The eagle-eyed will have noticed a strange appearance in my reading column this week - the NIV Study Bible – and an explanation is overdue methinks. It’s all part of my reading plan for what remains of 2006 and 2007: I mean to read one or two ‘books’ of the Bible each month, starting this month with Genesis, and moving on through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers etc, until I finish the whole thing. (I estimate the project will take me a year and a half, given the short length of some of the New Testament ‘books’.) I mean to write about this experience of ‘reading’ the Bible, as a literary and historical text as well as a foundational document, every Sunday (very fitting don’t you think?). I’ll try and make time to read around as well, but on the whole my posts, responses and reactions will be my own – unedited and uncensored. I mean the whole experience to be ad-lib, and as uncluttered as it’s possible to be.
Safe to say I’m not embarking on it as a journey of spiritual discovery, or under the aegis of Christian belief; I’m looking for neither edification nor religious teaching. I decided during the distant days of my early teens that Christianity wasn’t for me, logically, ethically or aesthetically (and I do think our individual aesthetical sense has a lot to do with the religions we do or do not choose). No amount of Bible reading could alter that, and I wouldn’t want it to. The question remains though: Why bother? I have three reasons really, two general and one almost entirely personal. Most obviously I want to familiarise myself with it - this behemoth of literature - as a reader of books. Any ‘canon’ would, necessarily begin with it (Harold Bloom’s does). With its historical baggage and pervasive imagery, it has had enormous impact on writing and imagination in the West (and beyond). I should like to recognise it when I see it, and catch at least some of the allusions and topos surrounding it.
Secondly, I am increasingly aware of how the Bible is being (mis)used as an ethical and moral primer, in the UK as well as in America, and I would like to arm myself more effectively against it – I would like to know my critics and their seminal text. I should like to be able to argue against it with the knowledge of an insider; I don’t want to blithely dismiss what I haven’t read.
This last feeds into my personal reason, which shortly is this: my mother is a ‘born again’ Christian, who believes (as far as I can tell) in the literal truth of the Bible. This means that we disagree on any number of specific ideological issues central to my life - sexuality, religious difference, the position of women, abortion, the nature of evil. Over the years these topics have become dangerous ground for us, assured to lead to arguments and then to mutual frustration; I don’t imagine we’ll ever reach a plateau of agreement. Still, I suppose, I would like to understand her viewpoint better, to see what she sees, as well as to verify the logic of my own position – I would like to be personally familiar with what I vehemently disagree with.
There are some things I think I should make clear from the outset, a series of caveats and/or rules:
1/ I do not believe the Bible is the word of God and I am not a Christian, although I was when I was a child/young teen and I come from a vigorously Christian family. I believe the Bible to be a constructed (and serially reconstructed) document, built of disparate but mutually reinforcing mythologies and stories, each grounded in it’s own historical period.
2/ I do not believe that Jesus was the Son of God (although it seems entirely possible that he lived), nor do I hold any non-specific conviction as to his spiritual wisdom or goodness. I have seen lots of New Age and neo-Pagan venues refer to Jesus as a pseudo-deity in personalised pantheons, or as an inspirational prophet, or simply a ‘nice guy’. I happen to agree with C.S. Lewis on this point: if you do not accept that Jesus was the Son of God, then you must consider him to have been (at least) a mentally unstable individual with delusions of grandeur. Of all the fictional representations I have come across, Mikhail Bulgakov’s charismatic schizophrenic has seemed the most realistic to me.
3/ Although I actively reject certain tenets of conservative Christianity, I don’t wish to be antagonistic or offensive towards people who hold those tenets; my aim is to better understand them and their textual basis.
And so, next week, I’ll begin by writing about Genesis (which already has me riled)…
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The Sunday Confession:
Poop. Esther and I went book shopping.
~~Victoria~~