Just heard about a new special edition of the Bible - The Poverty & Justice Bible. It highlights passages about caring for the poor, revealing "God's passion" (singular). Of course, caring for the poor is an important duty for the church, one that the Body of Christ has been doing since Acts. I just read a Psalm in my daily reading this morning that focused on caring for the poor. But do we really need a Bible that highlights it above other things the Bible teaches?
It brought to mind the Wild about Horses Bible, which highlights horses in the Bible. The most ridiculous one is the Personal Promise Bible, which substitutes the pronouns in the Bible with your name. It's not enough to inscribe your name on the cover of your Bible, we can actually insert ourselves in the text. Your very own personalized edition of the Bible! With no apparent care for distorting the text.
I don't at all mean to demean the duty to care for the poor by comparing it to finding favorite animals in the Bible (cats are never mentioned, are they?) or narcissism run amok. The point I mean to draw attention to is the bad habit behind this phenomena. The explosion in recent years of all kinds of editions of the Bible that highlight certain messages and passages encourage us to go to the Bible looking for particular messages, eisegesis rather than exegesis. I've mentioned before that I don't even like regular study Bibles, though I think they can be useful and I have a couple, because we can end up relying on the commentator's interpretation rather than studying the text ourselves. And with any commentary, there's the potential for imposing something on the text that isn't there.
The problem this phenomena of specialized Bible editions points to is the habit Christians have developed to go to the Bible looking for specific messages. Christians often look for a personal message from God and pull verses out of context to claim it for themselves with subjective meaning. That's not proper application of what we learn from the passages. Texts are divorced from their context and lessons drawn from the orphaned passage that don't necessarily have anything to do with the text itself. We quote verses in isolation without any understanding of how the surrounding texts or the historical background may influence it's meaning. Prooftexting is sometimes a bad habit in used to support a doctrine or teaching that could be true, but still violates the integrity of the text.
Publishers are following the lead of bad habits practices everyday. We need to learn how to do proper Bible study to learn God's revelation as He intended it and allow the Holy Spirit to use it in our lives. The "sword of the Spirit" is no weapon at all and Scripture is not going to be profitable for us if we don't handle it properly, study it thoroughly in it's entirety, and know it accurately. Some study Bibles are helpful to that end. Most of these special editions just reinforce bad habits of mishandling the Scriptures.
A Bible to suit my interests, not changing my interests to match the Bible. That's convenient!
Posted by: RobertK | July 28, 2010 at 09:25 AM
Well said. And I agree with your point about study Bibles. One of my favorite, the ESV Study Bible, as good as it is, is not shy about imposing its view and asserting things that are not in the text. As for reading the Bible as a whole, I'd almost go so far as to say do away with chapter and verse numbering. It's helpful, but overall I think it contributes to a lot of abuse.
Posted by: Matt | July 28, 2010 at 09:25 AM
The site about the Poverty and Justice Bible says it's highlighting some passages. This is probably something the Horse Bible does too (Really? A Horse Bible?). These don't sound as bad a sticking your own name everywhere. It's sounds a lot like the Red Letter Bibles, where the words directly attributed to Jesus are printed in red. It seems a bit …inefficient (?) to publish a new edition for each particular thing someone wants to highlight.
What would be cool is something like a Kindle version of the Bible where people could write add-ons that highlight a particular set of lines. Then you could have the same text, but select different highlighting schemes. While some of these would just be oddities, like horses, other sets could be very informative. Competing interpretations could be compared by switching between the highlighting of the passages seen as important. For example, different views of end times could be represented by different highlighting schemes, with each highlighting the passages they believe to be supportive of their view. Then you can read the text in its full context with these passages highlighted to see which view makes the most sense.
Now that I think of it, this might already be supported. I don't own a Kindle, but I know they support annotations of texts. If these annotation sets can be shared, then there could already be a supply of annotations along these lines for various Bible translations, as well as other texts. Google, here I come.
Posted by: eric | July 28, 2010 at 10:00 AM
What would be REALLY cool is a Bible in electronic format that allows me to cut, copy, paste, make changes, deletions and updates, put verses I like in larger or bold font, or highligted bright yellow.
That way, I could personalize my Bible to my heart's content and make it something that's meaningful to Me, Me, Me!
Posted by: Mike Westfall | July 28, 2010 at 10:33 AM
Mike,
There is that already. I have an ASCII text version of the KJV. I'm sure other translations are out there if you search enough. Open with your favorite word processor, and off you go.
Posted by: eric | July 28, 2010 at 10:40 AM
It's just a gimmick to sell more Bibles. I mean seriously--what could be easier? Maybe I should publish my own edition of the Bible, highlighting every place that mentions a bow, a quiver, or arrows. It might be a big hit with my archery friends.
Posted by: Sam | July 28, 2010 at 01:45 PM
Jim Wallis will be all over this Bible - he turned is Bible into this version a long time ago. I wonder if John 12:8 will be highlighted?
Posted by: KWM | July 28, 2010 at 02:02 PM
Melinda, you said,
Which of the two do you think this particular one be (if you had to guess)?
KWM,
I wonder if John 12:8 will be highlighted?
Prooftexting in the comments about a post dedicated to the dangers of prooftexting for the win!
Posted by: brgulker | July 29, 2010 at 09:45 AM
My guess is prooftexting and taking verses out of context - lifting groups of verses out of context - to nightlight purportedly "God [single] passion." Sounds to me like it highlights a message, an important message, out of proportion to the entire context of Scripture. I don't think this one duty should be highlighted to the exclusion or minimizing other duties or the overarching message of the Bible of God's reconciliation of man to Himself through Jesus.
Posted by: Melinda | July 29, 2010 at 02:58 PM
A Creation Bible highlighting all the passages dealing with creation -- there are loads of them outside of Genesis -- would interest me. A Prophecy Bible would be interesting. Add in commentary by experts and these Bibles would pack a whollup. When I read through the Bible, I often do with a certain theme in mind.
Posted by: Richard Ball | July 30, 2010 at 06:00 AM
"If you can't get the people to conform to the Word of God, get the Word of God to conform to the people."
One of the ancients said this once and this is my paraphrase.
I love what Greg said in "The Bible Fast Forward"... People read their Bibles like they look at their high-school yearbooks... "Hey, where am I?"
Posted by: ryan | July 30, 2010 at 07:38 AM