How Not to Learn About the Bible

Skimming along on the surface of things is the lot of the journalist. You might even say that unless you're an investigative journalist -- and these days you might as well be angling to write a book considering the tiny news hole most newspapers have -- your coverage is just going to scratch the surface. Even magazines, with the exception of The New Yorker, barely give shrift to weighty topics.

So it's no surprise that a web editor, through a topic-specific blog, would write a less than comprehensive view of the Bible that he then parlayed into The Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible. I give David Plotz credit for actually reading the Old Testament all the way through, but I wouldn't exactly call that Blogging the Bible. Plotz, who is a Jew, understandably believes that's the end of the story, but that's only prologue for Christians. He might have had a lot of questions answered in the New Testament. Alas, he didn't get that version.

Instead, with no real religious education and without any consultation with scholars on the many subjects he tackles, Plotz writes a tongue-in-cheek review of the structure, meaning and stories in the Old Testament. I admit it's sometimes funny, but so is watching the Three Stooges (occasionally). That doesn't make their films educational, inspiring or even illuminating. And certainly you can't derive the great wisdom of some of the Torah's writings from Plotz's snarky commentary.

Christians fought for the right to read the Bible in their own language and to be able to possess it when the printing press made mass production practical -- in spite of the Catholic church's insistence on having priests control the interpretation. While I think there can be a middle ground, when someone has the "pulpit" on a book that religiously and culturally influential, they shouldn't waste it by stewing in their own ignorance. Plotz explains himself in this Washington Post interview.

The complexity of meanings in the Bible was driven home to me this week when Bud Miller of Bible.com handed me a copy of a final draft of new translation of the Old Testament in plain English. Dr. Stanley Morris, a Biblical scholar who worked with original documents and was aided by crack translators (even though he understands Hebrew and Greek already), painstakingly sought to create the most accurate version in our vernacular. While just about anyone with a passing understanding of the history of the Bible knows the King James version is riddled with translation errors, there are nuances that scholars are still debating. Christian scholars have narrowed down the New Testament translations fairly well, but this translation brought new clarity to the Old Testament that will shed light on its meaning to those who really care. This and his previous work on translating the New Testament for The Great Book have been Dr. Morris's life's work.

As I have written before, context is everything in making sense of the Bible. Without understanding that the Old Testament was an attempt to explain the relationship between humans and God during a primitive time when civilization was barely established, the behaviors of many tribes are bewildering. Plotz was prompted to start his quest when he was horrified by picking up a Hebrew Bible at a bat mitzvah and reading the story of the rape of Dinah. Just think of how, today, we perceive of "honor" killings of women by their Islamic fathers, brothers or other male relatives after they have been raped or otherwise shamed by associating with men that their families disapproved of. In that context, Dinah's treatment was comparatively humane. It's all a matter of educated interpretation.