How to Read the Bible

How to Read the Bible

Language: English

Pages: 400

ISBN: 082760775X

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Master Bible scholar and teacher Marc Brettler argues that today’s contemporary readers can only understand the ancient Hebrew Scripture by knowing more about the culture that produced it. And so Brettler unpacks the literary conventions, ideological assumptions, and historical conditions that inform the biblical text and demonstrates how modern critical scholarship and archaeological discoveries shed light on this fascinating and complex literature.

Brettler surveys representative biblical texts from different genres to illustrate how modern scholars have taught us to “read” these texts. Using the “historical-critical method” long popular in academia, he guides us in reading the Bible as it was read in the biblical period, independent of later religious norms and interpretive traditions. Understanding the Bible this way lets us appreciate it as an interesting text that speaks in multiple voices on profound issues.

This book is the first “Jewishly sensitive” introduction to the historical-critical method. Unlike other introductory texts, the Bible that this book speaks about is the Jewish one—with the three-part TANAKH arrangement, the sequence of books found in modern printed Hebrew editions, and the chapter and verse enumerations used in most modern Jewish versions of the Bible. In an afterword, the author discusses how the historical-critical method can help contemporary Jews relate to the Bible as a religious text in a more meaningful way.

 

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B r o a d sense), Marta will have an advantage that we Bible readers never have: she h a s w h a t linguists a n d anthropologists call " i n f o r m a n t s " — r e a l , live people w h o can lead h e r d o w n the right track. We have n o i n f o r m a n t s f r o m ancient Israel, so w e m u s t use other, less reliable criteria to d e t e r m i n e w h e t h e r we are reading the ancient texts correctly. 5 W h e n it c o m e s to reading the biblical text w i t h i n its original context, m.

Land h a d rest f r o m w a r (Josh. 1 1 : 1 6 - 1 7 , 19, 23; transi, a d a p t e d ) . Similarly, the s e c o n d s u m m a r y passage reads: The LORD gave to Israel the w h o l e c o u n t r y w h i c h He h a d s w o r n to (‫)כל‬ their fathers that He w o u l d assign to t h e m ; they took possession of it a n d settled in it. T h e LORD gave t h e m rest o n all sides, according to all ( ‫ ) כ ל‬He h a d p r o m i s e d to their fathers o n oath. N o t o n e m a n of all ( ‫) כ ל‬.

Schools wrote n e w traditions. Both reframed older traditions—thereby revising their meaning. Through etiological tales they m a d e existing places and practices more meaningful. The historical-critical m e t h o d allows us to recover these creative steps, so that we may see the traditions both before their reworking and after their revision. This offers a powerful model for u n d e r s t a n d i n g later Judaism, which in a similar way has reworked and revised earlier traditions and texts.

To the Book D u r i n g the Babylonian exile, s o m e m e m b e r s of the defeated people reserved h a r s h j u d g m e n t s for the victors. ( C o m p a r e the postexilic Ps. 137:8, in reference to Babylon: "a blessing o n h i m w h o seizes y o u r babies a n d d a s h e s t h e m against the rocks!") Probably at that time, a copyist of J e r e m i a h a d d e d 2 5 : 2 6 b as a way to "vent" against the Babylonian masters: they too were not e x e m p t f r o m d r i n k ing f r o m the.

"spokesman." 2 1 In short, these first-person narratives offer an amazing sense of h o w the prophetic experience affected Jeremiah. Yet we m u s t bear in m i n d that these recorded "confessions" are unique. W h y did those w h o c o m p o s e d prophetic books not present similar insights into the inner experience of Isaiah—or of Amos, or of other classical prophets? We d o not know. Therefore we must be very careful about generalizing from Jeremiah to the other prophets. 2 2 We have n o.

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