Is the bible a book? Perhaps the answer depends on who is being asked. Tevye, a stout Jewish father in the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” called the “the Good Book,” although he was referring just to the Tanakh, and he did habitually attribute his own enigmatic axioms to the wise authors of said book. (No Christians I know could ever be accused of such behavior…ahem.) On the other hand, James E. Bowley, referring to the same collection of Hebrew scriptures, makes his opposing opinion quite clear in his newly released Introduction to Hebrew Bible: A Guided Tour of
One may ask, at this point, what kind of book we are referring to. No one would contest, to be sure, that the Bible is a “set of written, printed, or blank pages fastened along one side and encased between protective covers.” Nor is it a stretch to say definitively that the Bible is a “printed or written literary work,” or even that it is “regarded as a source of knowledge or understanding.” The real contention, the one that the esteemed Mr. Bowley is addressing, is whether the Bible composes a cohesive narrative or simply a collection of historical, literary, and moral documents. As noted before, Bowley is referring to the Hebrew scriptures, and to discuss whether or not those form a narrative is a topic for another day and another paper. For the sake of this discussion, we’ll pretend he was referring to the Christian bible, both Old and New Testaments, an assumption which will make this paper a much more lively and applicable endeavor.
Actually, the only Bible I know of that truly fits Bowley’s description is the one I have in my kitchen: the Pie and Pastry Bible. This massive volume contains recipes for every pastry delight known to Western Civilization, each of which contain more calories than a Jewish bagel shop. This “bible” was compiled by a renowned chef, Rose Levy Beranbaum, and according to followers of her confectionary cult, “The Pie and Pastry Bible is not just a bible. It's a textbook. An encyclopedia. She not only tells you what to do, but why you should do it. It requires concentration and careful reading. But if you follow her instructions, I promise that you'll bake some marvelous creations, as well as overcome many of the obstacles that home bakers face.”
From the titles, it’s relatively simple to see the difference between the Pie and Pastry Bible and the Holy Bible: one is intended for cooking, and one for establishing religious narrative. Once they are opened and used, however, it can become tricky to tell which is intended for which purpose. If both are viewed as collections of relevant material, as Bowley would prefer, then these bibles look remarkably similar – Unified compilations, divided into thematically linked sub-books of groups that contain individual recipes for “marvelous creations” and ways to “overcome many obstacles.” Pick any section you like - skip around even! Just throw in the required ingredients, and the result is a feel-good crowd pleaser. If by chance it doesn’t please the crowd, simply throw that recipe out and move on to the next one!
It seems clear to me that reading the Holy Bible like a cookbook, as the “basic instructions before leaving earth,” is as backward as reading the Pie and Pastry Bible as the foundation for a religious narrative. Unmistakably, there are major differences between the two, the most pivotal of which is the fact that while the Pie and Pastry Bible does not (and should not) have a plot, the Holy Bible very much does have, and ought to be read in light of, an overarching and underpinning fabula of the interactions between the Creator and Creation.
There are two ways to re-view the Bible, or better, two perspectives, both of which are essential to understanding its complete structure. An accurate understanding of Scripture emerges from an understanding of its deep structure – the progression of the story of creation to the redemption of creation to the perfection of creation. Such an understanding can only be gained, however, in carefully taking in the Bible’s surface structure: interwoven stories of nations and churches and individuals, multi-narratives complete with foreshadowing, irony, symbolism, allegory, and metaphor, literary elements no good story is without. These elements are the source of the Bible’s deep structure. They help us understand that the Bible is a story – plot emerges, and conflict, and tension.
Thus, we see that the Bible is indeed a book – a story that opens with a poetic hymn of creation, and closes with a similarly artistic rendering of the culmination of creation. A visiting lecturer to Point Loma’s campus once highlighted the Christian paradox of being “caught between the already and the not yet.” We have our beginning, and we have our ending. Our burden is finding the way to get from one to the other, deciding what to do with the chapters that have already been written, and those that are still germinating.
The truth is, we Christians are in an ironic pickle – we are characters in story whose ending has been written before the story itself is finished, and I think it’s fair to say this sometimes leaves us with a vague feeling of disappointment at having spoiled our own ending. Furthermore, most of what we know about the eschaton is found in a nicely imaginative but irritatingly frivolous apocalyptic vision in the last chapter of the bible. We don’t know exactly how it’s getting here, when, or what it will look like when it comes – I myself make no concrete claims about the coming kingdom except that it’s coming! Thankfully, the content of the plot from now to the Apocalypse promises to be tremendously exciting if it is anything like the previous chapters, plus we have a host of already written stories that still need to be re-told and re-examined if we are to have any hope of learning from our mistakes and being faithful in the events to come.
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