Omit, delete, ignore - and read the little words!
Here's something from our Heart and Mind session the other day. I'm putting it up here because I think there are some important guidelines we mentioned which deserve a wider audience.
We were looking at the Book of Romans, and focused in on chapter 1, verses 14 to the end of the chapter.
Those verses have often been read - and often still are - as a bit of a diatribe against the human tendency to sin, especially towards sexual sin. (It's apparent that this text is still being read in this way if you look as some of the more immoderate expressions in the current debate on sexuality across the Anglican Communion!)
James Alison, in his excellent, thought-provoking book "Undergoing God", points out (and I paraphrase!) that this is not the only, or even the most natural, reading of the text.
Putting it simply, he suggests that Paul is drawing his readers or listeners - and particularly his Jewish Christian listeners or readers - into a position where they find themselves fulminating against the vices of others, and especially others they do not like or agree with.
James Alison points out various principles of reading which lead his to this conclusion.
First - ignore what Paul (or whoever) did not write! Since we know Paul wrote all of Romans, this can only mean... the verse numbers, chapter numbers and paragraphs!
This is how our earliest copies of the New Testament look:
No verses, no paragraphs, no chapters. All written in uncial (basically capital) letters. No punctuation!
So what does this mean, here? It means: don't stop reading at the end of chapter 1! Just because there is a chapter break there, it doesn't necessarily mean that Paul has finished his argument.
Second - look out for tiny keywords! And - what do you know? - there's one of them at the very beginning of Romans chapter 2. "Therefore...", Paul writes. Where there's a "therefore", you can be sure that Paul was linking up what he's now saying with what came before. And that means that Paul's discussion hasn't stopped at the end of chapter 1, but carries on into chapter 2. And it means that Paul's BIG POINT, the climax of his argument, is coming now, in the first verses of chapter 2.
Here's what he writes:
"Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgement on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things..."
This means (according to James Alison - and I'm pretty convinced, myself) that this whole passage is not a diatribe against sin, but a warning against Paul's readers/hearers not to judge others, or to assume that they are themselves without fault. As Paul says in Romans 3:23: "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..."
So: a radically different reading - and all because we remembered to ignore the markings in the text (which are a later, only sometimes helpful, imposition) and take more note of link words.
Worth remembering as we read?
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