Attentive to the Word: Biblical Scholarship and the Devotional Life

by David A. deSilva[1]

David A. deSilva (Ph.D., Emory University) is Trustees’ Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Greek at ATS.

When you curl up on your couch underneath your favorite blanket, cup of coffee sitting on a coaster on the end table beside you, Bible opened in front of you, and when you start to listen for the divine voice speaking to you as you practice lectio divina or otherwise read and reflect upon the words on the page, what are you really hearing? To what are you really about to ascribe divine authority and legitimacy? How clearly and fully will you hear the voice of Jesus, or the voice of Paul, or the voices of the Hebrew prophets? How much will their voices be muted, distorted, transformed and domesticated by the filters of your own background and context?

Biblical scholarship, at its best, exists to empower a full, authentic hearing of the Word and, thereby, a fuller, more complete obedience to the Word in a new context. It exists, at its best, to preserve the power of the Word as a voice that speaks to us from outside our systems, our structures, our traditions, our theologies, our ideologies, our assumptions, and thereby retains its power to challenge, even shatter, all that we have internalized in our context that insulates us against the full transformation that God desires for us, for our faith communities, for our presence and engagement in our world.

A common image used to describe the task of biblical scholarship is dissection. The biblical text is laid out in front of the exegete like a frog spread-eagled in the zoologist’s pan. The prejudice behind the analogy is that, if you look at something too closely, taking it apart, as it were, and examining each piece, you may learn something about it but you leave it dead and, like the poor frog, thereafter experience it as something dead to you. I don’t actually mind this analogy up to a point—that is, the point at which we are left with something as useless as a gutted, pickled frog. But this has not been my experience of studying the Bible as a professional scholar. But, then again, I also learned a rather long time ago not to idolize this English translation of a library of ancient Scriptures. I really wanted to hear what the Scriptures were saying. I really wanted to find out about how God was acting and the Spirit was working in living, breathing communities of faith removed from me by language, by culture, and by two millennia. And I was convinced that this pursuit would lead me closer to understanding what the same Spirit was seeking to communicate to the churches of my culture and age. You see, in the end, I’m not left with a gutted frog; I’m left with, I believe, a fuller understanding of the living God and his living challenge to Christian disciples seeking to follow him in the here and now. The frog may not live again, but the Word does, and its runs freer through our churches for our closer study of it—freer to reshape our way of knowing God, following Jesus, and being church in this world.

This image of approaching the Bible like dissecting a frog (the approach of biblical scholarship) has been contrasted with approaching Scripture as a lover (that is, through devotional reading and encounter).[2] I actually have my doubts that most Christians approach the Bible either way. I certainly doubt that many people first dissect the text and study it in its original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, leaving it lifeless on the table. I find it to be much more common for people to open up the Bible and expect it to speak to them right there and then in the moment, some relevant word for them in English (or whatever their native tongue). Tell me what I need to hear right now. Get me started on my day. Help me find comfort in the face of this problem. Help me find guidance for something I’m planning to do or some choice I’ve got to make. In other words, the people I observe tend to approach Scripture neither as a scientist nor as a lover, but as one approaching a consultant. And in that encounter, the one approaching is the one with an agenda, and the consultant is supposed to facilitate it. The one approaching is the one whose context and needs and interests matter, and the consultant must speak within that framework.

But even the image of two lovers coming together may also not be the ideal model for approaching Scripture. Two figures silhouetted against a night sky, red hearts, yellow butterflies, white stars, and blue birds circling around them like some Valentine’s Day edition of Lucky Charms, lost to the world in their feelings for each other. We have to be real about this relationship with the Word, and lovers are not always real about each other, about the world around them, even about the relationship itself. Indeed, lovers are often as self-centered as the person approaching a consultant—they want the other for what the other can give them, how the other can make them feel, how the other enhances their life (but doesn’t turn it upside down).

So I suggest that we approach Scripture neither as an anatomist nor as a starry-eyed lover, but as a marriage partner. And we’re in couples counseling together with Scripture, our spouse, and biblical scholarship sits in the seat of the marriage counselor. It helps us understand our spouse, these Scriptures. If we really are going to love the other for the long term, we need to dig deep into understanding the other. We have to apply ourselves to understand: How do you think? How do you communicate? How did your world shape you? When you say “such and such,” what is the context that gives meaning to “such and such,” so that I can really understand what you’re saying. Anyone here who has been married for a while knows what trouble you get into when you assume that your spouse thinks like you do, communicates like you do, comes from your world, or fills in the blanks like you do. So if we’re going to hear our spouse, we need to do the work of the exegete—but, notice, this work takes place in the context of a relationship of love and respectful listening, and not in the cold, sterile, dead environment of the laboratory.

I. Recovering distance as a means of getting closer to the Word

Biblical scholarship, first and foremost, seeks to help us to hear the Scriptures on their own terms, within the frameworks of meaning provided by their original languages, social and cultural contexts, and historical and pastoral situations. It involves us in the discipline of distancing ourselves from the often-familiar texts—challenging us to take full account of, and to honor, the very real distance that exists between us and the texts of Scripture—so that they can speak to us in their own voice and from their own world.

Such disciplined listening provides a safeguard against the almost automatic domestication of Scripture that happens when we read it without taking account of the distances, when we read it within the frameworks that we bring to it from our own formation as members of our own, contemporary society, whatever particular society that is, with its values, its relationships, its economics, its politics—in short, with everything our upbringing in this location has trained us to assume rather than to question. Add to that, then, our formation as members of a particular denominational (or “non-denominational”) faith community, with its assumptions about the message or theology of Scripture, which frequently overrides our listening to the voices of particular texts that may not, on their own terms, agree with our faith community’s positions. Add yet over and above that our own personal interests and investments, theological or otherwise.

Distancing ourselves from Scripture in order to really hear it, to allow it to shake up our selves, our faith communities’ beliefs and practices, our embeddedness in our own societies—this truly takes on the character of a spiritual discipline, one that seeks to empower an engagement with the Scripture that will be truly and radically transformative, and not merely formative within the limits of what our location will allow.

A. Distance in language (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic)

First off, we’re married to a foreigner. She comes from the Mediterranean, and doesn’t speak English. She doesn’t even speak English as a second language; we generally rely on someone else to tell us what she is trying to say. One of the most basic goals of biblical scholarship is to keep us aware that the Scriptures were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Attending to the Word means finding ways to “hear past” a translation to the sense of the original rather than resting content with the representation of Scripture in any one translation or even in a variety of translations.

Please don’t misunderstanding me. I know from experience that translators really try to “get it right.”[3] They try to the best of their ability to create a faithful representation of the text in a new language, and they’re well qualified for the task. But even so, what they hand us at the end of the day is not the same as what they began with as they set to work on the Hebrew or Greek text. Why is that?

First, there’s the issue of the meanings of words. Most words in any language have not a single meaning but a range of meanings, and sometimes all-out different meanings, with the immediate context setting up the native hearer to zero in on one facet of this range of meaning in a particular occurrence.[4] The range of meanings of any one Hebrew or Greek word is generally not captured by any single English word, so there never is, truly, translational equivalence between words. The translator has to decide what English word captures the sense of the Hebrew or Greek word evoked in the context of that particular verse. That’s already a lot of decision-making. But second, there’s the issue of grammar and the problem of how to represent in English the grammatical relationships between particular words in the foreign language. Third, there’s the issue of culture, that web of social relationships, values, and knowledge within which words take on real meaning, nuance, and implication, and this rarely gets translated at all.

Let me illustrate the first two factors with a famous example. Paul often speaks of pistis Christou as the means by which people are “justified.” Pistis is a noun that can mean trust or belief, but it can also mean loyalty or faithfulness (it can also mean “proof,” as, for example, in ancient law courts). Christou is a personal noun, Christ, and it is in the genitive case. Connecting one noun with a second noun in the genitive case creates a relationship between the two nouns—one with a range of possible significances. The phrase could theoretically mean: “Christ’s faith,” “Christ’s loyalty,” “faith in Christ,” “loyalty toward Christ,” “the trust that Christ provides,” “faith such as Christ showed,” and more besides.[5] Translating into English often entails selecting one option among several—the one that the translation team believes to be the best in its particular content, a decision that often reflects the theological commitments of those translators—and representing it as the option.

So what does this mean for our devotional life, since we’re not likely to master Hebrew and Greek to the point where we will be engaging it as the basis for lectio divina? At the very least, it means don’t wed yourself to one translation. Educate yourself about what went into producing a given translation. Who was involved, with what qualifications, in what capacity? How many people, and from what diversity of locations, were involved in translating any given book? What theological range was represented among the translators? What they bring to the text ends up determining a lot of what you’ll find in the text! What kind of translation were they aiming to produce? One that tried to represent the sentence structure and word choice of the original as closely as possible (often called a “formal equivalent” translation, because it is focused on keeping the form of the original transparent to the extent possible)? One that tried to bring out the meaning as fully as possible in the natural expressions of the new language (often called “dynamic” or “functional equivalent,” because it is focused on how the new language would naturally capture the force and feel of the original)?[6]

After this investigation, select multiple translations from across the spectrum of translations (formal to functional equivalence) and use them together. The theory is this: if you listen to multiple interpreters, you should be able to hear more of what was available to be interpreted in the original. By noting the differences, you’ll see where decisions were made about the meanings of words and the relationships between words. This will actually complicate matters for you, but it will also keep you from swallowing too quickly and unreflectively one translation team’s decisions as, well, Gospel. I would compare this to the navigational practice of checking one’s position by triangulating, rather than relying on a single landmark.

Now even this approach will not get you all the way to hearing your marriage partner. Many translations agree in leaving out important, contextually evoked nuances, so reading many translations will not help. So as a second step, I would urge you to make yourselves friends of some basic- to mid-range commentary series that you can read alongside your devotional engagement with the Word as a necessary enhancement to the same. These become conversation partners with you, helping you get at what the author of the text was trying to say, but that translators may have only partially (or, in some cases, defectively) captured.

A few random examples of what is missed when you engage Scripture only on the basis of your English translation may help put all this in perspective:

i. Hebrews 4:12–13: “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (NIV, similarly the NASB, NRSV, ESV, and CEB).

What mental image do you hold as a result of reading? What does this make you feel as you contemplate judgment before God’s word? In English, the second verse speaks of our exposure before God and God’s word, but the word translated “laid bare” evoked a very vivid and explicit image in the Greek—the image of a combatant in the ring or a prisoner before an executioner with the head pulled back and the throat exposed to the blade,[7] a very fitting complement to the description of the Word of God as “sharper than any double-edged sword.” The image should evoke fear in us, with the concomitant respect for the Word, awareness of the need to be obediently responsive to the Word so as not to be condemned by it, and awareness of the importance, therefore, of holding onto that Mediator who gives us confidence before God and access to favor in the place of judgment, as Heb 4:14–16 goes on to present.[8]

ii. Hebrews 10:35: “So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded” (NIV, similarly the NASB, NRSV, ESV, and CEB).

What brings great reward? What kind of orientation towards life and life-setting is the author promoting here? If I’m really going to meditate upon this verse and expect it to form me and push me in the directions that its author wants to, I really need to take the time to investigate what meanings really stand behind the English representation of it, and not simply rely on the English at face value. The author is not commending the inward feeling of confidence, but the outward manifestation of confidence in one’s bold witness to the value of God’s friendship, a witness that often involves confrontation through speech and through lifestyle difference. The Greek word translated in so many translations as “confidence” is parrhesia, a word often translated as “frank speech,” “boldness” or “outspokenness.”[9] Particularly in the context of the author’s recollection of how the believers formerly defied all of society’s attempts to mute their witness to Jesus and erode their commitment to one another, the promotion of parrhesia pushes them to continue to give the same energy to their public witness to the value of Jesus’ friendship and to their public commitment to the new community formed around the experience of God’s favor in Jesus. In other words, this verse should move us toward outspoken witness in speech and life, rather than remain in the internal realm of feelings.

iii. Hebrews 12:1–2: “let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (NRSV, so also KJV, ESV, NLT); “let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (NIV, so also NASV, CEB)

If we’re going to dwell formatively upon this text, should the text guide us to think about Jesus as the person who initiated our faith and makes our faith complete, or who reflects faith at its fullest in action? Should it lead us to give our attention to what Jesus has done or will do for us, or what we are called to do in response to God’s promise, following Jesus’ example? If we’re really interested in where the Scripture would lead us, we would have to move in the latter direction. There is no word in the Greek text behind the “our” in the KJV, NRSV, NIV, and ESV; there are no contextual indicators that it should be understood as implied (as in the sentence “we have washed the bodies,” i.e., our bodies, “with clean water,” Heb 10:22).[10] The parade of examples of faithful and trusting response to God’s promises in Hebrews 11 leads to Jesus as the climactic example of one who has gone further into the territory of faithful action than anyone else (hence, faith’s pioneer), and who has shown completely what it means to keep faith with God (hence, faith’s perfecter)—and the author calls us to reflect on his example for the purpose of emulating it in the face of challenges to faith in our context.

iv. 1 Peter 2:6–7: “For in Scripture it says: ‘See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.’ Now to you who believe, this stone [or, “he”] is precious” (NIV, so all major translations except CEB and ESV).

This is one of my favorite examples, because virtually no English translation has gotten it right with the exception of two very recent ones—the ESV and CEB. The NIV and most other translations lead us to think that the passage is foregrounding what we think about Jesus—is he “precious” or “honored” in our sight? Is that the significance of our “believing”? But that’s just taking us on a wrong turn. Peter is underlining the significance of the last part of the quotation from the Psalms, “the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame,” restating this as a promise based on that clause: “Honor, then, is for you who believe.”[11] That’s a far cry from “to you who believe, he is precious.”[12] And Peter is contrasting this, then, with the fate of those who fail to place their trust and loyalty in this Jesus: “Honor is for you who believe,” but those who distrust Jesus will stumble and fall, hence come to shame in the end.

Once we can actually hear what this text is trying to say, the Spirit might also lead us to ask who this word is really for in our world. Peter is writing out of special concern with the shame and rejection that Christians have experienced in many regions on account of their loyalty to Jesus and the new community of faith, and the promise that honor, in the end, awaits such people may push us to think beyond ourselves (and how “precious” we might think Jesus to be) and direct our thoughts to our brothers and sisters throughout the world who cling to this promise of the vindication of their honor to give them hope in the face of the many ways in which they experience being shamed by their non-Christian neighbors. This, in turn, might move us to hold them up in prayer, to find ways to connect with one particular community so as to encourage them directly and extend the fruits of Christian kinship—but all this begins, does it not, with discerning what the text is really saying so that it gives us the proper cues?

v. James 4:5: “Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us?” (NIV, and most other translations); “What do you think the Scriptures mean when they say that the spirit God has placed within us is filled with envy?” (NLT).

This is admittedly a difficult verse to translate, and, to their credit, a lot of translations note some of these difficulties in their footnotes. The NLT seems, to me, to be on the correct track, since the particular Greek word translated “jealously” in the NIV (phthonos, “envy”) actually refers to a frame of mind that is always morally blameworthy and never ascribed to God anywhere else in the Old or New Testaments.[13] Does this text invite us, then, to dwell somehow on God’s passion for us, or does it warn us about some bent toward envious longing in our spirits, some corruption of the spirit God planted within us, calling us to the discipline of self-examination and driving us forward to God’s provision: God gives a greater gift than any object or achievement that we might eye invidiously.

Are these small differences? Perhaps. But they are certainly palpable differences, and how you ruminate on the text will be appreciably changed depending on what you are reading in the text. Don’t be content to listen to your marriage partner merely through a translator. Engaging biblical scholarship on this point is foundational and integral to the devotional life.

B. Distance in culture and cultural values

Drop yourself down today in the middle of Bergama, Turkey, or a kibbutz in Israel. You will indeed feel like you’re in a different world, even though they’re still a part of our global, modern world. Now drop yourself there 1,900–2,900 years ago, when people just didn’t do things the way they do them today, when the ways of getting on in society gave rise to some very different value structures than we have here and now. You’re not fully listening to the Scriptures unless you’re attentive to these differences and how they should affect how you’re hearing what is being spoken. Biblical scholars have given a great deal of attention to recovering the social and cultural environment of ancient Israel or the Greco-Roman world in which the early church took shape.[14] This work helps us attend to the basic social and cultural codes that undergird the sacred text—like honor and shame, patronage and reciprocity, the ethos of kin, the significance of purity and pollution—and on the basis of which its authors and hearers would have understood the nuances and implications of what was being said.

When we read about “grace,” for example, we tend to think of it as a mainly religious word used to speak about God’s mercy and generosity towards those who have not done anything to “earn” what God is giving them. Furthermore, in our post-Reformation theological contexts, we tend to hear “grace” chiefly in terms of “grace alone, apart from doing good works,” and we don’t really know how to integrate doing good into our understanding of salvation or justification.

In the first century Greco-Roman world, which included Judea, “grace” was an everyday word. It was the keyword in relationships between friends, or between patrons and their clients, or between public benefactors and the cities or groups they benefitted. The single Greek word charis, “grace,” could be used to speak of (1) the favorable disposition to grant help or resources; (2) the help or gift given; and (3) the response of gratitude on the part of the one helped.[15] The ethic of these relationships was visually captured in the image of a dance between three goddesses, moving about hand-in-hand in a circle (the “Three Graces”).[16] This image communicated the obligation inherent in giving and receiving a gift—the circle of grace must be unbroken. Gift gives birth to grateful response; favor gives birth to the desire to bless in return; the act of receiving implies the obligation to respond.

Once we allow biblical scholarship to make us aware of the dynamics of patronage and reciprocity in the New Testament world, we will begin to make the connections between grace and response that first-century hearers would naturally have made, and thus discover afresh the seamless connections between justification, sanctification, and obedient service that Paul and his hearers would have held together in a never-ending circle. If we’re attentive to the world in which the Word took shape, we will find ourselves joining together once more what theologians have rent asunder: God’s grace and our grateful response of loyal obedience and witness, trust in Jesus and obedience to his lordship, reception of the gift of the Spirit and honoring the intention of the Giver—that we should allow the Spirit to transform our lives.

We find this logic throughout the Scriptures, but here I’ll just highlight some passages from Paul and his circle: 

And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. (2 Cor 5:15 NIV) 

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:20 NIV) 

Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned. (Heb 6:7–8 NIV)

This last passage bears a little more comment.[17] The author has just spoken of people in his hearers’ position as a community that has experienced wave after wave of God’s favor and spiritual gifts—the rain often falling on the ground to make it fertile (6:4–5). But some in this community have begun to have more regard for regaining their neighbors’ acceptance than for remaining open and steadfast in their commitment to Jesus and the new community of faith—surely a public slap in the face of their great Benefactor, a frightful act of ingratitude. This agricultural image reminds the hearers of a basic cultural truth that they need to be sure to apply in their situation: they must continue to allow God’s favor toward them to have its intended effect, to make them fruitful in their support of their fellow Christians in the face of a hostile society, and to continue to bear public witness to the value of our Lord’s friendship over the world’s friendship.

If we are really to engage and encounter these texts, we need to acquaint ourselves with several such social and cultural matrices that are such a prominent part of the life world of the authors and audiences of the Scriptures—the world in which our marriage partner grew up, and which shaped her fundamental logic and experience.

C. Distance in pastoral setting

The situation addressed by a particular author may stand at a considerable remove from our own life setting or church situation, but if we engage the text simply as if it were written “for me” in the “here and now,” we might lead ourselves into some places whither the author of that text would never have had us go. The Scriptures are living and active, in large measure, because they were living words addressing living people in living situations. Their authors had particular goals for shaping the audience’s responses in those situations, and many books are wholly composed within the framework of that situation and the author’s pastoral goals for the people in that situation.

This is, of course, not to say that the Bible is of historical interest only, that the Word of God is dead and fossilized. But it is to say that biblical scholars have invested a great deal of research and energy into uncovering the details, dynamics, and challenges of the historical and pastoral situation addressed by, say, Amos or Galatians, so that we have the possibility of hearing Amos or Galatians as a living word shot at a particular target, a well crafted piece of pastoral direction seeking to nurture a particular response as the faithful, the community-sustaining, the kingdom-building response. And understanding Amos or Galatians in this way gives us a tether, a mooring for our own reading, both in terms of a solid footing from which to examine ourselves and our setting and an appreciation of the movement for which the Spirit of God was calling, and for which the Spirit still calls in analogous situations around the world today.

For an example, take Paul’s letter to the Christians in Philippi. This letter is not about doctrine or Christology, though it certainly builds on Christological statements. It’s about people in church pulling in their own directions because people can be stubborn and prideful instead of pulling together like people better formed in the image of Jesus. If we know that the reconciliation of two leaders within the church is Paul’s goal (4:2–3), this changes how we process the opening three chapters of the letter. We can engage it as Paul’s extended spiritual guidance aimed at helping put two alienated leaders in a frame of mind to let go of their own agendas, sense of merit, indignation, or whatever, and so be restored to unity with one another (and the congregation along with them). The whole letter has a pastoral trajectory, a formative trajectory both for the individual disciple and, through that, the community of faith as a whole. If we engage it from this angle, the Word can more directly and freely follow its formative trajectory in and among us in our communities of faith.

For a further example, take some of the more difficult passages in Hebrews, like Hebrews 6:4–6: “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace” (NIV). This is a piece of pastoral rhetoric, not an absolute theological statement independent of any context.[18] It was written to motivate a particular response in a challenging situation: it has a pastoral and formational trajectory that ought to provide the starting place for our own formational engagement therewith. From this angle, the text does not invite us to try to assess whether repentance is theoretically possible or impossible for someone, or whether someone has committed some unpardonable sin, or whether those who are “truly saved” can in fact fall away. Rather, the text invites us to take the utmost care whenever, and as often as, there is a choice to be made between several possible courses of action, one of which shows greater loyalty and gratitude toward God and solidarity with Christ and his church, another or others of which may bring temporal advantage, pleasure, or relief, but would do so at the cost of giving God less honor, witness, or obedience than God’s generosity towards you merits.

D. Distance in conventions of communication

You already know how important recognizing “genre”—or conventions of communication—is for interpretation. If you picked up The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, or Cloverfield and were unfamiliar with the genre of “found-footage fictional movie,” you probably would have found these communiqués more disturbing than most viewers, and your responses would have been quite different (and unintended by the communicator). Recall the reactions during Orson Welles’s broadcast of War of the Worlds by people who didn’t tune in from the beginning, where it was announced as an episode of “Mystery Theater.”

The book of Revelation provides a stellar example of the importance of recognizing and understanding genre. There is so much in that book that most Christians simply do not get because they are not reading it as an “apocalypse,” but rather as a book of predictions about a future far removed from its author or the people its author cared about. They are not picking up on its conventions of communication, conventions that can be observed across a number of similar writings from around the turn of the era (for example, 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, and Apocalypse of Abraham). As an “apocalypse,” an “unveiling,” Revelation was offered by John not as a coded document needing a key to be interpreted (certainly not a document that we are now in a better position to decode than its intended recipients in first-century Asia Minor), but as a text that provided the key by which its intended audience could interpret their own situation in light of God’s constant values and purposes for human community in his presence. It peeled back the veneer of Roman imperialism, religion, and economy to reveal the ugliness, in God’s sight, of its violence, its exploitation and excessive consumption, its self-glorifying ideology that placed it above accountability. And it challenged Christians to stop seeking to profit from a system built on such sins, but rather to bear costly witness to the one God and that God’s opposition to the sins of the system. But, not “getting it,” many Christians are not prompted by their reading of Revelation to ask the penetrating questions of themselves, their churches, and their engagement with their society that John was raising and answering for his churches.[19]

E. Distance in theology

“Eternal security,” “justification by faith alone,” “pre-millennial dispensationalism”—these are not first-century concepts, and they are not part of the theological thought-world of the authors of Scripture. They are theological constructs from much later generations. Biblical scholars have been very attentive to trying to help us hear what the text was trying to communicate before systematic theologians of one stripe or another started telling us what they were so sure the text was trying to communicate. It is essential that we not allow the voices of Scripture become ciphers for post-Scriptural theological developments. In other words, don’t make the texts sing to your theological tunes. Hear them; live within the tensions among them, stretched by them. That is part of what makes the Word “alive and active.”

The more I have immersed myself recently in the study of Galatians, the situation and competing theologies that occasioned its writing, and Paul’s pastoral agenda in that situation, the more I am seeing that Galatians is not really about “forensic justification” or the basis on which righteousness is “imputed” or about “faith versus works.” It’s about how we become righteous in God’s sight, what provision God has made out of God’s generosity to make transformation possible, and what it would mean to rely on Torah’s provisions for becoming righteous now that the new provision of the Holy Spirit has been made available to all—and that at the immense cost of Jesus’ giving himself over to crucifixion on our behalf. Verses about Christ being fully formed in the disciples, such that Christ is the active, living force animating them, such that the Spirit produces its nine-fold fruit where formerly we gave the flesh free rein, such that, by trusting Jesus, the righteous we hope for becomes real in our lives (see Gal 2:20–21; 4:19–20; 5:2–6, 13–25) rise to new prominence. Paul is writing about deep and total transformation, and how to facilitate this: these are the issues that drive him, and that would better occupy us as we engaged the text.[20]

Biblical scholarship continuously draws attention to the distances between us and the Word—distances in language, in social and cultural world, in pastoral setting, in conventions of communication, and in theological interests. It also gives us tools by means of which to honor and yet bridge those distances. In these ways, biblical scholarship equips us with the disciplines that will help us truly attend to the Word, and help us avoid attending to the many distractions that take our attention off the Word. The disciplines that help us honor and take account of the distances help us to come to the text less with our own agenda for, and limitations upon, the encounter, and more open to the Scriptures’ agenda for us in our setting, more open to the breadth of the transformation that the voices of Scripture challenge us to embrace.

II. Biblical scholarship and “challenges” to faith

I do not wish to minimize the fact that biblical scholarship poses significant challenges, even dangers, when one is primarily seeking to grow in one’s relationship to God and one’s discipleship. Not all have faith (2 Thess 3:2). Not all scholars pursue their work—or their communication of their work to a reading public—in “good faith.” Nevertheless, whether a scholar intends his or her work to challenge (and possibly undermine) our commitment to the Scriptures or to positively enhance our understanding of its complexities—whether he or she intends it for good or for ill—God can use it in our lives for good, to help us release our idols in favor of embracing the living “other.”

If you walk into a brick-and-mortar bookstore and head to the religion section, you will find books written by biblical scholars that specifically present challenges to your view of Scripture. Scholarship often challenges the reader’s understanding of the origin and composition of particular texts, the nature of the reliability of these texts, and their manner of inspiration. We can engage this healthfully, however, if we commit ourselves at the outset not to make of Scripture what it is not. Again, this fits our analogy of the relationship with a spouse quite well. How many marriages end up faltering because we have a view of what the other must be, and he or she simply is not, so that we have loved our image and not the person? Scripture is indeed sacred, but your views or your church’s views about its origins, composition, reliability, and the like are not.

For example, there have been some prominently featured books on the complexities of the variations in wording in the New Testament manuscripts from the third through about the eleventh centuries, both accidental variation and intentional changes.[21] This is a reality that may threaten our absolute certainty in regard to the precise wording of this or that verse. This has, by the way, driven at least one prominent biblical scholar to lose faith in the Bible’s reliability as a whole—though there, too, it was a case of sacrificing faith in Scripture before sacrificing faith in his views of Scripture.[22] Rather than view this as a threat, we could view variations in the manuscript tradition as invitations to peer over the shoulders of our earlier Christian brothers and sisters in the faith wrestling with making sense of the text, or identifying and “fixing” perceived problems in the text, or even commenting on the text—evidence of the word as “living and active,” though not always correctly understood. These variations, together with the discipline of textual criticism, remind us also how much we owe to the larger Christian Church for the gift of these Scriptures. We have access to them only because of the efforts of thousands of copyists who valued these texts and were committed to their transmission to future disciples.

Another example would involve the composition of the four Gospels, especially the first three, which appear not to be the private memoirs of three men but the intentional crafting of material that was part and parcel of the church’s public preaching and tradition about Jesus.[23] And there are some notable differences between these three Gospels in terms of ordering of material and wording in Jesus’ teachings. Attending to these differences, however, means learning to value the Gospels for what they are—proclamations about Jesus and about what it means to follow this Jesus. It means learning to value and appreciate the four evangelists themselves as voices speaking in Scripture, as preachers and as spiritual directors, shaping Jesus traditions and the overall story of Jesus for the sake of bringing out its significance or suggesting a formative application.

In that same brick-and-mortar bookstore, you will find books written by biblical scholars that present challenges to your view of Jesus. Studies of the “Historical Jesus” are probably the facet of biblical scholarship most visible in the public arena, and these are often presented—or answered—as attempts to cast doubt on the Christian confession of Jesus. Here, too, there is a way to engage scholarship healthfully. First, it is important to realize that a lot of scholars turn to historical Jesus studies because they have a serious axe to grind with the Christian Church, but they also don’t want to let go of Jesus. This leads them to seek to recover something of Jesus behind and apart from the Christian confession of Jesus, regarding their reconstruction of “who Jesus was” as the new basis for their faith, now freed from the Church that has disappointed them.[24] This is where the historical scholar always gets into trouble, and frankly a move that casts suspicion on the alleged objectivity of his or her study.[25] Second, it nevertheless remains important for us to think through afresh, and constructively, why we believe a crucified Jew to be in some sense the unique Son of God. This was a challenge to generation after generation of Christians, and we ought not to insulate ourselves from answering that challenge for ourselves. Third, and most importantly, the results of scholars of the historical Jesus can help us see more of Jesus than appears in our own image of him, checking the adequacy of our image of Jesus against the whole counsel of the New Testament.[26] These scholars can help us see facets of Jesus, his mission, and his challenge to those who would follow him and be formed into his likeness, that we have overlooked or excluded—whether because our own lenses hadn’t allowed us to notice these facets, or because the challenges posed by those facets of Jesus are just so not congenial to our lives as we want to live them.

Increasingly in these bookstores, you will also find books that seek to challenge the boundaries of the biblical Canon. These are the books that suggest that the canon of the New Testament was the result of bishops’ rigorous suppression of popular, but unorthodox texts, that it was the product of a conspiracy to silence alternative versions of Christianity rather than the product of a long and rather democratic process of natural selection.[27] These are the books that suggest that the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and the Gospel of Truth are equally valid starting points for knowing and following Jesus, even though they were written a century or more after the canonical Gospels and were the private property of Gnostic assemblies that intentionally set themselves apart from the apostolic church and its teachings.[28] Actually, I don’t see much to recommend in the study of Gnosticism, except insofar as it shows us interpretations of Jesus and of the shape of discipleship that did not square with the church’s foundations or the memory of those who knew Jesus “in the flesh.”

The general trend to get people to read ancient texts outside of the biblical canon is, however, a good one. Some texts outside of our canon can be, in fact, very important to understanding the Scripture and even independently formative for the life of faith and discipleship. I would recommend, first and foremost, the Old Testament Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical Books (most of which are already included in the Bible of the majority of the world’s Christians) and the Apostolic Fathers—second-century Christian writings from within and intentionally drawing upon and carrying on the apostolic tradition.[29] If we’re going to grow more attentive to the Word, we need to read around in the world of the Word more fully, especially to read those texts that were themselves formative for those whose voices speak in the Word (like many books among the Apocrypha), or texts that give us our earliest glimpses of the Word applied (like the Apostolic Fathers).

Conclusion: The devotional life as context for biblical scholarship, and biblical scholarship as context for the devotional life

On the whole, I have not experienced biblical scholarship and the devotional life as two distinct and separate categories. Indeed, my personal credo has been that as soon as one takes on a life of its own apart from the other, something is distorted. And so in the midst of writing commentaries or puzzling over texts, I pray to God for guidance, for illumination, for the gift of being able to discern God’s truth and to help the Scriptures speak authentically to those (admittedly few souls) who will read my books. This is not always the case. There have been times when I’ve failed to keep my awareness of my relationship with the living God as pressing as my attention to the minute details in the text and the history of its interpretation. But God does keep calling me back to the balance. Then when I turn to read devotionally and to pray, I bring what I have learned as a scholar into those engagements, and I find myself hearing more of Scripture’s challenge to me and to our churches as a result.

Biblical scholarship reminds us of the uncomfortable complexities of trying to listen to texts written between about 1,900 and 2,900 years ago, in foreign languages, in foreign cultures, in short, in a different world. But we do not honor the Word if we ignore these complexities. We do not get closer to the Word, we do not become more attentive to the Word, if we pretend that these complexities do not exist and take steps to discover the distances so that we can close the gap in actuality, rather than in wishful thinking. And so I would close by urging my readers to bring biblical scholarship into your devotional engagement with the text, so that you will hear more of the text and less of yourself and the voices of your culture and your world when seeking direction from and formation through the Word. And I would urge you to bring your devotional life into your interaction with biblical scholarship, for you do not wrestle with these texts alone, but within the community of faith and above all in the communion of the Holy Spirit. So ditch the frog. Ditch the starry-eyed lovers. Do the difficult work of really getting to know your spouse. In the end, this will make you better lovers.

Notes

1. A version of this paper was presented at the Renovaré conference ‘The Fire of the Word: Meeting God on Holy Ground’ held in Denver in May 2012.
2. Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 55.
3. I had the privilege of serving as part of the four-person team that produced the English Standard Version Apocrypha for Oxford University Press and then to serve as General Editor for the Apocrypha for the Common English Bible.
4. An excellent introduction to the problem of “word meanings” can be found in Peter Cotterell and Max Turner, Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1989), especially pp. 106–188. More technical, but seminal, is J. P. Louw, Semantics of New Testament Greek (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1982).
5. Representative contributions to this debate include Morna Hooker, “PISTIS XRISTOU,” NTS 35 (1989) 321–42; Richard B. Hays, “PISTIS and Pauline Christology: What is at Stake?” pp. 35–60 in David Hay and Elizabeth Johnson, eds., Pauline Theology IV: Looking Back, Pressing On (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1997); Barry Matlock, “ ‘Even the Demons Believe’: Paul and Πίστισ Χριστο?͂,” CBQ 64 (2002) 300–318; idem, “Detheologizing the PISTIS XRISTOU Debate: Cautionary Remarks from a Lexical Semantic Perspective,” NovT 42 (2000) 1–23; Francis Watson, “By Faith (of Christ): An Exegetical Dilemma and Its Scriptural Solution,” pp. 147–163 in Michael Bird and Preston Sprinkle, eds., The Faith of Jesus Christ: Exegetical, Biblical, and Theological Studies (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2009).
6. A helpful resource in this regard is Gordon Fee and Mark Strauss, How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010). Readers who want to delve more fully into the history and problems of translation would do well to consult Paul D. Wegner, The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origin and Development of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999).
7. Walter Bauer, Frederick W. Danker, William Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (3rd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 1014; Henry G. Lidell, Robert Scott, Henry S. Jones, Greek-English Lexicon with a Revised Supplement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 1811.
8. D. A. deSilva, Perseverance in Gratitude: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Epistle “to the Hebrews” (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 170–71; Craig Koester, Hebrews (Anchor Bible; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2001), 274–75.
9. Bauer, Greek-English Lexicon, 781; Liddell, Greek-English Lexicon, 1311. See also Philodemus, On Frank Criticism (David Konstan, et al., eds.; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1998)
10. So Gareth Cockerill, The Epistle to the Hebrews (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 606; deSilva, Perseverance, 431–32; William L. Lane, Hebrews 9–13 (WBC; Dallas: Word, 1991), 399, 410–12; Koester, Hebrews, 521, 523.
11. See Paul Achtemeier, 1 Peter (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 160–161; John H. Elliott, I Peter (AB; New York: Doubleday, 2000), 427–28; J. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter (WBC; Waco: Word, 1988), 104.
12. The error arises originally from not giving adequate attention to the fact that the author has moved away from using the adjective timios, “precious,” “valuable,” in 2:4, 6 (quoting the Greek version of Isa 28:16) to using the related noun timē, “honor” in 2:7. Once this error was made in the KJV, it appears to have persisted by force of familiarity with the language of the KJV, particularly as many “translations” were undertaken as “revisions” of the KJV or one of its successors rather than a fresh translation “from scratch,” as it were.
13. Aristotle makes a clear distinction between phthonos (properly translated “envy”), which is always a vice, and zelos (properly translated “jealousy” or “emulation,” depending on the context) in his Art of Rhetoric 2.11. On the proper translation of James 4:6, see Sophie Laws, A Commentary on the Epistle of James (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1993), 177–78; Luke T. Johnson, The Letter of James (AB; New York: Doubleday, 1995), 281–82; most thoroughly, Scot McKnight, The Letter of James (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 335–344.
14. The following resources may be helpful: Albert A. Bell, Jr., Exploring the New Testament World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998); D. A. deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000); Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (3rd ed.; Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003); James S. Jeffers, The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1999).
15. Bauer, Greek-English Lexicon, 1079–80; Liddell, Greek-English Lexicon, 1978–79.
16. Seneca provides the following interpretation of this image in his On Benefits 1.3.2–5. See also deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity, 104–106.
17. For a fuller treatment, see deSilva, Perseverance, 229–234.
18. See, further, deSilva, Perseverance, 234–36, 240–44.
19. Some helpful resources aimed at remedying this include D. A. deSilva, Unholy Allegiances: Heeding Revelation’s Warning (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2013); Craig Koester, Revelation and the End of All Things (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001); Nelson Kraybill, Apocalypse and Allegiance: Worship, Politics, and Devotion in the Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2010); Mark Wilson, Revelation (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007); Ben Witherington, III, Revelation and the End Times Participant’s Guide: Unraveling God’s Message of Hope (Nashville: Abingdon, 2010).
20. See my Global Readings: A Sri Lankan Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011).
21. Some of the most celebrated include Bart Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); idem, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005). Ehrman’s earlier work is actually a fascinating study of how variations in ancient manuscripts of the New Testament reflect ongoing theological debates and interests. The “edge” in both is evident from the titles, especially the latter. There is a sense in which scholarship yields to a bit of sensationalism, particularly since the latter ingredient is an important element of marketability. Nevertheless, the fact of manuscript variation, from the trivial to the truly significant, is indisputable, and it is important for Christians to come to terms with this reality as they wrestle with thinking through what Scripture truly “is.” For an alternative introduction to questions both of textual transmission and canon formation (see below), see Arthur G. Patzia, The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection, Text and Canon (2nd ed.; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011).
22. Bart Ehrman provides a very candid and transparent account of his journey in Misquoting, 1–12.
23. See, for example, the very helpful books by Graham Stanton, Gospel Truth? The Quest for an Eyewitness to Christ (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995); Robert H. Stein, Studying the Synoptic Gospels: Origin and Interpretation (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001).
24. A rather extreme example is Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1997), written by Robert W. Funk, the convener of the Jesus Seminar.
25. See the incisive critique of the theological and anti-ecclesiastical programs of “Jesus Seminar” and other such enterprises in Luke T. Johnson, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1997). See also Craig A. Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006).
26. Some excellent resources in this regard include Ben Witherington III, The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1995); Mark Alan Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998).
27. See, for example, Bart Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It Into the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 1–4; Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). Ehrman has actually provided an excellent collection of early Christian and Christian-Gnostic literature, as well as opened helpful windows into some obscure corners of what adherents claimed to be forms of Christianity. He is too committed, however, to “leveling the playing field” between those texts that were clearly affirmed by the widely-distributed majority of people who were, in their self-understanding, “Christian” and those that were affirmed by only small enclaves here or there. In her translation and interpretation of The Gospel of Mary of Magdala (Polebridge Press, 2003), Karen King writes: “History … is written by the winners. In the case of early Christianity, this has meant that many voices in these debates were silenced through repression or neglect” (pp. 6–7). There is a third possibility: the voices were not “silenced” at all, but spoke and failed to persuade any but a few like-minded people. The remaining manuscript evidence (or, in cases like the Gospel of Mary of Magdala or the celebrated Gospel of Judas, the stunning lack of manuscript evidence) also could be taken as a sign that these attempts to promote a particular interpretation of Jesus and what it meant to follow him simply found little or no hearing, dying a natural death as the bulk of Christ-followers continued to look to the texts that would eventually be set apart as the “New Testament” for their inspiration and guidance.
28. Of course, scholars writing for a popular audience tend to avoid overly sensationalist claims on behalf of such texts.
29. Many modern translation projects have also included the Apocrypha within their scope, even if not in all printed editions. Thus the Apocrypha can be found in RSV, NRSV, ESV, CEB translations. Introductions to this material include D. A. deSilva, The Apocrypha (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2012); idem, Introducing the Apocrypha: Context, Message, and Significance (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002); Daniel J. Harrington, Invitation to the Apocrypha (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999); Bruce Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). The best modern translations of the Apostolic Fathers are Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers in English (3rd ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006; also available in The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations [3rd rev. ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007]) and Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers (2 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). Beginning guides to this literature include Paul Foster, ed., The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2007); Clayton Jefford, The Apostolic Fathers: An Essential Guide (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005); idem, Reading the Apostolic Fathers: A Student’s Introduction (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012); Wilhelm Pratscher, ed., The Apostolic Fathers: An Introduction (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010).