The Problem with Print

as it is written: “There is no righteous person, not even one;”  Romans 3:10 NASB

As it is written – How many times do you suppose you read these words in the Bible?  “As it is written” becomes the catch phrase for the next prooftext.  Paul is particularly fond of this method, but it’s found throughout the Scriptures. Unfortunately, our mental picture of this phrase is probably some black and white letters on a page.  We don’t think of a scribe carefully handwriting Hebrew letters.  We think of lines in a book.  Our image has some interesting consequences.

“In the specific case of scripture, the cheap and easy availability of myriad versions of the Jewish and Christian scriptures has done much to reduce the special quality of the physical text as an object of reverence and devotion in and of itself.”[1]

The ready availability of printed Bibles “ . . . reinforces the primary image of scripture as but another printed book.  The tracing of manuscript traditions and collation of textual variants has improved our understanding of the growth of scriptural texts, but it has also taught us how to treat them only as simply historical documents.”[2]

“The common ascription of fixity, permanence, reliability, and authority to the printed page generally applied also, and usually in a much greater degree, to the scriptural page; yet such valuation of the printed word is finally as much a reduction of scripture to a ‘thing’ as is the treatment of it as but another volume of paper and ink.  The security of having divine revelation ‘in black and white’ can be a tempting crutch to lean on.”[3]

“Analogously, the documentary, historical- and text-critical orientation that characterizes modern religious-text studies reflects in the treatment of texts the wider contemporary conception of scripture as merely a particular kind of written text, perhaps special in many ways, but ultimately one among other genres of written and printed matter.  While such approaches are perfectly legitimate in and of themselves, they share and promote more widely held notions of scripture that greatly limit our ability as scholars to grasp the functional roles of scripture in other historical contexts.”[4]

What lessons do we learn from Graham’s analysis?  Perhaps the first one is this: our appreciation for the “Bible” has been diminished because it is so easily available.  We’ve lost the sense of sacred, seen, for example, in the adoration of a scroll presented in the synagogue.  Secondly, because our Bible is a book, we (especially me) often treat it in the same way we treat all books, that is, as useful information about God’s revelation in historical context, but not as sacrosanct.  Our critical analysis of the problems of transmission and the development of the canon often ignore that sacral quality of the text.  Finally, we’ll have to work hard at remembering that we are not dealing with just another religious “thing.”  While we can raise textual questions about communal authority, we must recognize that these words function as more than instructions.  They communicate God to human beings yesterday and today.  We’re not just reading a book.  We’re listening to the divine.

Topical Index: print, writing, sacred, Bible, Romans 3:10

[1] William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 46.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., pp.46-47.

[4] Ibid., p. 47.