NIVAC highlights Part 1

This is a great example of what a pricey commentary can do, shift your focus on only what you are to believe in a theological and doctrinal way and get at the text itself how to approach the text without the modern stuff filtered through to interpreting it. ... I know i just said in previous post i'd stop talking about commentaries, but it would be a disservice to my learning progress to not do this, which will help me internalize the learning, and if anyone wants to put in their 2 cents you're more than welcome!!

"we can often identify the questions the text addresses by familiarizing ourselves with ancient literature rather than by letting our culture dictate what questions the text addresses or how it answers questions." ... "we cannot feel free to try to transform “in the beginning” into either a scientific statement or a theological treatise. It is not a covert reference to the Big Bang any more than it is proof of creatio ex nihilo. If interpreters are free to transform text, text is stripped of its ability to transform lives." (from "NIVAC Bundle 1: Pentateuch (The NIV Application Commentary)" by John H. Walton, Roy Gane, Daniel I. Block)

NIVAC stands for the NIV Application Commentary based on the New International Version translation.

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SW-User

I agree with this commentary up to a point. It is a clear and useful statement of how one particular approach to studying the Bible should work. In Jewish tradition the essence of this approach has been around since the Middle Ages, and it is known as פשט peshat, which could be translated as "stripping away" all the later assumptions and prejudices that we tend to bring to a text. The goal is to establish the simple and original meaning, as much as we are capable of doing (while always admitting that our understanding is imperfect).

But Jewish tradition also respects מדרש midrash, "seeking out", which is almost the exact opposite -- reading the Bible with creative imagination, and looking for every possible way to make it meaningful to ourselves in the time we live in, not the time it was written down in.

There is a tension between peshat and midrash but both are important and needed.

My two shekels :)

SW-User

@SW-User Thank you so much, that was informative!! I'd say it was a hundred or so shekels. :)

SW-User

@SW-User I appreciate you posting about interesting intellectual and spiritual concerns; it is a relief from all the randomness and garbage on here.

SW-User

@SW-User Thanks, just a way to go through my readings, and folk like you can help me digest things better. I just highlighted this quote from Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death which might be assessing our shared reality in the west at least with entertainment.

"When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility."

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