The Bible is a record. A recording of the historical experiences of individuals with each other, with their environment in relation to the God they knew. The Bible is a record of what they saw, what they went through, what they knew and how they perceived it (1John 1:1-3).
People in ancient days long before there were a people known as Israelites or even Jews, had encounters with the Being we know as God today.
This ‘Being’ revealed Himself in various ways and these included Nature, gods, culture, language, etc. These encounters and experiences between this Being and the people of then became the talk of their time and later the tales of their experiences.
What we have as the Bible today is a documentation and in some of its parts a transcription of these conversations of the then people about their encounters and experiences. It is from such experiences that we have what is known as Oral Tradition.
Oral Tradition
What we have in the ink and paper of the Bible books is what originally was shared in individual, family and community conversations.
These conversations have been passed on from one generation to another and the details of these talks are ignored but the principle messages have been upheld from one generation to another.
This is what we call the Oral Tradition. Here is how Mustafa Umar explains what Oral Tradition is:
“Oral tradition is a story, tradition or practice that is shared orally or through speech- usually handed down from generation to generation.
Oral tradition is usually eventually written down, but can tell us so much about the society and the people who originated them and allowed history to be kept and shared by groups who do or did not have writing.”
“Fadeiye (2004) described oral tradition to include myths and legends which throw light on origin of communities- their social, economic and political institutions, their taboo, totems, social concepts and practices.”
People of my age do remember the stories that were told to us by our parents and grandparents. These stories that were told to us as children were intended to communicate to us values of life, morals and meaning.
What we were told, we were told not just to abide by it but to also keep it and pass it to the next generation. It is from this very culture that the stories and experiences shared in what we know as the Bible are born.
The stories told by our parents do not necessarily have to be true or false, real or unreal, the plot (intention) of these stories is the agenda of these stories.
As you read the Bible you have to contemplate on the art of Oral Tradition and how it works. For instance, in our cultures there was a tradition that if a young child sat on a stone of the Kitchen Hearth, that child would end-up unmarried.
The Oral tradition emphasized the value of Marriage yes, but the intention was protect kids from Kitchen accidents. It is a tradition about risk management.
When the word of God says the woman was taken from the rib of a man, the message is not that a woman is a by-product of man but rather that physically weak must be under the love and protection of those who are physically stronger and it doesn’t have to be a gender agenda always.
This is what Oral Tradition is about. It is not just a recounting of History orally but a historiography of a history.
A literature Piece
The Bible is a literature piece and it is important that those who study it, treat it as a literature work. Scholars agree that the Bible remains a cornerstone of many literature works.
It has also been instrumental in the development and structure of Western history and philosophy, art and ethics.
From Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Old Testament) to the cataclysmic apocalypse of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, you will be face to face with key stories, characters, plots and all literature ideas in the Bible.
Literature themes like sibling, tribes and country rivalries, community significant characters like prophets and kings, the principal character of God, divine punishment, the problem of evil, gender and sexuality, God’s chosen people, violence human and divine, contesting worship and divine perception concepts like monotheism and polytheism, human beginnings and the end of all things.
Holding the Bible as a book one will always see Bible’s many genres as we learn its stories and literary techniques.
As we read and attempt an interpretation we shall learn also to listen to its silences and appreciate the gaps as they are without filling them.
As you read the Bible therefore it matters that we do an honest literally analysis. Because the Bible is a literature work, it is important that Bible readers apply literature engines to it as they attempt to understand it.
A literature teacher and student are likely to benefit from the study of the word of God more than others and a trained Christian theologian is essential in guiding meaning all readers draw from the same.
As Scripture
Now that I have asserted that the Bible is a record of the encounters and experiences of both ancient People, it matters that we investigate how scriptural the Bible is. When we read this record, how do we decipher the intended revelation of this God from the perceptions of the first recipients of this revelation?
The question of what is scripture is the best question that can lead us to understanding what this library we know as the Bible is all about. In the Bible there are two elements that a few of us actually notice.
The first is the text. When you mention a text to a theologian like myself there are connotations that o way beyond what i intend here and so it is if you mentioned the same to a literature expert or student. What I mean by Biblical text however, is the words and wording in the Bible.
The text in the Bible are the words as they are recorded and written in there. The Biblical text is useful to anyone with a divine or mystical conviction or not.
The text is used everywhere and in various disciplines.
A Biblical scholar is not necessarily a believer in God and there are many people with the knowledge of the Biblical text but totally ignorant of who God is regardless of the fact that he-God is the message of the text. The second element in the bible is Scripture.
Scripture is or actually ought to be the meaning or even the content of the text in the Bible. When you are reading the Biblical text, it is not necessarily true that you are reading scripture. There is a difference between reading the Biblical text and reading Biblical scripture.
Scripture is the inerrant, sufficient and authoritative God’s self-revelation through the text but not limited to the text.
There is scripture in the text but scripture in the Biblical text introduces us to other scripture (God’s self-revelation) elsewhere (nature, experiences, other professions/disciplines) and that-scripture in the Biblical text operates as a canon to all other scripture (God’s self-revelation).
Unlike the Biblical Text, Scriptures may be used to evoke a deeper connection with the divine, convey spiritual truths, promote mystical experience, foster communal identity, and to guide individual and communal spiritual practice.
No text is a scripture in itself and as such. The common error is that People—a given community—turn a text into scripture or actually fail to distinguish between a text and scripture or in many incidences equate a text to scripture.
The mistake is not born in the text itself but how we treat a certain text determines whether it remains naturally a text or eventually turns into scripture. This is the need of a proper Biblical trained and anointed by the Spirit of God Bible teacher.
Bible readers must understand that both text and scripture are contents of the library known as the Bible. The text however, is the vehicle and container of scripture.
We can only access scripture through or by the text and the quality of the scripture we appreciate depends on how we have handled the text. Matter of fact is that, the text is a human activity around the divine activity known as scripture.
The text of the Bible is not inerrant (without error), it is the scripture of the text in the Bible that is inerrant.
We have an entire discipline of study known as Theology because the text (Vehicle of scripture) of the Bible is not inerrant so that the inerrant scripture (word of God) can access its target audience in its objectivity at least in meaning.
The Biblical text therefore, is not the word of God but the vehicle of the word of God and it is the word of God that is inerrant.
Scripture is the communication of God to men through the words (text) of men.
God bless you, I invoke Truth, Wisdom and Faith
Priest M.I.T White
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)
Questioning to Believe, Believing to Live
iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24) 