What Do We Do with the Bible?
Many Voices; One Text
Monday, January 26, 2026
Authors Jennifer Garcia Bashaw and Aaron Higashi highlight that the Bible includes stories from many voices across different times and cultures:
When considering the Bible, it’s important to keep in mind that it is a multivocal text. To be multivocal simply means that something is composed of many different voices or perspectives. The books that make up the Bible, and the texts that were edited together to make up the books of the Bible, were written in different times, in different places, by different people, in different genres, with different theologies. These differences are easy to recognize when you know to look for them. The voice of a tenth-century BCE court history, for instance, is different from the voice of a sixth-century BCE piece of wisdom literature, which is also different from the voice of a late first-century CE gospel. Just as a quilt is made of many different sections, or an anthology is made of many different essays, the Bible is a collection of independent things. [1]
Spiritual writer Carl McColman describes how recognizing multiple voices in the Bible allows us to center those voices that communicate God’s love, mercy, and justice:
A mystical reading of the Bible sees it as a conversation with many voices chiming in. Unfortunately, some of those voices are racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, or comfortable with the authoritarian exercise of power. But other voices also present in the Bible seek to challenge all of the above, promoting a world where privilege is dismantled, nonviolence is an ethical mandate, and compassion is the guiding principle for both individual behavior and social norms. Learning to read the Bible like a mystic includes learning to recognize all those different voices and discern which ones primarily function as “bad” examples and which ones are truly there to inspire us and draw us closer to God. When we read the Bible to connect with those compassionate and just voices, it is not only the Bible that is saved, but we ourselves also become more whole. [2]
Reading Bible like a mystic allows us to enter into transformative reading:
If you long for a deeper, more mystical relationship with the unnameable mystery we call God, then read the Bible like a mystic: like someone whose life has been illuminated and transformed by immersion in the very heart of divine love. Read from the heart of compassionate love, not from fear or any anxious need to please, placate, or control.
If you want to have a meaningful relationship with the wisdom teachings of Jesus, especially to have those teachings liberated from all the ways that institutional religious Christianity has distorted, misunderstood, or weaponized those teachings in the service of power and authority, then read the Bible like a mystic, for a mystical reading of Scripture can be a way for you to reconnect with the uncreated light that shines at the heart of those ancient words of wisdom and love. [3]
No comments:
Post a Comment