"The Case Against Reference Bibles" at Relay
With apologies to Baron Munchausen, I have learned from experience that a modicum of hyperbole can be most efficacious. This explains why my feature for the latest edition of Relay, the new online magazine of Worldview Academy, makes the case for reader-friendly Bibles by making the case against reference editions. Relay: "The Case Against Reference Bibles"
No, I haven't gone (entirely) crazy ... I just hope to get people's attention by calling into question one of those truths we tend to hold self-evident: namely, that the accretion of 'helps' in your typical printed Bible are actually, well, helpful.
I took up this theme in my recent interview with The Bible Exchange, too.
"A help is something that assists you in solving a problem you can’t resolve on your own. The goal of help is to fill a gap until you develop the strength to fill it yourself without help. This is why a good teacher, in classroom discussion, doesn’t just give students the answers. Struggling with the problem is one way you learn. So ideally you would know your Bible well enough to find specific passages without help. Because you don’t, there are cross references, concordances, chapter and verse numbers, even thumb indexes if you can’t recollection the order of the books. If these things were just helps, you would rely on them less over time. That’s not what happens. Most of us find, when they are taken away, that we can’t do without them. That’s the definition of a crutch."
Crazy talk? Maybe. But I find myself questioning more and more whether the helps are really helping. Over the years, I've tended to remain on the conservative end of the reader-friendly design spectrum. The section headings are useful, I'd argue. Surely we need the verse numbers. Lose the chapter breaks? Unthinkable. Yet my tendency recently has been to ask just how much I really need even the most basic helps. Even when I find I do need them, I wonder whether I should. Especially then, in fact.
Whatever your view, it makes for an interesting thought experiment. Check out the article and the whole of that interview question and tell me what you think.
