If you read the Bible daily, or weekly, or once a year or twice in your lifetime…someone taught you the skills you needed to do that.
That someone was most likely a teacher.
Someone taught you how to read.
In a few cases, it will be a parent or some other person but in almost every case, you were taught to read by a teacher, a professionally trained, intuitive, caring, unselfish, and generous teacher.
As I have stated many times, the Bible, itself, is the closest thing to a miracle that we can see and touch.
The ability to read it for ourselves involved the work of many priests, theologians, scribes and others through labor and great sacrifice in many cases. We laud and praise these people, yet we practically ignore the work of the teachers who brought its words to life for us.
Just the basic skills of word recognition and syntax are not the whole story, however.
Teachers have done more than that. Much more.
Teachers have shown us and exposed us to many other things.
- Understanding vocabulary and word choice
- Gaining understanding through context
- Learning how to interpret and evaluate text
- Developing an appreciation and respect for the written word
Understanding vocabulary and word choice
We can access any dense and difficult text, whether it is Shakespeare, Joyce or the King James Bible, because we have learned to seek the meanings of new words, read margin notes and apply our understanding of the structure of the language to our reading to learn new things.
We were not born with the skills to do that.
Someone taught you how to read for understanding. It was most likely a teacher.
Gaining understanding through context
It is easy to see that people, especially people like politicians and religious recruiters, will pick out a verse from the Bible to prove, for example, that capital punishment is Biblically permissible. Others will argue that the Bible prohibits capital punishment.
Some will find a verse to prove something and another will use the same verse to disprove the exact same thing.
No Bible verse stands on its own any more than any verse or phrase from any book does so. All understanding is gained from context. You must read the chapter, or the book.
Someone taught you that. It was most likely a teacher.
Learning how to interpret and evaluate text
Texts like the Bible, ancient in origin, copied and edited again and again, translated and re-translated, cannot in any way be taken at face value. They must be studied, evaluated, interpreted and in some cases, deciphered and decoded.
The easiest example I can give is the Book of Revelation. I publicly defy anyone to convince me that the book is clear and lucid. No one has the skill to get anything at all from the Book of Revelation without bringing a lot of interpretation to the conversation. The same goes for the Book Of Daniel or for that matter, the Book of Genesis.
Someone taught you how to do that. It was most likely a teacher.
Developing an appreciation and respect for the written word
The Bible itself is a marvelous collection of books.
Theology, History, Mythology, Fable, Poetry, Wisdom, Mystery. Intrigue, Conquest, Infidelity, Generosity, Faith and Betrayal.
We learn that the ancient world is quite unlike our own and quite like our own in different ways. We learn to appreciate the work of those who inscribed the words with cramping hands, by candle light, in cold, damp rooms in cold, damp buildings.
Along the way, you developed an appreciation for the written word itself, for the words contained in the Bible.
Someone taught you how to do that. It was most likely a teacher.
Teachers are the keepers of the culture
Teachers are the people in a society who teach the skills necessary for people to understand the world, to fit into acceptable patterns of behavior, to see truth and to gain understanding from all sources of knowledge…but most importantly from the written word, in which culture and life are recorded.
Teachers are the keepers of the flame, the preservers of the culture, the keepers of the language.
It is necessary for the faithful to praise God.
It is just as necessary for the literate to praise their teachers.
I am certain that some will disagree. As a public student of Bible and religion, I invite you to join the conversation whether you agree or disagree. I want to hear from you.
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