John 1:1-5, 9-14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Over the last couple of weeks, we have been looking at the different genres in the Bible. It’s important that we understand the nuances and particularities of the texts it contains, and after Easter we'll be going closer in to take a more detailed look at the Old Testament, but today I want to take a step back to look at scripture as a whole, offering a different take on genre. We have already acknowledged that there are some issues with the historicity of the Bible, and it’s difficult to get away from the fact that scripture contains inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Attempts have been made to reconcile them all, but these involve some really contorted readings. It can be troubling to realise that Biblical literalism cannot be maintained without an exhausting degree of mental gymnastics, but I believe there are ways of understanding the Bible that don’t require us to turn a blind eye to its fallibility or reject it out of hand, but allow us to embrace it for all it really is.
Firstly, I want to propose that the Bible might be better understood as myth. That word may come as a shock, so I want to be really clear about what I don't mean by it, as well as what I do mean by it. I don't mean that I think the Bible is a work of fantasy or imagination, or that I disbelieve all of the miraculous and supernatural things within it. For the avoidance of any doubt, I affirm the historic creeds of the church. When I talk of the Bible as myth, I mean that I believe it reveals deep and universal truths and finds its meaning in something more significant than simple historical accuracy. Neither do I mean that we must put the Bible on the same pegging as other mythologies. CS Lewis believed that Christianity was unique in being the true myth, and while I would agree with Tolkien in saying that there is some truth in all myth, I would certainly declare that the Christian myth is uniquely truthful because it contains a unique truth in the person and life of Jesus.
If the biblical stories are intended to tell great truths, then maybe we can begin to understand the inconsistencies and the inaccuracies we find in them. The first two chapters of Genesis give irreconcilable accounts of creation, and the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke vary on some crucial details, but in doing so they help us focus on different parts of the story. Genesis 1 gives us a sense of there being order and pattern to creation, while Genesis 2 emphasises the unique position of humanity within it. Matthew gives us the story of the magi because he wants us to see that Jesus brings in the nations, while Luke offers the experience of the shepherds because he wants us to see that Jesus reaches out to the marginalised. Reading the Bible as myth helps us to understand these apparent tensions as narrative techniques, and points us to the reason behind them. I find this a far more positive and helpful approach than one which seeks to treat the Bible as a primarily historical document.
It may also offer an answer to another question, about how we transition from a seemingly poetic account of creation to an apparently historical account of Israel, both of which we find in Genesis. Where does the poetry end and the history begin? It seems impossible to know, as the text itself doesn’t tell us, but if we see the entire narrative of Genesis as being aimed at establishing the nature of the relationship between God and the world, then perhaps it’s okay for us to answer the question by suggesting that those distinctions don’t really matter.
The idea that the Bible is not a straightforward textbook is not a new one. In fact, biblical inerrancy is a relatively late concept which came about as a kind of hardening of the religious position in response to the Enlightenment. But it can still be difficult for us to shift away from it if it is what we have known. The church I grew up in had got as far as seeing the six days of creation as six ages, but I think there was a reluctance to extend that approach beyond the first few chapters of the Bible, because it felt like a slippery slope towards dividing the Bible into true and false. However, the point of this approach isn’t to say this bit is fact and this bit is metaphor and this bit is just made up, and then to make a judgement value on that basis, although sometimes that kind of evaluation will be helpful. The point is to suggest that the Bible is the story of the relationship between God and God’s people, as told by those people in the way that best captured the beauty and the mystery of their experience, and that its real meaning lies in what it says about the nature of God and the world and what it means to live in it.
I understand that the word myth comes with a whole load of baggage that means some people may find it unhelpful as a way of talking about the Bible, and please do push against and pull apart what I say, because as I said last week, this is meant to be the beginning of your own reflection, but I hope the ideas I have shared may at least prove interesting. In all honesty, I’m still not sure myth is precisely the right word for what I want to say about the Bible, but I’ve used it here because it comes close and it’s provocative enough to challenge us and get us thinking. What I’m really trying to suggest is that if we can set all other questions aside for a moment and read the Bible as a story, and let it fascinate and engage us as all good stories should, we might find ourselves moved and transformed, and perhaps even invigorated to get back to the nitty gritty of biblical scholarship.
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I spoke there about the Bible as a story, and that brings us to the second thing I want to suggest to you this morning. Old Testament scholar Water Brueggeman talks about the Bible containing primal, expanded and derivative narratives. The primal narrative is “that most simple, elemental and nonnegotiable story line that lies at the heart of biblical faith”. Gerhard von Rad says that for Israel, this was the exodus from Egypt, as expressed in passages such as Deuteronomy 6:20-24. According to CH Dodd, it was for the early church the death and resurrection of Jesus, as recalled in passages such as 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. In both cases, the primal narrative is the recital of a saving act of God and a declaration of faith.
The expanded narrative is “a more elaborate and complete presentation of the same theme found in the kernel” which is “confessional not reportorial in character”. In the Old Testament, Exodus 1-15 is a fuller presentation of the Israelites’ delivery from slavery. And in the New Testament, the gospel narratives expand the life and death of Jesus. These stories come to be seen through the lens of the central theme and so proclaim the same faith even if read separately.
The derivative narrative is the subsequent history of the community which testifies to the power of the basic narrative and supplements it with tradition. In the Hebrew scriptures, this is the story of Israel after Moses and Joshua. In the Christian tradition, this is the story of the early church. It contains the literature of institutionalisation, mature theological reflection, and the instruction and vocation of the community.
In short, and doing very little justice to Brueggeman, the primal narrative is the story that changed everything, the expanded narrative is everything that led to it, and the derivative narrative is everything that came from it. So how does all of this affect the way we read the Bible? Well, I like Brueggeman’s model because it prioritises purpose and allows for different genres within each category, allowing for more nuanced readings of texts which can make use of the genre markers we looked at before without getting fixated on them. I also like the fact that Brueggeman applies the model to each testament, so that we see how both Israel and the church used the same pattern in response to the revelation of God, because this breaks down some of the barriers between us and the Hebrew scriptures.
But there’s also something else I think this can teach us, which is perhaps best demonstrated by way of a brief activity. Think for a moment about your own primal, expanded and derivative narratives. What is the central story in your relationship with God? What brought you to that place? How has it impacted on your life since? Now think about why you chose those stories and how you choose to tell them. Do you include every detail? Do you apply any filters? Do you add any commentary? Thinking about how we tell our stories may offer some insight into how the Bible was written. Because the truth is that we all interpret and shape our experiences, especially when we have a primal narrative that makes sense of everything around it. Let me offer an example by way of explanation.
Part of my derivative narrative is my experience of leaving university. I prayed about whether or not it was right for me to go, and the words “you don’t have to be here” came to me really clearly. And yet when I told that story afterwards, I said that God had told me to leave. I always knew what God had said, but I interpreted those words as meaning I should go, because I needed to feel that I had definitely done the right thing, and so that was how I told it. It was some years before I felt confident enough in my decision to acknowledge that what God had really done was give me a choice. I didn’t intentionally lie, but my experience was filtered through my conviction that God was interested and active in my life, which was rooted in the experience of healing that forms my primal narrative, and my belief that God had a fixed plan for my life, which came from the theological understanding gathered during the Christian upbringing that forms part of my expanded narrative (although that belief has shifted somewhat because if this experience of being given choice rather than direction).
I don’t imagine that the people who wrote the Bible set out to write these distinctive strands of narrative – they are a filter we’ve placed on the text – but I do suspect that they interpreted and shaped their experiences and inherited stories in just the same way as I have done. I think that answers a lot of questions we have about the Bible, and I hope it also reminds us that our story is an ongoing part of the story that began “in the beginning”.
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We've heard those words already this morning, in our reading from the prologue to John's gospel. “In the beginning, the word was with God and the word was God”. I wanted us to hear that reading as part of this series on the Bible, because I think it is crucial to how we answer the question ‘what kind of book?’. The Bible is often called the word of God, and whatever we may think about how accurately the prophets and the scribes and the translators heard and understood that word, we must always remember that it is the word of God with a lower case ‘w’. The Word of God with an upper case ‘W’ is Jesus, the ultimate revelation and communication of God to us. And so with that in mind, when I'm back here in two weeks time, we will be thinking about what it means to read the Bible through and with Jesus.
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