How to read the Bible?

[u/myriadisanadjective]

I'm in a little bit of a weird position where I am extremely culturally Catholic and have had profound spiritual experiences through Catholic rites and rituals, and have been called back to the Church repeatedly (despite being rabidly queer and generally not the type of person you'd think would find comfort or meaning there).

But I've never seriously read the Bible. I don't want to approach it as "Bible study" the way churches do it, but it is an important philosophical and theological text and I'd like to read and understand it the best I can.

How would a philosopher approach reading the Bible? I obviously can't come to it from a place of total faith and belief, but I would at least like to come to it in a spirit of intellectual and personal curiosity.

Thank you!

[u/Xeilias]

Boy, what a question. I think the first thing you would need to remember is that the Bible isn't really "a book," as much as it is a set of books. So reading each one will use different rules, and require different contexts. There are general overarch rules, but there are also more specific rules for each book. To take an example. If you were to read the book of Hebrews, and compare it to the book of Romans, two books that most scholars think were written with a relatively similar theological bent to them (they used to think that they were written by the same person, the apostle Paul, but more recently, they don't. Regardless, most scholars still think Hebrews would have been written by someone directly within Paul's circle of influence). But, many people have read the two, found the same word used in both, and assumed they meant the same thing. The problem is that Paul wrote in koine Greek, with a pharisaic background, while Hebrews was written in koine Greek with a significant number of classical Greek loanwords, and had an Alexandrian Jewish background. So it can't be taken for granted that the two letters, which are theological treatises in two different genres, mean the same thing when they use the same words. Then when you bring in Revelation, which is entirely different in almost every conceivable way, it gets more complicated.

With that said, you should be able to fair well with a good book on biblical hermeneutics. There are non-religious as well as religious ones. And when reading a specific book in the Bible, it would be good to get a good commentary on it.

Secondarily, as I'm sure you are already aware, the Bible is not a book on philosophy. There are more or less philosophical books within it, but it would be a mistake to fail to read it without an interpreter's lens.

And finally, there are different layers of messaging that the Bible is saying. Think about it like this. Q1: what did Jesus say? Simple enough. Q2: Who was His intended audience, and what was His purpose? Also simple enough. Q3: what was Mark's intended audience and purpose for recording what Jesus said? That's more complicated, and people don't usually ask that question. Q4: what was the gospel compiler's intended audience, and his purpose? Even less often asked. Q5: what was the new testament compiler's intended audience and purpose? What you have with Jesus' words are three layers of meaning and audience, and the meanings may expand or contract with each layer. And it's also not really obvious which layer is the proper one for knowing the intended meaning. It gets wild when asking these questions about the Old testament. And this is when you get into the hyperlinked nature of the Bible. So if we were to begin asking those questions about Moses, it might get really messy, which is partially why people can dedicate their lives to its study.

Anyways, it's a worthwhile venture. It's worth finding those books on hermeneutics, and good commentaries if you do want to understand it. Just reading it is probably not going to make it make the most sense.

[u/myriadisanadjective → u/Xeilias]

This is so WILDLY helpful and exactly the kind of guidance I was looking for - I hope it helps others googling around for the same answers I was, because this is a much better explanation than what I was finding. Thank you so much!

[u/Xeilias → u/myriadisanadjective]

I'm glad you found it helpful!

[u/jessedtate → u/Xeilias]

This is an awesome question and an awesome answer

[u/loselyconscious → u/Xeilias]

It's important to add that while is a fantastic summary of the core of academic biblical studies and a good amount of theology, there are important and radically different modes of traditional and academic hermeneutics.

Rabbinic Hermeuntics not only has no real conception of authorial intent or intended audience, it takes a great deal of joy in finding meaning that was definitely not intended, using hermeneutical techniques that switch letters around, change the diacritics, draw meaning from the shape or sound of the letters, or just ignoring words or letters. This is because Rabbinic Hermuentics have a very different understanding of the nature of the text and the purpose of interpretation.

In the academy, scholars like Robert Alter have argued that "critical Biblical Studies," in its true attempt to remind us that the Bible is not a unity, has forgotten that the Bible has been read as a unity for 2,000 years and that someone (or someones), did make intentional choices to compile different sources of meaning together, either weaving them together into continuous texts or by placing different works in a certain order.

Feminist Scholars try to actively read the bible "against the grain," These scholars attempt to give voice to the characters and traditions that the author and audiences have ignored or maligned.

Post-Critical Scholarship asks the readers of the Bible to study themselves deeply, what they bring to the Bible, and how the Bible impacts them.

[u/Xeilias → u/loselyconscious]

Yeah taking a variety of approaches is important if for nothing else than to live up to the Socratic dictum, "the educated man is one who can entertain a number of ideas without believing in them." But I think one of the important elements is the "educated" part. Like, I wouldn't recommend to a newcomer to biblical hermeneutics that they jump into rabbinic hermeneutics (especially without the guidance of a rabbi). That's probably more deep-end stuff that requires a rabbi as a guide in the first place rather than simply a book. At least, if staying true to the rabbinic methodology. Like, I'm pretty sure it is understood that only P'shat can be taught by a book. And that is why so many of the printed commentaries that accompany things like the artscroll Tanakh or Chumash are mainly P'shat (i.e., Rashi, Radak, Ibn Ezra), while the masters of the other layers tend to be given their own dedicated set of literature. But of course, I have heard stories from Yeshiva students to the effect that you are describing. It sounds like a fun place. Although I'm pretty sure even those methods have a structure and logic to them. I don't think they just randomly change words around or skip letters. Maybe I'm wrong though.

In the academy, scholars like Robert Alter have argued that "critical Biblical Studies," in its true attempt to remind us that the Bible is not a unity, has forgotten that the Bible has been read as a unity for 2,000 years

Yeah, I agree with this. This was sort of what I was getting at with my last point, but I didn't take it to its furthest extent, which would be, "what were the Biblical compilers' intentions." And again, it's an open question as to whether it is meant to primarily be read as a united canon, or as a set of books. It kinda depends on your theory of hermeneutic, which will be significantly influenced by your metaphysic. I, for one, understand God to exist, and to have revealed Himself through history, using the Bible as one of the primary means of that revelation, but accompanying it with a revealed oral tradition that is meant to provide a means of discerning between canonical and noncanonical interpretations. This means that I personally read the Bible as a unified book, and that the feminist method you mentioned is relegated more to the side of thought experiment. Sort of like the four portraits of Abraham in Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling." A fun thought experiment nonetheless. I remember making a group of Presbyterians laugh when I referenced Machiavelli as a way to interpret an Abraham story at one point. And I remember making a professor very uncomfortable when I interpreted the book of Philemon like a letter from a Mob boss. Fun stuff.

Post-Critical Scholarship asks the readers of the Bible to study themselves deeply, what they bring to the Bible, and how the Bible impacts them.

This is in reference to the Bultmann existential hermeneutic, right? This one is fascinating, as I have only recently begun diving more into it. I've kinda steered away from it for a while because it kinda requires learning existentialism, but it turns out more simple than I had previously thought. Then again, it depends on the existential tradition, lol.

[u/loselyconscious → u/Xeilias]

rt. Like, I wouldn't recommend to a newcomer to biblical hermeneutics that they jump into rabbinic hermeneutics (especially without the guidance of a rabbi).

I was sort of thinking of the answer to this question as less "How OP should read the Bible" and more "What are the scopes of possible ways people can read the bible," explain the Rabbinic approach is not hard, and there are tons of accessible academic sources.

his means that I personally read the Bible as a unified book, and that the feminist method you mentioned is relegated more to the side of thought experiment. Sort of like the four portraits of Abraham in Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling." A fun thought experiment nonetheless. 

Well, the Feminist scholars would not appreciate that depiction certainly. Some are pretty interested in actually attempting to reconstruct the lives of women in the biblical period; Alter's student Ilana Pardes believes we can reconstruct "fragments" of women-centered traditions that were preserved partially in the text. Carol Meyers reads the text with archeological data to try to get to the "day-to-day life" of Ancient Israelite women. Some feminist theologians, like Judith Plaskow, argue there is a sort of hermeneutical imperative (not words she uses) for members of a religious community that considered the text written for them to imagine the lives of the women in the text. (This is very close to my work, so I am a bit biased to the approach)

his is in reference to the Bultmann existential hermeneutic, right

I'm familiar with it through the lineage of Paul Ricoeur (who applies this both to the bible and to broader literature). It is part of the broader "Post-Critical Turn" in the late 90s and early 2000s Humanities, which is a partial rejection of New Criticism and intersects with Eve Sedgewick and the Affect Theorists' criticism of Postructuerlism and turn back to phenomenology. Reading the theory behind it does probably require at least a basic level of knowledge in European philosophy (although Sedgewick is one of the most enjoyable academic writers I have encountered), but most of the biblical scholarship in the genre I have read (for better or worse) does a good job of explaining what needs to be explained and leaving the deep theory to the philosophers. But again, I was trying to just broaden the view of different possible approaches.