Sucking the marrow out of Scripture (not seeing the forest for the trees)

[myotch]

There's a few Christian sites I visit that have forums. Every once in a while, somebody will post their daily devotions, scripture studies, etc. And there's some good stuff that can be gleaned from these learned men (and women) of God, their wisdom gained from years and years of life experience, spiritual experience.

But one thing annoys me about these posted studies: the narrative gets lost in all the over-explanations of a verse, a phrase, paragraphs devoted to a single word or two consecutive words.

Was Scripture meant to be put in our minds "stop action / claymation" style? Or is God trying to show us a bigger picture?

[captain_solo]

When I teach I try to put any passage into its historical context within the story of scripture. This is easy in some places, but harder in others. It keeps it from being a self-help book full of 12 steps to better living and puts its meaning smack dab in the middle of the arc of scripture rather than being a segregated chunk of truth. Proverbs is a collection of disconnected truths (its what a proverb is) but the whole Bible cannot and should not be handled that way.

[Darren]

(09-01-2011 07:19 PM)myotch Wrote:  Was Scripture meant to be put in our minds "stop action / claymation" style?

No, absolutely not! I have the same frustration when people present something, and all the time I am thinking, "What does this have to do with what Paul or John or Isaiah is writing here?"

This is the problem many people run up against when they look at the verse divisions in their Bible. God gave us 66 books, and with a few exceptions- the Psalms and some of the Proverbs- they were given to us as book units. The main point of understanding the Scriptures is to know God, not to find answers to some question our small minds come up with.

I love your claymation analogy. I'll have to remember that.

[Annie Moose]

I can see the value of understanding the meaning or significance of specific words, but every once in a while, I think you do need to pull back and say "OK, so regardless of precisely WHY this particular word was chosen, what's the passage saying overall?" I agree that some people--make that a lot of people--can get too caught up in the former to remember that the latter is important too.

[I should be working]

You'll miss a lot in Proverbs if you treat it as just a bunch of disconnected truths. There's a lot of connection in there, a lot of wordplay to piece things together.

To the OP, the meaning of the text is not the sum of its parts. Words are nuanced by the context they are in, so I can't just go to a lexicon and grab a handy five-page definition and say that's what it means in the text. I've seen a lot of studies get caught up in other uses of the word in other contexts, without even considering what the text we're looking at means.

My opinion? There is a place for both, but never to exclusion or extreme. Every word has meaning, but not in isolation. Every text, and so the whole arc of the Bible, has meaning built from the parts. I think we could stand to have less prooftexting (the wham-bam-thank-you-maam style of scripture study) and more of a literary approach. Historical context is important, but I believe the narrative context layer is more so.

[myotch]

(09-02-2011 10:15 AM)I should be working Wrote:  To the OP, the meaning of the text is not the sum of its parts. Words are nuanced by the context they are in, so I can't just go to a lexicon and grab a handy five-page definition and say that's what it means in the text. I've seen a lot of studies get caught up in other uses of the word in other contexts, without even considering what the text we're looking at means.

I agree with your statements. I'm talking more along the line of...well, tomes written about genealogy (that has nothing to do with genealogy), or...explaining some bit of trivia, that, while interesting, has absolutely nothing to do with the narrative, and then trying to make some spiritual point about it.

It can greatly miss the point:

Jesus is our shepherd > Christians are the sheep > (trivia - sheep are grown to be slaughtered and eaten, or sacrificed) > spiritual message: Christians are developed to be slaughtered.

[boymom]

(09-04-2011 03:53 PM)myotch Wrote:  Jesus is our shepherd > Christians are the sheep > (trivia - sheep are grown to be slaughtered and eaten, or sacrificed) > spiritual message: Christians are developed to be slaughtered.

Some do seem to take the fattening up part to heart.

[I should be working]

(09-04-2011 03:53 PM)myotch Wrote:  then trying to make some spiritual point about it.

Here's where it all goes to hell in a handbasket - we try to wring meaning out of the text... The literary approach is, instead of approaching the text as a window to whatever happened in those times, we should take notice of why the author chose the words they did - why did he say what he did, when he did, and how he did. What is the thought process of the author? Treating the text as a window, by the way, a valid way to read the text and interpret facts, but the meaning and application come from the thought process of the author. We don't interpret Shakespeare that way, or Frank Herbert... So why the Bible?

Spiritualizing the text is just lazy. And selfish for that matter. Just taking the text and almost immediately jumping to an idea of what it means for us, now, in our time... without any thought of what the author was attempting to convey by how he wrote what he did. Genealogies have meaning in the text - the author included them for a reason. Our job is to figure out, what was Moses' process of thought to write out a genealogy in Genesis when he did. </lecture>