“The words on the pages are a means to an end.” Yes, I agree with you. That’s exactly what I hear McKnight saying too.

I’ve spent a lot of years analyzing the words of the Bible, and while that is useful (I don’t want to discount the value of study), the more important finding is discovering the Author behind the book, or as you put it “the spirit that lies behind them”, with spirit having a capital S. If we read the Bible but miss getting to know the God of the Bible, it’s been for nothing.

It sounds like Scot McKnight is charging people to be less literal and more literary when reading the Bible, would that be right?

I can’t help thinking about reading novels. Often a literal reading — what is written, what happens — misses the point — like a faithful but vacuous screen adaptation. For me, reading a novel for example, is an immersion in the author’s sensibility. The words on the pages are a means to an end. Studying the novel (analysing the language, researching the author’s history) can be helpful approaches, but they can’t replace really reading it. Wouldn’t the same apply to reading the Bible — complicated perhaps because the sensibility the reader is after is not the authors’ and editors’ but the spirit that lies behind them.

Some very chewy books.