to my son, and then he in turn gave it to me, about the Shroud of Turin [the thesis was that yes, the shroud was "genuine," but the person it enclosed was not dead!"], I was introduced to the Essenes and started my intensive quest on the true history of what happened in those 100 years before and after the period of Jesus. In that quest, I got hooked on the Dead Sea Scrolls. And read all kinds of stuff about them. To include subscribing to "Biblical Archaeological Review." I read off and on from it, (I still get it actually), but I was sort of dist by the eternal squabbling over the politics of who had the "rights" to do that work, who was legitimate, who was for supporting the Biblical record and who wasn't, and on and on and on. And then the explosion of the fake-articles-of-antiques industry that just confounds the historical narrative. And this essay, in the NRSV Study Bible, makes a succinct summation of this historical squabbling over the arrangement of carts and horses. Which came first. Archaeology to support a Biblical narrative, or a Biblical narrative to support archaeology. The money quote from this essay is on page lxi, the end of the second paragraph. "What in fact can be said of the situation at the beginning of the twentieth-first century is this: there is no longer a consensus on the history of ancient Israel either from biblical scholarship or from archaeology. A new synthesis is in the making, one that will be significantly different from the one that dominated in American circles for most of the twentieth century."
The essays "The Greco-Roman Context of the New Testament" by David E. Aune and "Archaeology and the New Testament" by Jurgen Zangenberg continue with helping the reader understand the context . . . a necessary component of critical-reading.
I am so struck with the differences between these two of my "study Bibles."
And speaking only for myself, to read the Bible, again, "for the first time," with a textual translation that is 50 plus years "newer," with an epic change in how archeology has contributed to understanding in the last half-century, within a paradigm of critical-reading that not only asks the difficult foundational questions, but seeks to fully support whatever the message might be . . . whether it meets a preconceived notion of what it is "supposed" to be or not, is a fulfilling experience.
For a gay individual brought up in a paradigm that religion abhors my very being, the critical-reading method is both enlightening and reassuring.
As my fellow Saunterer on this Bible-study journey has pointed out to me, with the help of the Queer Bible Commentary . . . gays and lesbians are NOT the "other" that has been so demonized by the literal canonical-readers of scripture. Rather, the historical narrative, the prophets and the law are truly inclusive. There is a diversity there for the seeking. And there is a context to those seemingly horrid stories of violence and sex and misogyny . And a message can and is being found. And with the tools and perspective of critical-reading of things sacred and scriptural, there is that Balm in Gilead for the disenfranchised gay or lesbian. There is not only hope, there is comfort.
And so Collins . . . whoever/whatever you are . . . you have transformed my old "Harper" Study Bible, with its old restrictive canonical ways, into an enlightening new "HarperCollins" Study Bible with a wonderfully open and inviting perspective.
And in more ways than one, this reading of the Bible is truly a "first time" experience for me. And praise be.
The Refectory Manager
I have little understanding of the etymology of these words in the context of my Bibles. But whatever Collins has done to Harper, it was a very good thing.
My well-worn, leather-bound, thoroughly marked up study Bible is/was a Revised Standard Edition (1952 revision) published as the "Harper Study Bible" by Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Zondervan publishes a lot of material for the evangelical community.
The "foreword" in that Bible was written by Harold Lindsell and dated, July, 1964.
I bought that Bible in Walla Walla, WA at a stop-over on our move from Ft. Knox, KY to Ft, Wainwright, Alaska. That was in June of 1976.
That RSV "Harper Study Bible" has been a part of me for a long time. And it was a significant "upgrade" for me from my very well worn King James Version used in my college days.
And then, my introduction to and acquisition of The "NRSV HarperCollins Study Bible" in December of 2008. It uses the New Revised Standard Version text that was copyrighted in 1989. And published by a division of HarperCollins Publishers. A publisher that is known for its wide collection of Biblical research books.
This NRSV "HarperCollins Study Bible" itself has a copyright date of 2006.
It was my Serbian friend who alerted me to the HarperCollins, and it was I that bought two of them, one for each of us.
This NRSV Bible is new to me . . . not a part of me yet. But that is quickly changing.
Even though I have been reading the actual text, with their comprehensive footnote references, it was yesterday that I read the preface material in the NSRV Study Bible. For the first time. There are five significant essays of expository, background, and introductory material.
The first is "Strategies for Reading Scripture" by John Barton. I have been aware for a long time that "higher criticism" of the Bible was somewhat of an anathema to heresy. It was to take God out of the Bible, to denude it, to strip it of its inspiration and inerrancy. To leave the reader with a sense of nothing.
This essay provides a succinct compare-and-contrast of both of these ways to read the Bible . . . and suggests at the end, that both camps , the canonical-reading camp and the critical-reading camp, can and will find things of comfort in this particular edition of a study Bible.
As Barton explains the essence of "Canonical Reading" . . . . It is to read the Bible with the expectation that what is found is:
1. "True." Literal, historical, factual truth.
2. "Relevant." If it is there in the Bible, it is relevant to our instruction. No matter what.
3. "Important" and "Profound." No triviality, nothing is superficial or insignificant. Begats and abominations included.
4. "Self-Consistent." No matter what it says [within/between books], there is only one consistent voice and message that comes forth.
5. And this for the Catholics especially, the Bible is to be read so as to conform to the teachings of the church.
That canonical-reading of the Bible is the main paradigm of conservative and evangelical Christianity.
And then his explanation of the essence of "Critical Reading."
1. Bible reading/study is approached from a "literary" rather than a religious perspective. What "kind of" text each book of the Bible is. To read prophecy is different from reading the law, as it is different from reading historical narrative. The Gospels and Paul's letters are different. To understand the "when," the "why," the "who" with respect to the book's history . . . is to help understand the context. And to understand the context is begin to understand the message.
2. Critical reading brackets the question of the "truth of a text" until it has established what the text means. Instead of approaching the text with the correct predispositions and presuppositions, critical reading is to read the text "cold", without a prior commitment to its truth or ready-made truth (a church's teaching) within which it is read.
And so the critical readers have found inconsistencies between and within the various books of the Bible. And in some cases, come to radical conclusions . . . what was once thought "gospel" is now clearly recognized as "fiction." Examples include the books of Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and Job. Purposeful fiction though! And that again, is a part of the critical-reading method, just how and what does that sacred fiction contribute to the message.
When I was first exposed to the authors and works of higher criticism in the mid 90's, I was aghast. I was staunchly in the canonical camp.
And so to read, today, a compare-and-contrast of the "Canonical Reading" and "Critical Reading" methodologies was not exactly new, but certainly clarifies these perspectives to me.
My old RSV "Harper Study Bible," in its preface material, denigrates the critical-reading approach.
Hence my, probably totally inappropriate, sense that "Harper" was a distinct fundamentalist. I suppose, using the critical-reading techniques, the Zondervan Publishing should have been a clue.
And even though my Harper RSV is a "Study Bible," there are not that many expository references in the preface material. However, there are extensive footnotes throughout the text. In reading the preface material for the Book of Genesis in each of these editions, it is truly a compare and contrast between canonical reading and critical reading. Harper is truly a canonical kind of guy.
A second essay in the preface material to the NSRV HarperCollins, "Israelite Religion" by Ronald Hendel, is to read a treatise of what a canonical-reader would call heresy. At least the "Harper" of my RSV Harper Study Bible would say so. Although Hendel doesn't go quite the distance of the Queer Bible Commentary in its critical-reading approach, it certainly points one in that direction, and for certain, to that possibility.
And then the preface material essay "The Bible and Archaeology" by Eric M. Meyers.
Back in the early 90's when I first read a book that a Jewish friend of my son gave to my son, and then he in turn gave it to me, about the Shroud of Turin [the thesis was that yes, the shroud was "genuine," but the person it enclosed was not dead!"], I was introduced to the Essenes and started my intensive quest on the true history of what happened in those 100 years before and after the period of Jesus. In that quest, I got hooked on the Dead Sea Scrolls. And read all kinds of stuff about them. To include subscribing to "Biblical Archaeological Review." I read off and on from it, (I still get it actually), but I was sort of dist by the eternal squabbling over the politics of who had the "rights" to do that work, who was legitimate, who was for supporting the Biblical record and who wasn't, and on and on and on. And then the explosion of the fake-articles-of-antiques industry that just confounds the historical narrative. And this essay, in the NRSV Study Bible, makes a succinct summation of this historical squabbling over the arrangement of carts and horses. Which came first. Archaeology to support a Biblical narrative, or a Biblical narrative to support archaeology. The money quote from this essay is on page lxi, the end of the second paragraph. "What in fact can be said of the situation at the beginning of the twentieth-first century is this: there is no longer a consensus on the history of ancient Israel either from biblical scholarship or from archaeology. A new synthesis is in the making, one that will be significantly different from the one that dominated in American circles for most of the twentieth century."
The essays "The Greco-Roman Context of the New Testament" by David E. Aune and "Archaeology and the New Testament" by Jurgen Zangenberg continue with helping the reader understand the context . . . a necessary component of critical-reading.
I am so struck with the differences between these two of my "study Bibles."
And speaking only for myself, to read the Bible, again, "for the first time," with a textual translation that is 50 plus years "newer," with an epic change in how archeology has contributed to understanding in the last half-century, within a paradigm of critical-reading that not only asks the difficult foundational questions, but seeks to fully support whatever the message might be . . . whether it meets a preconceived notion of what it is "supposed" to be or not, is a fulfilling experience.
For a gay individual brought up in a paradigm that religion abhors my very being, the critical-reading method is both enlightening and reassuring.
As my fellow Saunterer on this Bible-study journey has pointed out to me, with the help of the Queer Bible Commentary . . . gays and lesbians are NOT the "other" that has been so demonized by the literal canonical-readers of scripture. Rather, the historical narrative, the prophets and the law are truly inclusive. There is a diversity there for the seeking. And there is a context to those seemingly horrid stories of violence and sex and misogyny . And a message can and is being found. And with the tools and perspective of critical-reading of things sacred and scriptural, there is that Balm in Gilead for the disenfranchised gay or lesbian. There is not only hope, there is comfort.
And so Collins . . . whoever/whatever you are . . . you have transformed my old "Harper" Study Bible, with its old restrictive canonical ways, into an enlightening new "HarperCollins" Study Bible with a wonderfully open and inviting perspective.
And in more ways than one, this reading of the Bible is truly a "first time" experience for me. And praise be.
The Refectory Manager
posted by The Refectory Manager | 6:08 PM
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