Herman Melville tells of the adventure of Redburn, a young man who arrived the city of Liverpool, long after his father emigrated across the Atlantic. He had returned with a map of the city handed to him by his father, but there was a problem – the buildings, streets and landmarks his father, Melville, used to know no longer existed – making it almost impossible to map the ancient city onto the modern landscape with complete accuracy. Redburn found that his guidebook was years out of date and had therefore become useless.
Not so the Bible! Its inspired words constitute a message that transcends geographical location and time. This therefore rules out the possibility of it becoming obsolete or irrelevant. And so we do not erroneously imitate Redburn’s sidestepping of his map, rather, we humbly acknowledge a connection between the ancient world and the modern.
As such, what we require are tools that help us translate Biblical principles and content into our present day, all within the context of God’s overarching purpose. So for example, a bible reader would mentally travel back in space and time to examine the significance of a passage to its original audience, before applying the resulting principle to their present day reality.
Bridging the gap
The process of moving from an original context to a modern one is often referred to as ‘bridging the gap’. Considering that the events recorded in the Bible are so far removed from us, there are a number of gaps to bridge – language, location, culture, and history.
Attempting to read the Bible without paying attention to these gaps may at best be confusing; and dangerously misleading at worst. As a young believer, I remember not being able to get my head round why God’s chosen people were referred to as Israel in one verse, and Judah in the next! As you would imagine, there was no way I would ever get to the bottom of that as long as I stuck to my bite-size approach to Bible reading.
Truth be told – no one encounters the Bible in a vacuum, we all have frameworks that have mostly been shaped by our background, culture, tradition, etc. Our task therefore is to seek to develop a healthy framework that helps us faithfully engage with biblical texts, reducing personal biases to the minimum, so that the truth of God’s word may transform our lives.
Surely, there’s treasure to be found in the Bible, but in order to discover it, we’ve got to be digging with the right tools! More to come on this, do stay tuned.
Thanks for reading!
Sike Osinuga