The Shadow Bible<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A commenter on a recent post mentioned the experience of highlighting substantial parts of a work by Nietzsche while working on an essay. Years later, he\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/08\/the-shadow-bible.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Shadow Bible\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A commenter on a recent post mentioned the experience of highlighting substantial parts of a work by Nietzsche while working on an essay. 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{"id":1351,"date":"2011-08-15T22:44:24","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T02:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=1334"},"modified":"2011-08-15T22:44:24","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T02:44:24","slug":"the-shadow-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/08\/the-shadow-bible.html","title":{"rendered":"The Shadow Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ I\u2019m not aware of something of this sort ever having been done. But I think it would be instructive. What if we took John 3:16 and Isaiah 53 and Genesis 1-3 and whichever other texts typically serve as memory verses and slogans and proof texts, and covered them over for a while \u2013 not as a sign of disrespect for them, but as a sign of respect for the rest of the text. What if we took the time to focus on the passages we never read, the ones which, even if we might not actually say so, in practice at least we consider less important, less interesting, less meaningful?<\/p>\n

Should someone put together a \u201cShadow Bible Project\u201d \u2013 a reading group to focus on drawing attention to the portions of the Bible left in the shadows even (perhaps in particular) by those who regularly extol the Bible? Those who claim to revere or cherish the Bible have huge blind spots regarding its content (as Pete Rollins\u2019 post I linked to earlier today illustrates<\/a>). But there are also passages that no one focuses on. Like the one I mentioned on Sunday, which the youth leader at my church asked me about<\/a>. The choice of proof texts is arbitrary. What would the Bible come to mean if covered over the favorite passages, and had no choice but to discuss Exodus 4:24-26<\/a>?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"