Marginal Christianity

 SEPTEMBER 20, 2017 BY  TIM SUTTLE    0 COMMENTS What can neuroscience teach us about how to read the bible? James Kugel has some suggestions. Kugel is a Jewish biblical scholar & former Harvard professor. His new book,  The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times , makes some fascinating observations about the difference between the Hebrew mind and the modern mind. The main difference is in our “sense of self.” Modern readers don’t have the same assumptions about what it means to be a human being. We differ in two key ways: Self as Internal v. External to the Body At this moment you have an idea about what it means to be you. This is your  sense of self . Kugel says that the modern sense of self is quite different from the ancient sense of self . . . Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paperbacktheology/2017/09/reading-bible-neuroscience-brain-different-moses-brain.html#R3pYhUVhHkT8m0I6.99

The Rabbi Lawrence Kushner wrote a book called God Was in This Place and I, I Did Not Know, in which each chapter is a different interpretation of the same passage in the Bible. ... You keep turning the gem, seeing something new each time. That’s what we’ve been doing in this book—we’ve been turning the gem. We read it, and we let it read us. We dive into their story, discovering our story in the process. I’ve heard people say that they read it literally. As if that’s the best way to understand the Bible. It’s not. We read it literately. We read it according to the kind of literature that it is. That’s how you honor it. That’s how you respect it. That’s how you learn from it. That’s how you enjoy it. If it’s a poem, then you read it as a poem. If it’s a letter, then you read it as a letter. If it’s a story but some of the details seem exaggerated or extreme—like when Samson kills exactly one thousand Philistines or Balaam’s donkey starts talking to him or Elijah ...

Karl Barth talks about the Bible "becoming" the Word of God. What does he mean by this? I think it something like the experience of a 3-D movie. When you put on those funky glasses and start to watch the movie, suddenly one or more of the characters seems to come out the screen and confront you face-to-face! It is as if you are in their story and are required to respond. The movie has "become " real and compelling in a way it never could in 2-D. We can read the Bible in 2-D all day long and it will do us little good (other than perhaps keeping us out of the trouble we might otherwise have gotten into!). But then there are those moments when the Bible "becomes" 3-D and the story leaps of the page and confronts us face-to-face, calling on us to respond to it in faith and embrace its story as your own (or not)! The difference is that there is no magic pair of glasses that create this experience for us with the Bible. It "becomes" God's Word...

The biblical story is often told and retold by means of patterns. What I call the “Great Pattern” is that found in the Exodus story: liberation/wandering/promised land. This pattern begins at the beginning: creation. God frees being from the shackles of non-being. Creation “wanders” from its beginning toward full flourishing in God’s new creation (Rev.21-22), the promised land. The Exodus itself is well known. Liberation from Egypt is followed by wandering in the desert. Finally the people arrive at the threshold of the promised land. Entry into the promised land is told by this pattern. The liberated people cross the miraculously dried Jordan into Canaan. There they “wander” while attempting to pacify the land according to YHWH instruction. Finally, the promised land is theirs. Isaiah promises the people in exile that YHWH will perform a New Exodus for them. They will return to the land. However, once there they wander. All is not well and the great promises accom...