Ever Restless: Thoughts on Scriptural Acquaintance

Pintel:                  You know you can’t read.

Ragetti:                It’s the Bible; you get credit for trying.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006)

You know, guys, it’s all very well making a lot of noise about how much importance we place on what the Bible says, but how good a grasp of what it says do most of us actually have?

 

What a snazzy arty picture of a Bible.

For instance, I was browsing the book (or books?) of Kings the other day and found a whole load of stuff I don’t recall ever having encountered before. My favourite new discovery was the story of Ahab king of Israel making a fateful attempt to reclaim Ramoth-gilead from the Syrians despite a warning that his four hundred prophets were speaking falsely when they promised success in this endeavour.¹ And if you’re shrugging your shoulders to the effect that that story didn’t come up in Sunday school – first off, you should go and read the story because it’s great, and second, that only adds weight to my case. Why don’t we know these obscure stories? Why doesn’t it bother us that we don’t know these obscure stories? Much as we’d situate ourselves in the orthodox camp with our declarations that all scripture is the word of God, do we really believe that the story of Ahab’s last stand is as inspired as, say, John 3:16? Plus, to reiterate a point I heard a very clever and godly person make earlier this summer, why would we not bat an eyelid at Jewish or Muslim children learning to recite their scriptures in their original languages, and yet consider it pretentious for an adult to have her Greek New Testament out during a church service?² Why can’t we identify half the scriptural references in the hymns we sing? Why is it not normal for the Christian to have in her head a basic outline of the history of Israel during the first millennium BCE? Why am I so much better at Sporcle’s Harry Potter Top 200 character-naming quiz than its Bible Top 200 one?³

Why do I find it so easy to prioritise blogging about what the scriptures say over actually going and reading what they say?

On which note, I’ll leave you for today with a little poem I recently put together. It’s designed as an encouragement to explore and get to know the Bible better, but frankly, if it should instead deter you from continuing to read this post any further, such that you seek solace in the next hyperlink on which your eyes alight (which happens to be in my first footnote below), it may have fulfilled its purpose just as well…

I want to chart the scriptures as one charts a sea,

Not just hiding in the harbours most familiar to me,

But proceeding boldly with my flag unfurled

To discover where those harbours fit within the wider world.

I want to plot each island, grasp its shape and span,

Trace its every mile of coastline as exactly as I can;

I want to mine its treasures to their deepest seams;

I want to slake my salt-soaked thirst from its forever-flowing streams;

I want to trek its contours, every ridge and fold,

And appropriately marvel at the wonders I behold;

And then I’ll hoist my anchor and I’ll spread my sails

And set off to chart another one, whatever that entails.

I want to chart the scriptures as one charts a sea:

Though I’ll know them ever better, they’ll wrongfoot me constantly.

I want to learn the rhythms of their pulsing tide

And know at any point just where I am and what’s on every side.

I want to sift old wives’ tales from the true report:

How does what I’ve seen myself align with what I have been taught?

I want to feel my smallness when the waves rise high:

To explore is not to tame; it would be foolishness to try.

I want to come back changed from every voyage made,

What I’ve seen etched in my countenance, too awed to be afraid.

I want to tell these stories with my eyes aflame:

There are whole new worlds I’ve glimpsed and I want all to glimpse the same,

And though there’s no exhausting what might be explored,

May my soul be ever restless to explore it further, Lord.

Footnotes

¹ I found it pretty hilarious, to be honest: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Kings+22&version=ESVUK.

² The said conversation took place at Tyndale House, whence a new edition of the Greek New Testament has gone to press and will hit the shelves later this year: https://www.crossway.org/bibles/the-greek-new-testament-produced-at-tyndal-hconly/. It’s a specially good one not least because lots of manuscript evidence has been taken into account when determining things like spelling, diacritics, and paragraph divisions. Although you should probably know that I’m kind of biased in its favour on account of the fact that I did a microscopic smidgen of work on it last summer.

³ Go on, have a go: https://www.sporcle.com/games/Sforzando/bible_200. If you get all of them first try, I’ll buy you a Tyndale House Greek New Testament.