If there existed only a single sense for the words of scripture,
then the first commentator who came along would discover it,
and other hearers would experience neither the labour of searching,
nor the joy of finding. (Ephrem the Syrian)
I came across these wise words and it made me think of how I read the Bible for myself. Which took me back to my first serious encounter with this ancient library of diverse, challenging, comforting, problematic, perplexing and sometimes overwhelming texts. After reading the Bible for myself for fifty years, Ephrem seems to be saying something now entirely obvious to me; reading the Bible demands the labour of searching and offers the joy of finding.
All my grown up life I have read the Bible; well, since my conversion when I was 16. It was as Karl Barth called one of his best essays, "the strange new world of the Bible". The first Bible I owned was a gift from mum and dad, relieved I'd found a more creative focus for life than my increasingly troubled teenage experiments with the boundaries of law and social responsibility. A black leather Bible with a zip - at the time it went with the black leather jerkin with the zip! I read and marked that bible with a red Bic pen with underlinings, and a quickly developed symbol code for the bits I wanted to remember and find again. Nothing sophisticated, but useful markers to catch the eye.
Soon the pages were annotated, some chapters memorised, and gradually over a few years an inner language evolved that borrowed heavily from remembered reading. The parts of the Bible I know from memory, and the verses and phrases and vocabulary of my theology, these are still heavily dependent on the investments and capital of those years of reading, marking, thinking and praying. I still quote from memory in the Revised Standard Version, which remains my preferred translation for personal use.
University and College was a time of stretched horizons and deepened reading. Studying closely the text of Deuteronomy, and Galatians, and then the Gospel of John was an initiation into a new kind of reading. The slightly scary word hermeneutics became important. And I discovered that when people read the Bible they come to very different conclusions about what it means, how it is to be understood, and applied as a text intended to transform as well as inform. This was all part of the labour of searching that Ephrem expected of any serious reader; also, and often there was the joy of finding.
Over the decades since, the Bible has never been off my desk. Theories of hermeneutics have come and gone, each more or less helpful. Exegetical approaches are so numerous, and change with such rapidity, some transient and faddish, some valuable even essential presuppositions in responsible Bible interpretation. The labour of searching goes on, and it would be true to say I interpret many scripture books and passages, chapters and verses differently. The search for the single sense of scripture, the elusive 'real' or 'right' or 'sound' interpretation is as Ephrem hints, an act of imposition, an attempt to control the text, reduce the range and richness of a text that cannot be fixed by our hermeneutical preferences and exegetical limiters.
In the labour of searching and the joy of finding we are answering the Christian imperative to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest these words of Scripture. They are bread for the journey, light and lamp for the feet, water for the thirsty, testimony that fuels and ignites and sustains our faith.
As a minister I preach scripture, and am a steward of the mysteries of God. Responsible interpretation, thoughtful reflection, careful and compassionate application to life are each required when handling words that are freighted with truth claims that have existential impact on the lives of those who read them, hear them and seek to live with them and within them. But that is neither more nor less than the responsibility of every reader of the Bible, for whom Bible reading is integral to discipleship, crucial for the health of mind and soul as these are presented as a living sacrifice to God. The transforming of the mind, and the shaping of character and way of life, take place in that slow process of laborious search and joyful discovery. Ephrem may have been alluding to Jesus' parable about the man who was ploughing a field when he heard the clunk of a treasure box being struck by the blade. Reading the Bible is an act of cultivation, breaking up fallow ground, creating tilth in which seeds propagate, grow and fruit.
It shouldn't have taken a 4th Century Syrian deacon-theologian to remind me - but I'm glad he did.
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