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The Bible Within the Bible

Some think that congregations should be more critical in selecting scripture readings. They insist upon creating a canon within the canon. But this bases the authority of the Bible not on the Bible itself, but on the Bible as read by a particular communit

By Bernhard W. Anderson

The practice of public reading from the Bible according to a lectionary, which goes back to the biblical periods of Judaism and Christianity, usually presupposes that in some sense God speaks today to a congregation through the literature they regard as sacred scripture.a However, a system of lectionary readings, even when extended over a three-year period or longer, does not include everything found in the Bible. How are the readings selected? This question has puzzled me as I have worked on a project to help preachers interpret the assigned texts for the day. Apparently the major principle of selectivity […]

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Footnotes

1.

In this column we resume the discussion begun previously in “Reading an Ancient Book in a Modern World,” BR 12:05.

Endnotes

1.

Among Latin American interpreters, see, for instance, J.S. Croatto, Exodus: A Hermeneutics of Freedom, trans. Salvator Attanasio (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981).

2.

J. Matthew Ashley, “The New Evangelization,” The Ecumenist 3:3 (July–September 1996), pp. 54f.

3.

Robert McAfee Brown, Theology in a New Key: Responding to Liberation Themes (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), pp. 88, 90. Quoted by Jon Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993). Levenson gives an incisive criticism of this theological interpretation in the chapter “Exodus and Liberation,” pp. 127–183.

4.

Among many books and articles that could be cited, special mention should be made of Phyllis Trible’s elegant and pathbreaking book God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978).

5.

See Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroads, 1994); also my column, “Moving Beyond Masculine Metaphors,” BR 10:05.

6.

Phyllis Trible, “Five Loaves and Two Fishes: Feminist Hermeneutics and Biblical Theology,” Theological Studies 50 (1989), pp. 279–295.

7.

Conversation with David Andrews, minister of the Congregational Church, Middlebury, Vermont.