Which is why I am bemused by this email (reproduced below) that has been doing the rounds for a few years now (apologies if you're one of the people that forwarded it to me!)
Ever wonder what would happen if we treated our Bible like we treat our cell phone?
What if we carried it around in our purse or pocket?
What if we flipped through it several times a day?
What if we turned back to go get it if we forgot it?
What if we used it to receive messages from the text?
What if we treated it like we couldn’t live without it?
What if we gave it to kids as gifts?
What if we used it when we traveled?
What if we used it in case of emergency?
This is something to make you go . . . Hmm, where is my Bible?
Oh, and one more thing. Unlike our cell phone, we don’t have to worry about our Bible being disconnected because Jesus already paid the bill.
Makes you stop and think, where are my priorities?
And no dropped calls!
I'm not arguing with the sentiment expressed, but the author didn't seem to understand that the Bible is a text, not a book. (Not a 160 character SMS but) a library of writings that can be compressed to about a million bytes of information. Which is actually not much by today's standards (a compressed music track takes 4 or 5 times that, and a modern phone can hold thousands of those.)
Jesus read from a scroll at the beginning of his ministry. A few hundred years later the codex, or book as we know it, replaced the scroll as the most common form of data storage. And the transition to the book was largely driven by the rise of Christianity. The need to transport the received scriptures around the rapidly expanding early church fuelled the development of the technology known as a "book".
People tell me they'd rather have "a proper book" in their hands than be looking at a screen of some kind. I'm sure "books" will be around for many years yet. Perhaps it will take hundreds of years like it did for the scroll to die out. But the codex has been superseded by better technology.
Which brings me to another email which did the rounds. I think this is a bit sad, too. However, as It seems to bring pleasure to Luddites everywhere, you can have a read of it by following this link. It's just a little bit ironic that this was circulated electronically. But I'm told some people actually print out their emails! Now that I find hard to believe!
Luke 4:16-21 (ESV)
16 Then Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath he went as usual to the synagogue. He stood up to read the Scriptures 17 and was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written, 18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed 19 and announce that the time has come when the Lord will save his people." 20 Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. All the people in the synagogue had their eyes fixed on him, 21 as he said to them, "This passage of scripture has come true today, as you heard it being read."
Location:Shed
I wonder if 'proper books' were perceived in a similar way when first introduced as 'e-books' are at this moment in time? It is still early days for e-books but the more I use them the more I see the greater benefit in them over proper books. I am slowly being converted. On another note, visually it may not have been as exciting to see Jesus reading scriptures or Moses reading the Ten Commandments from an iPad but I am sure it would have been easier to carry around.
ReplyDeleteThe historical fact is that the Church did not encourage people to read prior to the Reformation. Indeed, many local priests could not read either, but would know the words of the Mass by heart. Printing was viewed with suspision by the Church as it would give the people power. In the same way today that there are still some priests (I could name them) in the Anglican Church who do not want the laity to read theology and who would like a return to the days of the uneducated and therfore obedient laity. As for Jesus being able to read - if he was (as we are led to believe) a carpenter would he be able to read? I am not sure that people of the lower classes at the time of Jesus would be able to read and therfore the story of Jesus reading might be yet another example of redaction by the Early Church. Then again, I am a member of the uneducated laity and bow to the greater knowledge of the clergy!
ReplyDeleteI don't think the church was particularly anti-reading; it's just that society then didn't need many readers! The church was instrumental in providing education, albeit to small numbers. Just look at the history of Oxford University for example, and that was several centuries before the Reformation. In later centuries th church has always been involved in bringing education to more and more people - that's why there are so many church schools nowadays that people want their children to attend.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there probably was a clerical exclusivism that tried to preserve the privileged position of priests - that's a good deal of what the Reformation was about. And it was fuelled, enabled by the ability to get the Bible and the writings of Luther et al. out as widely as possible.
I don't know any of those Anglican priests you mention - please feel free to name names!
As far as I remember, without looking it up, Jesus would have had the same excellent education of most Jewish boys of the time. Primary education involved writing and reading the Torah. Secondary education moved on to the Prophets and Writings. Tertiary involved hooking up with a local rabbi (something like a PhD supervisor, but much more emphasis on doing as well as learning). Numbers dropped off at each stage, depending on ability, but as I understand it pretty much everyone got as far as the first stage. And since Jesus himself became a rabbi with his own followers, it's possible he stuck with school all the way through!
Carpenters (stonemasons, builders) today can usually read and write just fine!
Thankfully, religion does have the power to cross 'class' boundaries.
http://www.emisoraslatinas.net/en/interview.php?id=110016 I know this might be a little tongue (not in the charismatic sense) in the proverbial, but it seems that Jesus could read Hebrew. I am not sure that he was educated to PHD level . Like Anonymous above, I have also experienced the negative attitude of clergy toward educated lay people. I have a first degree and a masters degree in theology and am currently working on a PHD, my former vicar and his curate (not far from your own church)took a very dim view of this and I got the distinct impression that they were both of the opinion that lay people should leave the deep thinking to the clergy! Wouldn't it be good if the local church could be a place where questioning, debate and learning could take place? Sadly, many churches are places where milk rather than meat is served up and people are treated like sheep.
ReplyDeleteThat website is interesting if a little odd. It's difficult to prove much about Jesus' education - but he certainly impressed people when he was 12.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry if you've been given the impression that the church is a place where you can't question, debate or learn. I've certainly done all those on a regular basis. It is always difficult to know where to pitch a sermon for example - there are always people present in need of milk, and others who need meat. I try to thrown in a bit of both, but that's never easy.
I would encourage people to learn more, although I do think a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I've known people scratch the surface of biblical criticism, for instance, and decide that therefore religion is a pack of lies! I believe that going deeper, in the company of wise scholars, God is still there after any number of questions. I'm certainly not accusing you of this, but it's all too easy nowadays to find someone on the internet to agree with any half-baked theory that comes from a cursory engagement with theology. So the role of clergy has always been to provide a corrective and a justification of orthodoxy.