Five authors who will change the way you read the Bible

Of all the responses to Ken Brown’s challenge so far, I’ve found that of Jared Calaway the most interesting. A great first step in learning how to read the Bible involves learning how to read it, not merely as an aesthetic experience, but for the thing itself, the subject matter it deals with. The reading of other examples of literature in which form and function are perfectly fused are excellent training grounds for reading the Bible.

It takes a great teacher, I suppose, to make Shakespeare come alive: I was fortunate to have one. From Shakespeare I learned that there are really only two ways of looking at the structure of existence: as tragedy (King Lear) or tragicomedy (The Tempest). The only way for life to be comic and not merely tragic, is, according to The Tempest, through forgiveness and reconciliation. Of course, this is the Jacob cycle in Genesis writ large. From the point of view of macro-genre, the Bible, let it be said, is a tragicomedy of the first order. Why, you may ask, is it important to learn to read Shakespeare before learning to read the Bible? Because it takes blood, sweat and tears for a 21^st century reader to make sense out of Shakespeare. Fast forward to the Bible. No one should expect to understand the fine grain of the Bible without a still greater investment in energy. Objectively speaking, the Bible’s cultural distance from us is five times greater.

Epic narrative and poetry are examples of well-wrought urns in which form and function are perfectly fused. Is it any wonder that a good half of the Hebrew Bible is either one or the other? For an understanding of how the literary and the theological are intertwined, I think C. S. Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms is as good as it gets. An extra plus: Lewis is a great prose stylist. In the aforementioned slender volume, his prose is effortless. I know of only one prose stylist who is better: Aldo Leopold, in A Sand County Almanac.

The pathos of God and the prophetic call are central to a great swath of biblical literature. Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Prophets is the best introduction available on the topic of the anger of God. And I cannot for the life of me think of a more provocative essay on the prophetic call than a slender essay by Martin Buber entitled “Plato and Isaiah” (in Israel and the World: Essays in a Time of Crisis). It was an introductory lecture given at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1938. The essay displays that perfect mastery of the history of philosophy which might only come from a first-class education in Germany. Buber discusses doom, hope, and failure against an ominous historical backdrop.

Finally, I think Emil Fackenheim is a great example of a modern Jewish thinker who was a prophet to the Gentiles (like Rosenzweig and Heschel). Have you read Fackenheim’s 15 pages entitled “New Hearts and the Old Covenant: On Some Possibilities of a Fraternal Jewish-Christian Reading of the Jewish Bible Today”? Once you do, you will never read Jeremiah 31:15-17 or 31:31-34 in the same way again. The essay appeared in the Lou H. Silberman Festschrift (1980); it is included in the anthology entitled The Jewish Thought of Emil Fackenheim: A Reader.  

Ken Brown is keeping a list of links of those who have taken the challenge. From Calvin Park’s comment thread, a fine list from Jill, whom I’m hoping will start her own blog:

Tod Linafelt (2000) Surviving Lamentations (set the tone for the renewal of Lamentatons scholarship in this decade).

David Carr (2005) Writing on the Tablet of the Heart (shifted the conversation in Pentatuachal criticism in terms of orality/textuality)

William Schniedwind (2004) How the Bible Became a Book (also related to textuality and composition issues and is very readable)

Bernard Levinson (2008) Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (this book will have an increased impact on intertextuality - the best one on the subject since Sommer’s book on Isaiah)

Jeremy Schipper (2006) Disability Studies and the Hebrew Bible (set the tone for the other books on the growing number disability books since then and even got Brueggemann’s attention on the backcover)

Jacob Wright (2004) Rebuilding Identity (influenced the discussion of Ezra-Nehemiah, especially in terms of composition).

I tag Celucien Joseph at Christ My Righteousness, Cynthia Nielsen at Per Caritatem, Shane Lems and Andrew Compton at Reformed Reader, Tony Siew at Revelation is Real, Julia O’Brien at the same, Sam Norton at Elizaphanian, Anthony Loke at Old Testament Passion, Phil Sumpter at Narrative and Ontology, and Darrell Pursiful at Dr. Platypus.    

Comments

[Celucien Joseph]

Ok John. I now list mine.Thanks for inviting me.

I seriously need to read Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book" The Prophets." Sadly I purchased a copy eight years ago when I was working on my B.A. in theology but have never read it in full.

[JohnFH]

Celucien,

Thanks for your list:

http://christmyrighteousness9587.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/five-books-that-have-shape-how-i-read-the-bible/

N. T. Wright, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gerd Thiessen and Annette Merz, George Eldon Ladd, and John Piper: a fine mix of top notch authors.