The Bible is like a newspaper in many ways:
- Generally speaking, the reading of newspapers is in decline—many people today prefer to get their information from the internet rather than read a newspaper.
- Newspapers are printed on their own particular kind of paper, and have their own distinctive layout.
- Oppressive regimes tend to tightly control the distribution of newspapers.
- There was a time when people read the newspaper daily, but these days those people who do open a newspaper tend only to do so on the weekends.
- Purveyors of newspapers use increasingly bizarre marketing gimmicks to try to get people to buy them.
Each of these statements can easily be applied to the Bible. You can probably think of others. And you can also probably think of numerous ways in which the Bible is not like a newspaper (e.g. it’s not that good for wrapping fish-heads in). But I want to focus on three quite serious ways in which comparing the Bible to a newspaper helps us.
1. Like a newspaper, the Bible is read—not interpreted. No-one would ever talk about ‘interpreting’ a news story, or an opinion piece, or a letter to the editor. You just read them, using the normal skills of reading. That is, you notice what sort of thing you’re reading (a front-page news story, an in-depth feature article, a travel piece, an editorial), and mentally adjust your expectations accordingly. You start at the beginning and read through to the end. Along the way, you notice the main points the author is making, and you start to form a judgement about what is being said. If the argument is complex or contains ideas you’re not familiar with, you might read it again. After you’ve read the piece, you ponder how it relates to other news about the same subject (e.g. on television). And you file away what you’ve learned in your brain for possible future action (which might be anything from “Well, I certainly won’t vote for him at the next election” to “I’d better take an umbrella to work today”).
We read the Bible using the same skills and approaches—except that the Bible is not trivial and ephemeral (like most newspaper stories). It is of profound and eternal importance, and so we read it more carefully, more thoroughly, and with great attentiveness.
2. Like a newspaper, the Bible is an interpretation of reality. Newspaper reporters pretend to be objective, like transparent ‘windows on the world’ that simply show you what is happening. But of course they are not. In the selection of which events to write about, the assumptions and biases the reporter brings to the story, and the choice of headlines and photographs, the newspaper article explains not just what happened but also the meaning and significance of what happened. This is what ‘interpretation’ means, and this is what newspaper reporters do all the time, even though they pretend not to and even though we are often unaware that they are doing so.
The Bible, likewise, is an interpretation of the world—an explanation of the nature of things, of what the really significant events and ideas are, and what they mean. Like a newspaper, the Bible shapes our understanding of reality, with the ‘minor’ difference that it does so truly and infallibly because its author is the God who made the world.
3. Like a newspaper, the Bible can set the daily agenda. Newspaper reading might be in decline in general, but the major daily papers still set the agenda for discussion in our society. They are avidly read not only by the politicians and opinion-shapers, but also by all the other sections of the media; what is in the newspaper in the morning shapes the media conversation for the rest of the day.
Because the Bible interprets reality for us, it should also shape our daily agenda. This is why reading the Bible every morning is such a wise and fruitful habit. It’s not because we get a little nugget of teaching that tells us ‘what we must do today’—as if every time we read the Bible we must come away with an item to put on our spiritual to-do list. It’s because every time we read the Bible and drink in its explanation of who God is, who we are, what the world is like and what our future holds, our minds are transformed and re-oriented towards the truth. We are taught and reminded that God is God, that we are his people, and that Jesus is king over all.
Christians are in the news business—the good news business, that is. Let’s open our Bibles every day, and read all about it.
Thanks Tony.
I agree with your basic premise here. Although thinking of the bible as only printed on paper is missing a huge audience that has embraced reading God’s Word online. And many people use the internet as their primary means of reading the news (and have done for some time).
My point is that in addition to using the Bible to set our daily agenda we also need to meditate on the Word day and night because, like an online newspaper, the agenda changes throughout the day.
Thanks Tony,
I wonder if there’s also a comparison to the way that we (my generation?) choose the parts of the paper that we like to read (like the sports section), or even the news sources we like. Easier to do online.
And we do the same with the Bible don’t we. We read our favourite bits.
But maybe there’s something important to being guided to what we hear and learn and think about, rather than choosing for ourselves?
Tony, what a great article. Thanks. I have just one small quibble, if I may. You wrote: <cite>Because the Bible interprets reality for us, it should also shape our daily agenda. This is why reading the Bible every morning is such a wise and fruitful habit.(cite>
Every morning? Why not every evening or at different times of the day depending on when we can read it carefully and take it in, so to speak.
You put this to as as something that is helpful, not mandated, but I just want to be sure that we don’t turn the important principle of regular Bible reading and prayer into rules about times or even ‘the best times for the most godly.’
Thanks again for your article.
Interesting Mike. Hadn’t thought of that connection. Do not linger too long in the comics, but go to the obituaries and be wise.
I guess it also relates to what Scott Newling is saying in his recent Briefing article about devoting ourselves to the public reading of Scripture.
Phillip, yes—evening and morning and noon and all times in between!
TP
It is a mistake to suggest that we are not interpreting the Bible when we read it. In the course of an argument with another Christian over the interpretation of Genesis 1, I was informed, “Oh, you’re interpreting the Bible. I just read it.” My interlocutor, of course, was merely interpreting the text in a different way, but it was a lovely little put-down, wasn’t it?
And of course when we read Scripture, the Holy Spirit interprets it to us. I don’t believe he’s acting in the same way when I read the paper!
Funny. Before reading this I wrote something from a similar perspective about how books of the Bible are like a Media Release
Hi Tony,
I think your point (1) requires some significant qualification. For one, whether we talk about “interpreting” a newspaper or not, on some definitions of the term that is exactly what we do. If, by “interpret” we refer to the process of taking words from the page and deriving meaning from them, then we do interpret the newspaper. We use a whole gamut of skills we’ve learned (some of which you’ve mentioned) in order to achieve this. And we can still be accused of misinterpreting things we read, even from newspapers.
And while I agree that much of the Bible can be read like the newspaper — its meaning is relatively easy to derive by reasonably astute readers — it is a mistake to adopt this as an a-priori assumption about how the Bible can be read. There are passages where this approach results in misinterpretation. When reading a newspaper we employ skills we’ve learned and we access tacit information we’ve acquired in order to understand the text. But what if it were written with the expectation that the reader had different tacit knowledge and different skills? Then a “plain reading” is going to be a wrong reading.
Hi Ellen and Martin
I may be wrong, but are you both assuming that my post is part of a ‘plain reading’ agenda of some kind?
It’s not at all. I understand the frustration of having a discussion about the text and what it means closed off by the injunction of the ‘plain reading’ gambit. (Mind you, there are times when I can sympathize with the call for ‘plain reading’—such as when some really elaborate exegetical gymnastics is being done to avoid the straightforward import of a text. But even then I would say that it’s a case of a ‘better reading’ rather than a ‘plain reading’.)
I’m curious, Martin. Why go for the word ‘interpret’ to describe “the process of taking words from the page and deriving meaning from them”? I thought that was what we usually called ‘reading’. Isn’t it what you are doing right now?
My point was that this process is the same thing we do IN PRINCIPLE, whether we are dealing with a Bible or a newspaper. The Bible is not a different kind of thing. It’s a piece of text, which is to be read. (Or are you saying it is a different kind of thing? Or just a text that is more strange to us at points and requires more careful reading?)
Let me put it this way. If the newspaper in question was from the turn of the century, and referred to events we weren’t familiar with and even used words and locutions that were a bit strange to us, would you say that our task was to interpret this newspaper, or read it?
Now what if the paper was another hundred years old, and was actually a German newspaper which we needed to get translated before we could ‘read’ it. Wouldn’t it still simply be reading? Harder reading no doubt; and requiring a bit more background info, and sensitivity to the fact that the context was somewhat foreign to our own. But still reading.
I could go on, but maybe it would be better to give you a chance to clarify. My question to you is: What is it about the Bible, in principle, that makes it the subject of interpretation rather than reading?
(Thanks by the way for raising this—a discussion worth having.)
TP
Hi Tony,
To answer first with a question, how is what you’re doing now not interpreting? How do you see ‘interpreting’ as different to what you do when you read? ‘Reading’ can just refer to looking at the sequence of words without making any attempt to understand them (I can read a script, for example, without taking anything in).
My dictionary offers a meaning of ‘interpret’ as “explain the meaning of (information, words, or actions).” This offers a more precise explanation of the process than ‘reading’ by highlighting the derivation of meaning. It highlights what is actually happening when we read anything — we derive meaning from the text based on various strategies and methodologies we’ve learned. When we ‘read’ a newspaper we mostly do this without giving it a second thought.
As such there is significant semantic overlap in the terms. However, ‘interpret’ focuses on the derivation of meaning and so highlights the processes involved. And because of the way we ‘read’ a newspaper (largely without thinking about the processes), I think it important to highlight the fact that we do, nonetheless, do something to derive meaning from the newspaper. The problem lies in the fact that we can usually read a newspaper without needing to think hard about how we extract meaning from the text. There is a danger in approaching the Bible this way — because it is a translation of an ancient text from a social, linguistic, and cultural world removed from our own, a translation which, in some places, has been domesticated precisely so we can read it without adequately recognising this distance.
As an example, consider the way modern English translations render the word רקיע (rāqîʿ) in Gen 1:6 as something like “expanse.” This is a choice which allows modern readers to read the text without the challenging task of dealing with the very different cosmology of the original text simply because it can easily be made to fit with our cosmology. (To see more on this, read my translation of Genesis 1 with notes, introduction, Gen 1:1–8, Gen 1:9–19, and Gen 1:20–2:3).
My point is that if we do approach reading the Bible in the same way as we approach reading the daily newspaper we’re going to apply the reading strategies we’ve learned for contemporary English texts to a text that, in some places, is masquerading as a contemporary English text (despite — or perhaps because of — the best efforst of the translators). If we can make sense of it as it stands without questioning our reading strategies then we’re unlikely to ask questions about the appropriateness of the meaning we derive and, in a few places, misinterpret the author’s intention.
Hi Martin
Thanks for the reply.
I guess we could trade dictionary definitions at this point. Most of the ones I’ve looked at for “read” include the idea of comprehending or understanding the meaning of something that is expressed in words or symbols. Mind you, we also use “read” for non-literary comprehension (e.g. “reading someone’s face”). And the word “interpret” is liberally used in the definitions (e.g. “read: to look at and comprehend the meaning of printed or written matter by mentally interpreting the characters or symbols of which it is composed”).
So the words are clearly close and overlapping in meaning.
I rather suspect that we are each trying to protect or emphasize something by our word preferences. You seem to be wanting to avoid a kind of simplistic instant-understanding model, whereby one has only to scan the words on the page and we should pretty much know what it means straight away. Your point is that whereas that might happen with a story from yesterday’s newspaper, it might not be so straightforward with an ancient text originally written in a foreign language and context. We may need to be more conscious of what we are doing, and work a bit harder. I entirely agree. (I would just describe it as needing to read more carefully and thoughtfully.)
For my part, I am trying to avoid the idea that the Bible is like a cipher or a riddle, requiring each of us to arrive at our own ‘interpretation’. The Bible is not an event or an experience, which needs to be interpreted. It is a text, the meaning of which is available via the various skills, methods and strategies which in normal life we call ‘reading’. I’m trying to avoid putting the Bible in a different category so that it becomes this impenetrable thing that has to be ‘interpreted’ (leading to a competition between your interpretation, my interpretation and Uncle Fred’s interpretation, not to mention the interpretation of the Roman Catholic Church).
Rather, the Bible is the clarity—it is the message which interprets otherwise the impenetrable cipher of life and reality to us.
You OK with that?
Tony
Hi Tony,
I agree! I would argue that the Bible, like a newspaper article, was written to convey a specific message. For me, “interpretation” is the means by which we discover that message (for both the Bible and the newspaper).
However, I do, as you observe, want to avoid giving the impression that understanding it is always as simple as reading a newspaper (although in many places it is). Indeed, in some instances, reading it as though it were a newspaper can lead to misreading! I’ve encountered too many arguments founded on a supposed “plain reading” of the Bible which wind up being no more than excuses to impose on the Bible the reader’s own perspective.
So, in the end, I think we agree but are emphasising different things!
“Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!” (Ps 133:1)
And in blog comment threads it is almost a miracle!
Many thanks Martin.
@Tony and @Martin – thank you for your godly conduct during this discussion!
This article (or me finally getting around to reading it) is timely for me as I am studying the Preliminary Theological Certificate at Moore College at the moment, and reassessing my assumptions of how to read the Bible and what it means.
Thanks for a stimulating article and subsequent discussion.