Reading the Bible
Book without end, Amen.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
In the first chapter of the Book of Genesis — in just thirty-one short verses — the world is given form, light is summoned into being, Day and Night are named, Heaven hatched, the stars invoked, and Earth fashioned into land and sea, seeded with plants and populated with creatures. All in less than eight hundred words.
That the authority of the language in the most majestic English translation, the King James Version of 1611, seems commensurate with what it describes is astonishing. The confidence of the declarative eloquence — its cadenced sonorousness — evokes the eons that the stated chronology of seven days denies. The time is so deep only a spell can evince it, and the phrases resonate — albeit after years of echoing in churches and chambers of the imagination — like uncanny music conjuring a landscape equal to life’s mysteries.
Genesis, of course, is the first of the nearly forty books in the Hebrew scripture, or Old Testament, that, combined with the four gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — and the apostolic writings of the Christian New Testament, make up what is called the Bible. (Another set of books, known as the Apocrypha, are gathered outside the canonical testaments but often printed along with them.) One could write page upon page upon page without ever achieving clarity about the history, authorship, or composition of the great book, and that would be before one attempted to engage the religious, theological, and moral complexities it poses for this world and the next. One could read a thousand books about the Bible, covering subjects from archaeology to zoology, without beginning to exhaust the richness of its influence on civilization, culture, law, and literature.
But what’s it like to read the Bible? Not puzzle over its provenance nor interpret its meaning, not make peace with its traditions nor argue with the inheritances they inform, not evangelize its teachings nor submit to its commandments, but simply read the narratives, poetry, historical chronicles, legends, observances, and revelations it encompasses? If we start with the first week of creation and make our way from the story of Adam and Eve through the tales of Abraham and Isaac, Noah and the flood, Moses and the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, we wander through a mythological realm that seems to be waiting at the back of our minds; there are battles and brave deeds (think David and Goliath) as well as figurative evocations of human realities (think Tower of Babel) as memorable as any in literature. There are descriptions of rituals, admonitions to right conduct, and lists of strictures to govern body and soul. There are lamentations and prophecies, historical events and scenes of disaster as stark and terrifying as those conjured in dystopian fantasy or science fiction. Providence is often demanding and inscrutable, and divine retribution flows like a kind of supernatural resource, so much so that the territory of faith sometimes recalls the Theater of the Absurd. Supplications of enormous beauty (the Psalms) and poetry of romantic sensuality (the Song of Songs) in the Old Testament herald different kinds of comfort and love in the New. In relating the life of Jesus, from birth in a manger to Sermon on the Mount, death on the cross, and resurrection, the gospels deploy narrative methods — wonder tale, parable, passion play — as unconventional as the teachings they were meant to spread.
In short, reading the Bible is eerie, dramatic, beautiful, equivocal, infuriating, strange, for it is filled with knowledge that is inspired, practical, mystical, and sometimes unintelligible. In its chapters and verses we discover a fathomless universe of character and circumstance rendered in literary modes that are varied and surprising, and often cryptic and oblique. The meanings of what we read in the Bible seem to change their color, if not their substance, depending on the context in which we consider them; this is by no means to say biblical truths are malleable, but rather that life is.
Reading the Bible is also, in long stretches, boring, and since even the most devout reader’s earthly life is not eternal, there is no reason not to skip what doesn’t speak to you and to dwell longer on what does. But don’t miss the following books in the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Ruth, the Book of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Isaiah, Lamentations, and the Book of Daniel; and in the New: the four gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Revelation of Saint John. While there are myriad translations available, try first the stately and blessedly archaic King James Version. Composed by a committee of churchmen and scholars led by Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1626), it is one of the most beautiful and influential works in English literature. Its language, by inspiration and accumulated lore, opens endlessly, like a door swinging wide on hinges of phrase, fable, and faith to reveal the profundity of human experience without supposing to explain it.
