GUEST POST: Leonard Sweet
Not too long ago I watched a video of one of my former seminary students doing what I taught him not to do. He had six translations fanned out, Greek open, highlighters uncapped. He was dissecting Mark as though the gospel were a frog in a lab, or as I put it in an earlier essay, “like a bird in a pan not a bird in the bush.”
And I thought: When did we learn to perform autopsies on something that claims to be alive? When did the Bible become a specimen?
That is why I no longer call the Bible a “text.” I used to fondle that word. Text. It sounded serious, scholarly, academic. Most of all, controllable. A text sits still. A text stays where you put it. A text can be parsed, highlighted, footnoted, mastered. A text can be chopped into proof-texts and life-verses small enough to fit on a coffee mug or sharp enough to win an argument.
A text is something you manage. But I have become convinced that Scripture refuses to be managed.
Don’t misunderstand me. Of course the Bible is a text. But it is never merely a text. Calling Scripture a text is like calling the ocean water or a cathedral stone. True enough. But hardly enough.
The Bible is not a manual of rules. It is an unfolding Emmanuel drama, a symphony swelling, a story singing itself into the world.
What we call “verses” are not data points. They are movements. Melodic themes. Living voices in a larger score.
You can memorize every note and never hear the Music.
Jesus knew exactly what that looked like. In Matthew 5:18, he reaches right onto the scribe’s desk: “Not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” Or, in the unforgettable music of the King James: “One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”
A jot. A tittle.
The jot was the yod, the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet—a breath of ink hanging in midair.
The tittle was the keraia, literally a “little horn”—that tiny flick of the pen by which one letter distinguishes itself from another. Miss the horn and a letter changes. Change the letter and a word changes. Change the word and a world can turn.
The scribes guarded every stroke. They counted letters. They treasured the words of Torah with a devotion modern readers can scarcely imagine.
And yet Jesus says to those who knew the scrolls best, in John’s gospel (4:39):
You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
There is the tragedy.
They knew the signs but missed what the signs were signing and singing.
They loved the signpost and refused the journey.
They could transcribe the score note by note—and were deaf to the Music when the Music walked into the room.
That is bibliolatry. Not loving the Bible too much. Stopping at the Bible too soon.
It is mistaking the witness for the One to whom the witness witnesses. It is embracing the sign while missing the Signified. It is knowing every word of the score without ever joining the song.
Jesus did not come to abolish one jot or one tittle. He came to fulfill them. He is Embodied Torah and Incarnate Song--the Cantor who stepped into the sanctuary of the world to teach our tone-deaf hearts how to sing again.
Every jot, every horn, every stroke and stanza of Law and Prophets was a tuning fork, tuning the human heart to recognize the Voice when the Word became flesh and fresh. In A Tale of Two Swords I talk of atonement as attunement.
The Scriptures were never meant to become forensic exhibits under fluorescent lights. They are alive with a Resonant Voice.
The Bible is not a text to be mastered. Not a weapon to be wielded. Not a cadaver to be dissected.
It is a story to live. A score to inhabit. A song to sing.
And perhaps that is the greatest mistake we make with Scripture: We keep trying to read a song that was given to teach the world how to sing . . . in perfect harmony.
The Music has already begun.
Will we join the choir?
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My Response
We have traded “God-breathed” ( what does that even mean ??) for infallible and inerrant, which has allowed us to overreach on what inspired by God means. We rate our translation choices, our explanation theories, and our application preferences as divinely inspired as Scripture.
Am I wrong? The “God-breathed” examples to explain 2 Timothy 3:16 all result in life, not data.
Search: Creation of Humanity (Genesis 2:7):God formed the first man from the dust of the ground and "breathed the breath of life into the man's nostrils", making him a living person.giving Life and Breath to All (Job 33:4 & Isaiah 42:5):Elihu proclaims in Job that "the breath of the Almighty gives me life", and Isaiah notes that God gives breath and life to everyone who walks the earth.The Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:5-14):God commands breath to enter the dry bones so they come to life, using the imagery of His breath/spirit (ruach) to restore a lifeless nation.Imparting the Holy Spirit (John 20:22):After His resurrection, Jesus "breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit,'" using a physical act to symbolize a spiritual reality.
Phil Miglioratti