Tuesday, October 5, 2010

No More Bible Reading

I kind of feel like I don't want to read the Bible anymore. Sign of a true heretic right? There's just so much cultural/contextual stuff to wade thru, and about 95% chance of misunderstanding and/or misinterpreting every bit of it. The more I study, the more I see that the interpretations taught in the typical women's bible study are shallow at best, often just plain boneheaded.

Ugh sometimes I really wish I were smarter. Just a few extra IQ points would make it so much easier for me to understand this Borg/Crossan book (about Paul). As it is, about 50% of it is over my head. The other 50% is revolutionary for me and I love it.

But I hate coming up against my own intellectual barriers. I suppose if I really slowed down and studied this much more carefully, I'd eventually get it. Right now I'm too impatient... I'm in devour mode, not savor mode.

Reading "The First Paul." Parts of it, especially the first part, are just clear as a bell. But some parts get too deep into theological/historical nitpicking for me, and I don't understand it, although I want to.

Reading books like this one is what makes me feel hopeless in reading the Bible, because I can't possibly know all this historical, contextual background and so I can't possibly interpret scripture correctly, that is, how it was intended to be understood. I started thinking yesterday that with the Bible, I feel like I either need to study it in-depth (with teachers like Borg and Crossan) or leave it alone, because any other kind of reading is just a recipe for shallow and/or wrong interpretation. I think it's more helpful for me to read other authors these days instead of the Bible. No Sola Scriptura for me!

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