‘Have you not read...?’

No Christian parent who wants to raise ‘God-fearing children’ will frown at what my daughter asked me recently: a Bible. To be precise, she wanted a teen Bible. (The promotional phrase for one of them in Amazon says, ‘a Bible that speaks to their world’.) But we have at least half a dozen Bibles at home, different versions of it and in two languages, some of them taken out only on occasions.

Bibles now come in different versions, and mediums. There are the print, audio, braille, online and various electronic formats of them. Bible Apps for phone, computer and laptop offer different versions of the Word. The Bible Society of India website says it provides the Word of God in audio and video forms, catering to the need of non-readers and neo-literates. It says it has pioneered the development of a wide range of new Scriptures for special audiences and groups: the visually challenged, the hearing impaired, terminally ill, victims of HIV, semi-literate and rural audience, and so on.

The Bible is also a consumer product regularly repackaged and customised to suit the taste of a particular audience, making it the best-seller year after year. In 2007, some 25 million Bibles were sold in the United States — “twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book”.

A Bible for everyone

An article, ‘The Good Book Business’ in The New Yorker, says: “There are devotional Bibles for new believers, couples, brides, and cowboys... such innovations as ‘The Outdoor Bible’, printed on indestructible plastic sheets that fold up like maps, and ‘The Story’, which features selections from the Bible arranged in chronological order, like a novel. There is a ‘Men of Integrity’ Bible and a ‘Woman, Thou Art Loosed!’ Bible. For kids, there’s ‘The Super Heroes Bible: The Quest for Good Over Evil’.... In the ‘Rainbow Study Bible’, each verse is colour-coded by theme. ‘The Promise Bible’ prints every one of God’s promises in boldface. And ‘The Personal Promise Bible’ is custom-printed with the owner’s name ([For instance,] The LORD is Daniel’s shepherd’).”
The Bible is many things to many people. Many Christians read it ceremoniously at the break of dawn and as darkness encircles the earth, the Word engraved on the tablets of their hearts or leaving an imprint as temporary as desert tracks the wind erases. Some pore over it to find solutions to all their individual problems. Others try to find new meaning in the Scripture in the contemporary political, social and economic context. Some die for it; some live by it. Some invoke the promises in it to bring wealth and health to themselves; to some it is chicken soup for the soul.
People from as diverse backgrounds as ever, prince and pauper, capitalist and communist, slave and master, techie and casual labourer, Syrian Christian and Dalit Christian, all have used it to their purpose. It has been a tool of exclusion and dispossession; it has been a device for inclusion and liberation. Uninformed readings of it has led to an environmental ethic that is destructive even as it has been an inspiration for taking stewardship of the earth seriously.
From Genesis to Revelation, it is an entire series of classic literature in different genres: Poetry, historical narrative/epic, prophecy, epistles, and more. Approaching the Bible as history, it provides an insight into Jewish culture and traditions, and as a book of law and ethical guideline.
Why is it that the Bible looks radically different to different people? Is it worth seeking moral answers in the Bible to apply them in our context, when the moral issues of today are very different from those in biblical times? Does the Bible lend itself to an alternative interpretation?
‘Have you not read [in the Scriptures] …’ is an oft-repeated question Jesus asked the Pharisees. They were known for their strict observance of rites and ceremonies of the written law and their traditions concerning the law. Yet Jesus’ poser meant that he did not subscribe to their views or recognise their interpretation of the Scriptures. He obviously wanted them to follow it in spirit rather than in letter.
So, how do we read the Bible? Maybe you know this oft-repeated quote by our Valia Metropolita Philipose Mar Chrysostom: Don’t read the Bible, but study it.
Kristin Swenson, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of World Studies, in an essay ‘What You Should Know Before Reading The Bible’, says “knowing something about the Bible —  its historical backgrounds and development, its languages of origin and the process of translation, and its use within religious communities as well as secular contexts — enables readers to make sense of biblical texts and references for themselves. For religious people, such knowledge can enrich their faith; and non-religious people may appreciate better why the Bible has endured with such power and influence.” Kristin is also the author of Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time.
“The Bible is not an answer book to our questions, rather it helps us to ask the right questions,” says a theologian friend of mine. “It tells us how our ancestors experienced God in their life stories and lived a life worthy of their calling. Our engagement with the Bible helps us to discern God in our times and to engage in ethical praxis. When we read the Bible our attempt should not be to find out the original meaning of the original author in the original context. Rather, we, as readers, should bring our story into the Biblical story and construct new meanings to make the Bible a living story in our times.”
One of the things Kristin says she loves about the Bible is its resistance to reduction. “By way of a few examples, there are several stories of creation and four different narratives of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Consider the coexistence of explanations of suffering as punishment and the book of Job. Yet declarative and absolutist statements beginning, ‘the Bible says’, and bumper stickers such as ‘God said it. I believe it. That settles it’ are commonplace,” she says.
And if you maintain that the Holy Spirit will make the meaning of biblical texts clear to believers, here is what she says: “Knowing some background information (the more, the better) about the Bible is bound to lead … to fruitful discussion. Maybe it's there, in the spaces of informed conversation about a multi-faceted Word of God, in the dynamism of humble learning and listening, that the Holy Spirit pulls up a chair and the Bible reveals its richest meanings.”

The newspaper and the Bible

Imagine we had the chance to give an emoticon for every article that appears in the paper. It would be a smiley for the story on Saina Nehwal’s win in a Super Series tournament. Or a winking smiley for the story on Aamir Khan travelling disguised for the promotion of 3 Idiots. But I know I would give a frowny face for the story of Shanti Devi and Fatima.
Shanti Devi, a Scheduled Caste woman, died minutes after giving birth to a premature baby girl. She had not eaten for three days before her delivery. A year and a half earlier, Shanti Devi, pregnant for the third time, had a miscarriage; the foetus died in her womb. But four different hospitals turned her away because she could not pay the bills….
Fatima, another young woman, gave birth to a baby girl under a tree in the crowded Nizamuddin locality right opposite the Commonwealth Games car park. Her mother approached a maternity home run by the corporation but was turned away. (www.civilsocietyonline.com/may10/may107.asp.)
Haven’t we heard of another woman who had “no room at the inn”? Has the smiley Christmas story of a “prince being born” overshadowed it? Let me try to “report” the birth of Jesus:

Bethlehem
December 25, 3 B.C.
By Staff Reporter
Mary, a poor young woman from Nazareth in Galilee, gave birth to a baby boy in a manger in a crowded locality here yesterday. She and her husband, Joseph, had just arrived from their home in Nazareth, about 150 kilometres south to Joseph’s ancestral home in Bethlehem in Judea, to register in the Census of Quirinius when she went into labour. Joseph is said to be a descendant of King David and Bethlehem is David’s birthplace.
The couple knocked at the doors of many inns, but was turned away. Finally, a kind innkeeper offered them a stable for the night, where Mary delivered the child.
The baby is said to be healthy. “It is an event of great joy,” said one of the shepherds who came visiting the family after they heard the news while guarding their flocks in nearby fields. The child was swathed in white cloth when they saw him.

The nativity story gives us a picture of the society into which Jesus was born. The fact that Mary and Joseph brought a pair of doves (not the lamb of the wealthy) to the temple for sacrifice shows that they were indeed poor.
This is not to say the situation in Jerusalem 2000 years ago is anywhere close to what it is in India today. But you can draw shocking parallels to it from contemporary society. That, to me, is the relevance of the Bible.
Jesus’ preaching reflected the obvious socio-economic tension of his times. So, the parable of the labourers who receive the same wages (Matthew 20:1-16) brings to mind the sight of unskilled labourers who wait at street corners not knowing if they will get work for the day. The minimum resources required for a person to support his or her family are the same.
I am not discounting the spiritual meaning of this parable. But Jesus used everyday problems to illustrate a point.
The gap between the rich and the poor were wide, as it is today. There were landowning farmers and absentee landlords who lived in cities at one end of the spectrum and labourers who worked for them and wandering shepherds at the other extreme. Then there were the high priests, the temple administrators and taxmen who lived fairly well and craftsmen like Jesus and his fisherman friends.
Under imperialist Roman rule, there were questions of identity and political unrest too among people, as our country has been through.
Other Bible narratives too hold a mirror up to contemporary society. The episode of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21:1-16) is the story of the abuse of authority. King Ahab, Queen Jezebel’s husband, wanted to own a vineyard near his villa at Jezreel. Its owner, Naboth, would not sell. Jezebel gets Naboth killed so that ownership of the vineyard was passed to Ahab. Farmers and tribals are still helpless against the mighty and powerful.
Dear friends, if you are indifferent to news around us, think again. You and I are part of the structural violence that makes all this happen.
Here are more killer facts. According to the multidimensional poverty index of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, 421 million people in eight states of India live in extreme poverty. This is more than the total number of similarly impoverished lives in the 26 poorest African countries put together.
The National Crime Records Bureau states that 199,132 farmers in India killed themselves between 1997 and 2008. That makes it nearly 45 farmers a day.
So, if we are far too complacent with the everyday reading of the Bible, it is time for a rethink. As the great theologian Karl Barth advised, “Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.”