Reading The Bible With Rabbi Jesus By Lois TverbergSample

Day Seven: Three-Dimensional Bible Reading

When people hear the Scriptures read repeatedly they get very familiar with the stories. Every odd turn of a phrase becomes memorable. Distinctive words stand out when they come up again later. People start to notice themes rippling through the text and hear how earlier events foreshadow later events. They don’t just focus on single stories but rather listen for how details echo through multiple passages. 

This way of reading the Bible in “three dimensions,” of listening to how earlier texts shed light on later ones, and how later events repeat and echo earlier ones, is extremely Jewish. 

This style of reading may strike Greek-thinkers as frustratingly inexact. But keep in mind that throughout Jewish history, Scriptures were intimately known, having been read over and over. From a comprehensive knowledge of the text, rabbinic teachers were pointing out patterns and precedents. In effect they were saying, “How does God do things? Well, we see a certain pattern over and over in the Scriptures. Perhaps he’ll act this way again.” 

Western Christians overlook many of the connections in the Bible because of our habit of boiling down Scripture into abstract concepts for advanced study. For instance, we spend a lot of time discussing the Trinity, even though the term is never used in Scripture. Certainly we find the Father, the Son, and the Spirit throughout the Bible. But instead of following how God’s Spirit flows from scene to scene, we prefer to build theological skyscrapers out of abstract definitions. 

We also tend to view the Old Testament as simply written to predict the New Testament. But Noah’s ark did not “predict” Moses’ ark. The Spirit hovering over the waters of Genesis did not “predict” the Spirit resting on kings and on the Messiah. We see these things retrospectively. 

Think of seeing an ultrasound of a developing baby. For parents, the collection of smudges and blobs makes little sense at the time, but when they look at the same images after the baby is born, the infant’s distinctive features are obvious. The ultrasound didn’t predict the baby, it was true in and of itself. Similarly, we see Christ when we look through the text three-dimensionally and see his image in the Scriptures long before he was born. 

How might the idea of reading the Bible in “three dimensions” change your own way of reading Scripture?