Saturday, June 18, 2005
Bible Red Letter Edition -- Evil?
Bluefish had an interesting post.
I mean, how far do we want to carry this stuff -- I know people with study Bibles that spend more time in the helps than in scripture. Devices like red letter editions are what we make of them -- they are not inherently a problem. Rather than attack the tool, ought we not be dealing with the user of that tool?
Evangelical's often read the Bible as if some bits are more important than others. A few books will appear very dogeared in most Bible's which others are untouched. We're good with the gospels and some of Paul's letters but much of the rest stands neglected.I can't argue the primary thesis of this post, but I think he may be reaching a little bit in his examples. We must consider scripture as a whole, and the Jesus Seminar coding he refers to earlier is heinous, but I have always thought of red letter editions as study aids, not priority markers.
And then there are Jesus' words in red editions. These Bibles highlight the words that Jesus said by putting them in red text rather than black. On the surface this is fine, but actually its a problem.
What it ends up doing is to say that the words in Bible that matter most are the ones that Jesus said. But the whole Bible is Jesus' words. Every last word of the Bible is God speaking.
I mean, how far do we want to carry this stuff -- I know people with study Bibles that spend more time in the helps than in scripture. Devices like red letter editions are what we make of them -- they are not inherently a problem. Rather than attack the tool, ought we not be dealing with the user of that tool?
