Reading the Bible Badly. Karl Allen Kuhn
lenses might not be well-suited to engaging this text faithfully, and how can we adjust our lenses to allow the text to speak on its own terms?
It is important for us to be aware of our tendency as American Christians to sentimentalize the story of Jesus’ birth and overlook its political, social, and economic dimensions—the parts of the story that make many of us uncomfortable. As American Christians, we often resist the integration of religion, politics, economics, and social stratification, and yet Luke’s gospel, like the other Gospels, consistently presents Jesus as addressing such matters as integral to the arrival of God’s kingdom.
We also do well to be aware of the tendency throughout the ages and even today of Christians and Christian authorities casting the magi according their own interests and biases. Christians have often characterized the magi in ways that reflect their own self-image or selfish objectives, and in doing so have skewed Matthew’s witness to what it means to embrace Jesus as Emmanuel.
Reading with Respect
Not only does being mindful of these different contexts help us to become better, more critical readers of the Bible, it can also help us to be more respectful and faithful ones.
The Bible preserves the gathered testimonies of our spiritual ancestors, spanning over a millennium, to their experience and understanding of God, their history, and sense of what it means to be God’s people. We are the privileged—very privileged—heirs of these sacred traditions. But if we read this holy testimony without any concerted interest or effort to hear it as it was originally intended to be heard, then whose voice are we hearing as we encounter it? Are we truly engaging the testimony of our ancestors, or just our own voices?
Moreover, Christians have also commonly regarded this very same testimony as inspired by God, and an important resource that God has provided us to discern who God is and what it means to live rightly with God and one another. This belief began with our spiritual ancestors’ sense that these texts provided such inspired, faithful witness. But if we read this holy testimony without any concerted interest or effort to hear it as it was heard by our ancestors, who heard in these stories the voice of God, then we could rightly ask if we are actually reading the same “Bible” our ancestors gathered together, wrote down, and passed down to us. Are we truly engaging the “Word of God”? In other words, are we coming to the Bible to be entertained by a quaint tale, or to affirm the rightness of our own views and interests, or to be transformed?
Two Clarifications
I hope my logic here is straightforward. But as I close this chapter, I will offer a couple points of clarification.
Does this mean that all is lost if we have trouble discerning the historical context of a biblical passage, or we do not do so perfectly?
Not necessarily. Even if we don’t have all the information we need to reconstruct the specific features of every historical setting we encounter, just having a general sense of prevailing political and economic patterns and cultural norms in particular periods can often be very helpful. We also do well to keep in mind that interpretation of any sort is rarely an exact science and is more about probabilities than perfection. This is also the case with biblical interpretation. For this reason, ongoing study and research is important, and even more so, humility, self-awareness, and dialogue. We won’t always get it right. But we will almost never get close to the intended meaning and objectives of biblical texts if we don’t try to read them with these contexts in mind.
Does this mean that more “spiritual” or devotional readings that don’t critically engage the contexts behind the texts, of the text, and in front of the text, are worthless?
Not at all. I believe that the Spirit has the capacity to connect with us and guide us through a variety of avenues. The devotional reading of biblical passages is one of those rituals through which many—including myself—encounter the presence and instruction of God.
But I also believe that such practices should not be the sole avenue through which Christians engage Scripture. Our tendency to hear in the text what we want to hear, our tendency to shape our lenses in ways that mirror back to us our own preconceived notions, is a strong one. Remember, we are by nature and necessity perspectival and selective interpreters! Our devotional reading of Scripture should be informed by and in conversation with those readings that try to hear the witness of our ancestors as they testify to God and God’s will in their times and places.
The key, I think, is that we don’t fall into the trap of engaging Scripture in isolation from other believers, or through only one approach. The narrower our lenses, the more narrow our encounter with Scripture, and the more narrow our understanding of God and God’s will. We must be self-aware and humble enough to realize that faithful reading the Bible will sometimes, perhaps even often, lead us to read against the grain of our own biases and our own self-interests, at least as those are often defined by our world. We must strive for a way of reading that honors our ancestors’ testimonies to the often-revolutionary, always-transforming, real life-relevant work and word of God.
To do otherwise is to dishonor our ancestors. To do otherwise is to read the Bible badly.
Reflection or Discussion Questions
1 Do you agree with the author that there is a major disconnect between the way in which Luke and Matthew present the stories surrounding Jesus’ birth and how we remember and celebrate these stories as American Christians? If so, what manifestations of this disconnect do you recognize? Why do you think this disconnect exists?
2 It seems strange to many American Christians to consider the political and economic dimensions of the Gospel traditions, along with the rest of the biblical writings. How do you feel about this? How does attending to these dimensions help or complicate your understanding of Scripture?
3 In your mind, how might we faithfully honor the testimony of our ancestors in the faith as we read and reflect on Scripture today?
11. For a still relevant and thoughtful critique of how American Christians celebrate Christmas, see McKibben, Hundred Dollar Holiday.
12. Mark’s gospel begins with John’s arrival and Jesus’ baptism as an adult, during which the divine voice proclaims Jesus as God’s beloved son (1:1–15). John starts his narrative “in the beginning,” prior to creation, with Jesus as the divine Logos through whom all of creation comes into existence (1:1–18).
13. For more a more detailed account of the Roman world during the time of Jesus, please see Kuhn, Kingdom, 1–54, and the other resources listed in the notes to follow.
14. de Ste. Croix, Class Struggle, 374.
15. Rohrbaugh, “Social Location,” 154. The two studies cited by Rohrbaugh are Zias, “Death and Disease” and Fiensy, Social History.
16. Rohrbaugh, “Social Location,” 150, 151.
17. Horsley, Jesus and the Powers, 7.
18. Hamel, “Poverty and Charity,” 314.
19. Israel’s prophetic tradition and numerous texts surviving from the “intertestamental period” (about 250 BCE to 50 CE) identify socioeconomic exploitation by the elite as an egregious violation of God’s will for Israel and humanity in general. See, e.g., Amos 5:1–24; Micah 2:1–11; Isa 10:1–4.
20. See Kuhn, Kingdom, 43–44.
21. See Kuhn, Kingdom, 31–45.
22. Green, Luke, 122. For a helpful discussion of how the census would be perceived by most Israelites as a