Interestingly, yesterday was the feast of St. Jerome, patron saint of Scripture scholars; he translated the Bible into the Latin Vulgate, which was the gold standard for centuries.
So as a cradle Catholic, I've been shockingly ignorant of the actual content of the Bible. The Lectionary that we hear at Mass is, like, 3% of the content. And it's very selective and cherry-picked. So several years ago, our pastor was encouraging us to read the whole Gospel if we started hearing it at Mass, etc.
So if I'd hear a particular reading, I'd start by reading the entire chapter whence it came, and perhaps one chapter before it, to contextualize it more, because we're often dropped into the middle of a narrative, like "Jesus went away from there..." so I'm like: where???
There is a heresy called "Marcionism" that the OT and NT are separate and describe two unique Gods. We know better. All that vengeance and wrath and destruction and desolation of the OT and Revelation is integral to Jesus' mission at all, but it's implicit. It's unspoken and sub rosa until you pick up the threads and refer back to the typology in, e.g. Exodus, Numbers, Isaiah, Jeremiah.
And so the more I dig into it, the more cohesive it becomes. The more intertwined the stories are. None of them are told in isolation. No duplicated character-name is an accident or mere coincidence.
There is literary parallelism that will just bubble up to the surface once you know to recognize it. There are symbols and layers of typology, where you "never touch bottom" after diving into it.
The Bible says exactly what you think it does, and much much more. Here's the problem, though. If you haven't lived a Christian life with an authentic Christian community, Bible won't make sense in the slightest. If you've been an atheist, had a secular upbringing, it will never make sense to you, and it's sort of wasteful to even try, unless you do join a Christian community and live the life: full immersion and experience will explain those words on a page.
If you know your church and her history, then that Scripture will unfold like a flower and you'll understand exactly where you came from, who you are, and where you're going.
It doesn't take knowledge or concentration or anything we can humanly summon on our own. Pray for wisdom, seek Him earnestly, and you may be granted insight and understanding.
Moreover, it requires human interpretation. You need a person, a community around you, or you'll surely come to erroneous conclusions. The Bible is surely dangerous when isolated from that, which is why we've arrived at this point of fracture, with tens of thousands of "denominations".
Interestingly, yesterday was the feast of St. Jerome, patron saint of Scripture scholars; he translated the Bible into the Latin Vulgate, which was the gold standard for centuries.
So as a cradle Catholic, I've been shockingly ignorant of the actual content of the Bible. The Lectionary that we hear at Mass is, like, 3% of the content. And it's very selective and cherry-picked. So several years ago, our pastor was encouraging us to read the whole Gospel if we started hearing it at Mass, etc.
So if I'd hear a particular reading, I'd start by reading the entire chapter whence it came, and perhaps one chapter before it, to contextualize it more, because we're often dropped into the middle of a narrative, like "Jesus went away from there..." so I'm like: where???
There is a heresy called "Marcionism" that the OT and NT are separate and describe two unique Gods. We know better. All that vengeance and wrath and destruction and desolation of the OT and Revelation is integral to Jesus' mission at all, but it's implicit. It's unspoken and sub rosa until you pick up the threads and refer back to the typology in, e.g. Exodus, Numbers, Isaiah, Jeremiah.
And so the more I dig into it, the more cohesive it becomes. The more intertwined the stories are. None of them are told in isolation. No duplicated character-name is an accident or mere coincidence.
There is literary parallelism that will just bubble up to the surface once you know to recognize it. There are symbols and layers of typology, where you "never touch bottom" after diving into it.
The Bible says exactly what you think it does, and much much more. Here's the problem, though. If you haven't lived a Christian life with an authentic Christian community, Bible won't make sense in the slightest. If you've been an atheist, had a secular upbringing, it will never make sense to you, and it's sort of wasteful to even try, unless you do join a Christian community and live the life: full immersion and experience will explain those words on a page.
If you know your church and her history, then that Scripture will unfold like a flower and you'll understand exactly where you came from, who you are, and where you're going.
It doesn't take knowledge or concentration or anything we can humanly summon on our own. Pray for wisdom, seek Him earnestly, and you may be granted insight and understanding.
Moreover, it requires human interpretation. You need a person, a community around you, or you'll surely come to erroneous conclusions. The Bible is surely dangerous when isolated from that, which is why we've arrived at this point of fracture, with tens of thousands of "denominations".