Wednesday, December 28, 2016

The Use of Didactic Materials from the Bible in Spiritual Formation: Part One

The Use of Didactic Materials from the Bible in Spiritual Formation
Part One

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” This popular adage is normally applied to instruct a friend or a child to be more sensitive toward another person whose first impressions may rub some spots raw. It should equally be applied to the book of books, the Bible. The various pages of this collection of individual books divided into two sections, The Old Testament and the New Testament appearing chronologically on either side of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, contain varying genres, or styles of writing.

Poetry is easily recognized on most printed pages by the unusual format, although there are various subtypes that appear in poetic form: songs, hymns, proverbs, and prophetic utterances. The bulk of the material appears in prose form, word after word from beginning to the end of a line followed consecutively by more words forming sentences, paragraphs and entire chapters. Yet within these many words punctuation marks often distinguish between types: narratives frequently include “direct quotations” and “verbal command are identified with a punctuation mark!” Yet many lines have no identifying marks except for the comma and period. A third concern that frequently requires a touch of sensitivity so as not to draw the wrong conclusion appears in the voice of address used. The biblical text may simply be telling a story in the third person as it describes the actions of David, Samuel, Jeremiah, or Jesus. Yet other times it will use the second person form of address when “you” is/are included in the reading. Is the “you” singular-an individual reader- or plural-a community of readers? It is difficult to tell in most English translations.


A final distinction among prose writing comes in the oft-misunderstood teaching sections, where instructional, or didactic, words are written to an audience prior to the first century of our calendar. What shall I do with these words of instruction that most often seem foreign or address issues I am not encumbered with? That becomes the issue when you and I attempt to read the Bible to gain spiritual nourishment from the river of life. Didactic materials are focused primarily in the New Testament letters, although it is not unusual to encounter such materials in the Old Testament in places like Jeremiah 29, where Jeremiah writes to the exiles living in Babylon sometime between 597 and 587 B.C. Because mining for gold requires finding a rich vein, you and I will do most of our excavation where we know gold may be found.

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