The Bible Experience: a review

I've long been looking for a good audio Bible that met my criteria:

1. It must be a modern translation (i.e., post Dead Sea Scrolls).
   
2. It must be unabridged.
   
3. It must be in a modern format.
   
4. It must be well produced.
   
5. And relatively inexpensive.
   

For a long time the search didn't go well. It seemed the market was split between well-produced, expensive recordings of the King James Bible and incomplete, free recordings of slightly newer translations. Looking around now I see things have changed somewhat, but I sort of gave up after a while.

Then I purchased an iPod shuffle. This little device has revolutionized my listening habits since I no longer need to a) carry around CDs or b) hope something on the radio is interesting. Instead, I load up the iPod each day at work and listen to what I scheduled in my car, on my bike, or while I wash dishes. In essence, I create my own radio station that can be paused at any time. For the last year, I've been raiding the library for every book on CD that looks interesting and I now have listening material to last quite a while. But almost all of it is secular and I have not been able to maintain discipline in meditating on God's word. When I saw The Bible Experience at Costco, it seemed like something I needed to add to my play list.

The best news is that The Bible Experience meets each of my criteria. The audio book is 1. the TNIV translation, 2. complete (including genealogies and other minutia, 3. available in CD or MP3 formats, 4. expertly produced, and 5. less than $100 at Costco or in MP3 format.

After years of using and listening to the NIV, I have become bored with the translation—especially familiar passages. Although Today's New International Version (TNIV) shares many commonalities with its predecessor, it sounds fresh and new to me. One reason is that the language seems to be tightened up and modernized. I think the other reason must be a result of the incredible voice talent employed by
The Bible Experience. The story of Ruth, for instance, seems more engaging and relevant because you can hear the emotion of the characters as they interact.

Most sections have some sort of background music or noise (sheep bleating, swords drawn, crowds mumbling and so on). Other sound effects accompany significant actions such as the cry of a man in the throws of death and the cries of a woman giving birth. Although some might be distracted by the extra sounds, I find the effect reinforces the text. Very long (and boring) sections such as genealogies and administrative lists are made bearable with the addition of background music. Some sections repeat on a loop, which has been a mild annoyance to me, but this does not seem common. The introduction and conclusion tracks on each disk seem unnecessary, but they are easily skipped.

I still intend to read my Bible the old-fashioned way, but listening to it has become the primary way for me to consume the word of God. In some ways, this is a throwback to the pre-Gutenberg world and is not all unwelcome. In others, it is a thoroughly modern experience taking full advantage of technological advance. In either case, I'm grateful I can hear God's message more often and more easily than ever.

Modifying the inductive method for the Old Testament

Thinking about how to do an inductive study on Jonah, I've come to the conclusion that I need to modify the steps a bit in order to keep from getting over extended. The basic steps I usually follow are:

1. Observation
   
2. Questions
   
3. Interpretation
   
4. Application
   

These steps are fine, but it becomes difficult to study a book like Jonah that has two levels of interpretation. In particular, before Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice for us, the story of the great fish has no deep significance. God could have saved Jonah any number of ways and served His purpose equally as well. But as Christians, we know the "Sign of Jonah" so we need to be able to interpret the story in light of new information. This can be done in Application, but it really is part of Interpretation. So I'm going to try using these steps instead:

1. Observation
   
2. Questions
   
3. Interpretation
   
4. Christology
   
5. Application
   

In general, I think it will be useful to add an extra layer of interpretation to a whole range of "special" texts. Prophesy, for instance can become quite confusing when the question of what does such and such a passage mean on a symbolic level and what does it mean in terms of the future. They are separate questions, though the later depends on the answer to the first. Similarly for parables, poetry, and proverbs, the literal or face meaning must be addressed before the deeper meaning may be tackled.

Jonah: history, biography or parable?

I'm starting a study of Jonah with the Men's Inductive Bible Study next week and I have started thinking about what genre it might be. Traditionally, it has been included in the "Minor Prophets", but that is more of a historical accident, since the book contains very little in the way of prophesy. This classification arose because it was grouped with eleven books about or by prophets which could be written on a single scroll. Instead, the book of Jonah contains the story of what a particular prophet did at a particular time. Many would say that the genre of Jonah is obvious on its face: history. But I'd like to look at two other genres that have merit: biography and parable.

History

Most of us have an intuitive understanding of the history genre. It serves in a way to take us back in time so that we can observe what happened at a particular time and place. In the Old Testament the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles serve as clear examples of the history genre. In those cases the history spanned several generations and covered the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, not a portion of a single man's life as in Jonah. Unlike those texts, there is no evidence that Jonah's author relied on archives or other written sources, but either had access to a witness of these events or some oral tradition.

Biography

Perhaps a more likely candidate for a story of one man would be biography. Modern biographies aren't all that different from history or journalism in that they focus on accurate and complete details. Ancient biographies were less concerned about strict accuracy—often they included clearly apocryphal stories that illustrated some personal characteristic of the subject. For instance, one of our prime sources for early Roman emperors, Suetonius's On the Life of the Caesars, includes a number of omens and dreams that seem fairly unlikely. But in either era, biographies attempt to draw out the meaning of their subject's lives and selects details that illustrate that meaning. Ruth, Esther, and sections of other books such as the lives of David, Joshua, Daniel, and Joseph are Biblical examples of biography.

Parable

Perhaps a more controversial theory is that Jonah is a parable, or at least is told in the form of an extended parable. Although characters in parables are usually unnamed, Jesus christens one of his protagonists "Lazarus". The introduction and conclusion of Job may be regarded as two halves of a parable as well. The key to identifying the genre is to recognize lesson or point of the story and notice that all details emphasize that point. The other genres tend to include details that would seem extraneous to reason for telling the story. Jonah is notably light on extra detail.

Selecting the parable genre does not mean finding Jonah to be fiction, but it does indicate whether historical accuracy was held sacred by the author. Though we aren't used to this way of thinking, miracles such as living in a whale for three days, increase the odds that a parable is based on reality. The reason is that parables were constructed as simple, everyday stories that an audience could easily grasp so that the hidden, more complex meaning would be more clear. In Jonah, the story of the whale adds little to the deeper meaning and would not have been familiar to intended audience. Even today, we see that the "fish story" element tends to swamp the ultimate meaning in the text. An author starting the story from scratch would probably found some other way to turn Jonah back to Nineveh. A simple solution would be for the sea to become calm as soon as the sailors began to return to shore.

Of course God did not do things that way because the story of the whale becomes the "Sign of Jonah" for Jesus many years later.

A blank slate

I've moved my (mostly) investment related blog over to 4of2.blogspot.com. This space will remain blank until I know what to do with it.