I often say, the key to good history is a good narrative. As the famous quote goes, of which I’ve forgotten the source, “all history is narrative.” If this is the measure, Gordon has written a very good history about the Bible.
One of the marks of a good narrative is thematic cohesion. History books that are basiclaly one big data dump I find, beyond having very little to actually say about that data, ignore the fact that the historian is never cut off from the necessary function of interpretation. If all history is narrative history, all history is interpretation. Gordon gives us as readers a clear thesis and clear aim. It could be summarized in the simple statment that what defines the Bible is the necessary tension that shapes it. That tension is between the need to wrestle it down to certain truths, and the truth that the Bible cannot and refuses to be wrestled down, owned and contained. This is the conclusion that we come to in the final chapter:
“The global book remains deeply personal and local, often creating tensions between individual and corporate reception. It defines and shapes those who seek to actualize its words in their lives, to capture its model of holy living. Yet it will not be owned by anyone and continues to defy all efforts to anchor it in fixed interpretations. It inspires striving but rejects posession and exclusivity.” (p434)
“For Christians there is no greater fear than getting the Bible wrong, an anxiety that has inspired great faith and inflicted devastating damage.” (p434)
“In grasping to understand its words and is silences, for over two millenia the Bible’s readers have found hope. To borrow from the title of a 1965 film, the Bible tells the greatest story ever told. Its words have comforted, inspired, sickened, and haunted humanity. Its text belongs to the global world of sacred texts, with which, today more than ever, it is in conversation… The Bible remains inexhaustible.” (p437)
The author summarizes that idea in this wonderful statement,
“The Bible dictates its own history, which is without end.” (p433)
Thsi conclusion acts as the answer to the books introduction, and indeed the first chapter, where Gordon talks about the relationship between the Bible, described as a “book of books,” and interpretation. In this way it is a book without end. Citing Gregory the Great, “The Bible is, as it were, a kind of river, if I may so liken it, which is both shallow and deep, wherin both the lamb may find a footing, and the elephant float at large.” Or as Gordon puts it, “Every translation is contingent, a product of a moment that, unlike the Bible, is not eternal. At that moment the Bible holds something back.” (P64) That holding back is what allows it to speak, and allows us to seek.
What the Bible is, in this way, is necessary to uphold if we are going to step into the wild world of the Bibles formation into canons (yes, that reads plural), translations, debates, and denominational divides. Here I found an important and helpful reminder for not only what the Bible is, but how it retains its place as a sacred text within this historical framework. There is something about noting that larger narrative as a tension that makes that push and pull come alive. We need to formulate convictions based on our engagement with the text. And yet for the Bible to be alive and for the Bible to speak, we also need to understand that the minute we do, such actions need to be shaped by the critique. The whole of history is shaped this way. And yet, to be sacred also means holding something, some foundation, to be true, lest this tension slip into relativism. When it comes to the Bible, it is simply this- the Bible is a sacred text. If its not, there is no need to give it that sacred and formative place. Here Gordon makes this point rather subtly, which goes hand in hand with the fact that he is doing his best job to tackle a subject with immense internal significance, by standing at a distance. This has both weaknesses and strenghts. But in my opinion we need both. It is extremely helpful for me to have a voice like Gordons brought into the mix of my own internal wrestling with the Bible as a Christian. And yet, I come to this knowing that the internal process, the nuances that shape the actual practice of engaging the sacred text from the inside, is going to sit outside of Gordon’s perspective standing at a distance. This is what a life of faith is after all- not blind belief but an actual “lived” (faithfulness) belief. The only way we can truly come to knowledge of God and the world.
Another truism that runs through this book is the fact that all of this wildness, which the first chapter called “Becoming a Book” helps to outline, is tamed by its relationship to the past. We might call this Tradition. Tradition is not dogma, it is, rather, a commitment to a historical narrative that all constructions, be it denominations, theologies, or the Bible, have a thread that lead backwards. Which is to say, just because we can point to a dated “composition,” does not mean that this is where something is brought into being. Rather, that becomes a window into the thing that precedes it. And at its most fundamental level, the existence of a sacred text opens us up to a world not of the second and third and fourth and 18th centuries ect, but to the history that gave this life. Meaning, the logical conclusion of the Gospels existence must and can only ever be the existence of the seeds that gave it life. Which is hugely important, because its a reminder that “the Bible” was never contained to “a book of books.”
Some defining aspects of the Bibles history that Gordon touches on. First, he writes that “it is striking how many of the momentous developments of the Bible were the work of individuals or small groups in peril.” (p176) The Bible emerges from the margins, and is shaped by a story that gives life to those on the margins. The worst parts of its history are when it gets coopted by the worlds Empires. The enduring parts of its history are when it stands as the necessary critique to Empire. Perhaps one of the great examples of this push and pull is American slavery. That the Bible both functioned as peoples justification for slavery and its abolition is precisely how the sacred text has always worked. If it could be contained, it would always be contained by the shape of Empire. If it has enduring power, it will always critique the shape of Empire. This is the narrative history.
A second key facet of the Bibles history relates to the books title- a “global” history. Recognizing the relationship between the Judeo and Christian componants of the narraativer, Gordon writes that, “The Christian revolution was that scripture was meant for all, whether literate or not.” If we are looking at the Bible purely on a historical front, we can see that in the movement from scroll to book, it is both moving from Jerusalem into the whole of the world, and likewise into the hands of the common people. Which is to say, the thing that gives birth to the reformation finds its roots in a patterned history. As Gordon writes, “The Bible’s global ubiquity doesn’t imply global familiariaty.” (p432) Meaning, its presence precedes its embrace, often in profound and fascinating ways, but always with a coherent sense of how and where this happens (on the margins). One of the more interesting points of historical information to this end was the fact that China is the worlds leading source of making and printing and producing Bibles. Looking at how the sheer presence of Bibles translates to familiarity simply underscores the persistance of the sacred text in the margins, defined in its own particular way within the borders of China.
One final observation in terms of those key facets- the Bible grew organically into canon in relationship to devotional practices. These two things cannot be detached, lest we lose any and all sense of what the Bible is. The text is sacred not primarily because it can be studied and torn apart and analyzed, but because it offers us a story to be shaped by. This is, perhaps, the single most important facet, something, as Gordon points out, which has perhaps been lost in a wrong understanding of the Bibles transformation in an age of science and reaason:
“It is tempting to think that, with the arrival of the age of science and reason, the story of the Bible had reached its zenith- that what remains is a tale of decline. Not so. The rise of natural philosophy and the Enlightenment brought to the fore the relationship between the Bible and reason…. There were of course skeptics, (but) other leading lights of the age, such as Galileo, Bacon, and Newton, transformed our understanding of heaven and earth and did so with the Bible in hand. Indeed, as a panoramic view of the most important scientific, political, and philsophical thinkers of the age will show, efforts to marry religion and the Bible with science were far more prevalent than we today often take to be the case. The question with which thse thinkers grappled was not really whether the Bible was still relevant in a world in upheaval but how it was so…. It would be a mistake to see this period as one of rejection or repudiation of religion. Transitions are generally slow and complex, and many of the most important Enlightenment thinkers, to say nothing of the common people, were resolute in their belief. The Bible retained center stage and, in most cases, was reconciled with what was being learned about science and history” (p179; p208))
The sacred text is alive, and it gives us life through our participation in it. The crticisms (meaning, proper academic tools) are important and are relevant, but one of the great mistakes these criticisms often make is assuming that the Bible it is disecting and deconstructing is somehow contained to a book. That to critique the book is to somehow do away with the book, or to domesticate it. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It should awaken us to why we come to it at all- to be shaped by something that is not only alive, but invites us into the practice of translating it into our lives. One of my favorite parts was when it talks about the medieval age and its own attempts to recover the long standing practice of midrash, of writing in the margins. The bibles of this time were presented, long before our modern commentaries were a thing, a a conversation with the past. Present translations set alongside notes from previous ones, with open margins to invite fresh observations. I thought it was a beautiful picture of how the evolution of a “book” could marry itself to the simple practice of inviting the text (or the spirit behind the text) into our lives and allowing it speak.
The Stories of my Life 