The Top of a Reading List
Dave Black is offering a workshop on Dec. 4, 2011, and he’s posted a reading list on his blog. I extracted the list and posted it on The Jesus Paradigm, since Dave’s blog doesn’t allow for linking to a specific post.
Why am I making a point of a reading list? There are a number of very good things to read on that list, but that’s not it. It’s because of the first item: The Book of Acts. I commend Dave for putting it at the top of the list because that’s precisely where it should be on this topic.
I recall a few years ago when I was teaching a class about how to study the Bible that I offered a reading list that involved about 200 pages from various non-biblical sources and the book of Joshua. The book of Joshua is 20 or so pages, depending on your particular edition. In any case, it’s substantially less reading than the 200 pages.
I got not a single complaint or even a moan regarding the 200 pages, but someone immediately said, “Do we have to read the whole book of Joshua?”
We’ve become less tolerant of just reading or hearing the Bible. Scripture readings are abbreviated. I encounter some surprise when I suggest it would be a good idea to read all four passages of the lectionary (many of which are already trimmed) during worship. I’m told people won’t tolerate it. (Churches who don’t use the lectionary might consider other readings.)
In general, however, we’d rather hear people talk about the Bible rather than read or hear it ourselves. We’d rather read hundreds of pages of someone else talking about the Bible, than spend the time getting fully acquainted with it ourselves. I think this is tragic.
(I know that some people question the value of public reading in the modern world, but I think there is still value in hearing scripture read in public worship. I’ll discuss it some other time.)
Our tendency is to read the Bible in bits and pieces and learn the context from other people who say they know. The only way to truly know the context is to read the material for yourself and to do so as a whole, by which I mean whole section, whole book, whole testament, and even whole Bible.
I don’t mean to minimize the importance of what we can learn from other Bible students, but in order to make judgments about what is valid and what is not, one has to be familiar with the text as a whole.