Category: Bible and Mission

What’s the point in a missional reading of the Bible if you can’t read the Bible?

In his Encounters response Chris Wright’s Bible and Mission lecture, Eddie Arthur (Executive Director of Wycliffe UK) has written a brief but powerful article that for me opened up the discussion in surprising and sobering ways.

there is a fundamental assumption in the lecture that people are able to read what Jeremiah wrote. Sadly, for a variety of reasons, many people quite simply do not have access to Jeremiah…

In a language with the economic capacity of English we have numerous translations of the whole Bible available. For many minority languages, it is often the case that only a selection from the Bible is printed or published. Perhaps a Gospel, or a whole New Testament, maybe with the Psalms or a selection of Old Testament stories. In truth, Jeremiah is likely to be way down the list of things that are published. Does the missional hermeneutic stress on the overarching narrative of the Bible give us any insight into how we should go about making the Scriptures available? Should we perhaps consider concentrating resources so as to translate the whole Bible for one group rather than making selections available to a number of groups? Or could a missional hermeneutic guide us in making more principled decisions about which passages should be seen as essential? On the pages of a mission magazine this might seem a sterile question, but in a world where 200 million people do not have the Scriptures in their own language, some hard choices need to be made and we need a good hermeneutical and theological basis upon which to make them.

At my home group tonight we had four different Bible translations between five people. I am very grateful for the different translations available to us in English; they often help to bring out different facets of the text, or at least facilitate different ways of reading the Bible (study, public reading, devotional, etc.). But it is embarassing, if not outrageous, that we in the West have so many versions, while vast numbers of people cannot read a single word of Scripture in their own langauge.

You can read the whole of Eddie’s article by following this link to the June 2009 edition of Encounters Mission Ezine: Issue 29 – The Bible and Mission

Here in the UK we are currently embroiled in a succession of stories about the expenses our Members of Parliament have been claiming, which were recently made public. It puts me in mind of another review of a political leader’s expenditure set out by an Old Testament writer.

The popular view of King Solomon is that he was a good king who went bad later on in his reign. But the biblical account of his life, in the book of Kings at least, drops a number of hints to suggest a measure of ambiguity throughout his life. One aspect of this was his expenditure.

The people of Israel had been warned what might happen if they ever demanded a human king:

16 The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” 17 He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. (Deut. 17:16-17, ESV)

 10 Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.” (1 Sam. 8:10-18, ESV)

Fast-forward to Solomon’s reign where, among other things, he redraws tribal boundaries for tax purposes (1 Kgs. 4:1-19), conscripts forced labour for his building projects (5:13-18), spends twice as much time on his own house than he does on the Temple (6:38-7:1), and even imports horses from Egypt (10:28; cf. Deut. 17:16!).

Even the accounts of the opulance of his buldings and lifestyle seem to turn the reader from wonder, to hesitancy, to suspicion. Was the writer of Kings over-praising Solomon to make a point? Is there in fact a drip-drip-dripping of irony throughout the narrative that asks whether this was quite the golden age we thought it was?

Now of course the situations in Ancient Israel and contemporary Britain are completely different. But this at least reminds us that we should pay careful attention to what those in power do with their power, and not least with the public purse.