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A Romp Through The Bible

by William R. Phillippe

303 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0347; ISBN 1-55212-945-4; US$30.00, C$32.95, EUR24.50, £17.50

This book reveals the amazing kaleidoscope of prophets, historians, storytellers, and visionaries who tell of their own encounters with life and God in the Bible.

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About the book      About the author      Sample excerpts or Table of Contents      Catalogue info

About the Book This book is the result of many years of sharing with laypersons my love of the Bible. Like most people, I learned Bible stories at home and in the church; but never caught sight of the whole thing. No one ever put together for me the amazing kaleidoscope of prophets, historians, storytellers, and visionaries who tell of their own encounters with life and God in the Bible. ***** Dr. Phillippe reminds his readers that this is first and foremost a romp... " True to the definition of romp, "to play boisterously," he moves the reader quickly through the sixty-six books of the Old and New testament and fifteen of the Apocrypha and does it with a style he believes the writers would approve, even if the normally stodgy interpreters of the Bible might not. *****

About the Author William R. Phillippe was born in Pittsburgh where he says, "Presbyterians are more dense than anywhere else in the country." Educated at Muskingum College in Ohio and Pittsburgh and Princeton Seminaries. He held pastorates in Valley Forge and Pittsburgh, PA; Grosse Pointe, MI, Summit, NJ, Monmouth and Lake Forest, IL; and has been interim Senior Pastor at both Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church and Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. He has taught at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, University of Pittsburgh, Loyola University of Baltimore and has lectured at many other schools and conferences. For ten years he served as a Synod Executive in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and as Chair of the Civil and Religious Liberty committee of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. He has been described as, "a creative, biblically based preacher/teacher, witnessing to the global context of the Christian Church." ***** Vic Jameson, former editor of Presbyterian Survey says: "Phillippe's work will be seen by some as blithe and brash. That's the best part. He takes us on a tour of what and where and why the Bible happened, and by peeling off the dusty old trappings he brings to light an enchanting story about people, and a God, we'd like to know better."

Sample Excerpt

This book is the result of many years of sharing with laypersons my love of the Bible. Like most, I learned Bible stories at home and in the church, but never caught sight of the whole thing. No one ever put together for me the amazing kaleidoscope of prophets, historians, storytellers, and visionaries who told of their own encounter with life and God in a wide variety of ways.

I was fortunate in having a seminary professor who was at ease with the Old Testament and who passed on to me the enjoyment of seeing those books through the eyes of the ones who wrote them. But far too often even clergy look at the vital, humorous, emotion-packed writings through the eyes of theologians who lived insulated lives and viewed the world with myopic vision. Such pale and juiceless ones seemed afraid to enjoy--to enjoy their own lives or the lives of the great saints and heroes of the Church.

The question, then, is whether we can become free enough to read and enjoy the Bible. Can we see it like the experience of Alice in Through the Looking Glass. Alice, you will remember, was able to go through the mirror and walk around in that wonderland, talking, joking, living with the characters of that different world. That is what I suggest we do together.

So come with me on this journey through the printed pages, past the cold words, and into the amazing land of the Bible. Come face-to-face with men and women who felt the very touch of God in the midst of their lives and who were simple and honest enough to claim it with integrity. It just may make you aware that the same has happened in your life. At the outset we must acknowledge that the Church has had a great deal to say in formal ways about how we should approach the study of the Bible. In 1643 the "Westminster Divines" put it in this language:

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation; therefore, it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in diverse manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his church; and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people being now ceased.

For centuries this stilted language led the Church in its study of the Bible--and quite frankly scared many and kept them from feeling its vitality.

In 1967 the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. adopted a new confession using more intelligible language and expressing a more realistic view:

The Scriptures, given under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are nevertheless t he words of men, conditioned by the language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were written. They reflect view of life, history, and the cosmos which were then current. The church, therefore, has an obligation to approach the Scriptures with literary and historical understanding. As God has spoken his word in diverse cultural situations, the Church is confident that he will continue to speak through the Scriptures in a changing world and in every form of human culture.

In 1977 The Presbyterian Church U.S., in A Declaration of Faith stated:

Led by the Spirit of God, the People of Israel and of the early church preserved and handed on the story of what God has said and done in their midst and how they had responded to him. These traditions were often shaped and reshaped by the uses to which the community put them. They were cherished, written down, and collected as the holy literature of the people of God.

This progressive understanding within the formal sanctions of the Church has helped many of us to boldly declare again, publicly, our love of the Bible. My integrity is intact as I now can say openly that I take the Bible seriously but not literally. Furt her, I continually raise the question of the artist seeking to define the "negative space"--that is, what does the Bible not say? What perceptions are not recorded from that long period of time?

On my shelf before me in my study is the work of historians Will and Ariel Durant. In eleven volumes of 8,947 large pages they have attempted to capture the history of the human race from its misty beginnings to the death of Napoleon in 1821. Then I leaf through my Bible and am startled to realize that it contains over two thousand years of history in this one relatively slim volume. Someone once calculated, for instance, that all the recorded words of Jesus could be read in less than an hour--yet he taught for three years.

If, then, we realize that the Bible covers a period of about two thousand years--that is, from Abraham and Sarah to the writings of the early Church--and then relate that to world history, it's like trying to tell the history of humankind from Julius Caesar to Nikita Khrushchev. Think of the variety there is within that story. Well, the variety is just as great in our sacred history, but we have so few words to work with. Again, ask what was not recorded? What words, thoughts, dreams, desires were left out?

Yet, it is an amazing collection of the full range of human emotion: of birth and death; of murder, rape, war, and jealousies; of visions and hymns of hope; of ventures of faith. As we will see even in this very concentrated telling of our holy story we get a fairly complete picture of the actors on that stage of history. In the Old Testament particularly there are sections where the air brush has not been applied to remove the warts and blemishes of these searching humans in action and at rest. It is t he story of women and men discovering t he nature of God.

On sheets of papyri the ancient Hebrew scribes captured the lore of their people. These rolls of papyrus--known as biblia or little books--comprise one of the most eloquent and comprehensive accounts of an ancient people. For many of us it is the story of our mothers and fathers in the faith.

These literary artists were not just historians, editors and biographers, but impressive story-tellers as well. With simple, vigorous, and concrete words they told a powerful story and described magnificent feats of leadership. Sometimes they soared with a poetic genius as they dealt with universal themes and touched the root of all humankind. At other times they kept a boring recital of ritual laws and genealogical tables.

But overall the Bible comes through to many of us as a record with integrity--biased at many points, but with a bias that can be grasped and understood. So we must constantly see it as something from the past, reflecting the past, conditioned by the thought forms of those people quite different from us.

But, finally, it is not enough to just study the findings of scholars and archaeologists. I think it takes creative imagination to read and understand the lives, thinking processes, and teachings of those ancient people. But it is worth the effort. Being able to look into the faces of these men and women is to come into contract with persons who felt the very touch, the very hand of God in t he midst of life and were simple and honest enough to claim it with great integrity.

On various occasions I have been able to go into some of the world's great art museums and there have stood in awe before some of the masterpieces of the world. Even though I had seen reproductions of those paintings and read commentaries on them and heard from people I respect words of praise, I could not say that I knew a picture until I stood in the gallery and saw it for myself.

But what I have discovered is that even when I stood before those canvases the whole picture was not revealed to me. If I go back to the gallery again and again, I come to know the painting better. As I stand before it and continue to study it, and when I learn something about the artist, the experience out of which the painting grew, the circumstances surrounding its execution, and the significance of the composition and other elements, then I truly begin to see the picture and it takes on deep meaning.

The point is obvious. People need to read the Bible itself for themselves. A reputable translation by good scholars in modern language is necessary. I use The New Revised Standard Version (1989) for my basic work. I use a study edition, both the Oxford Annotated edition and the Harper-Collins Study Edition. I supplement this with The Jerusalem Bible (1966) for the Old Testament and the New English Bible (1972) for the New Testament. Do not just read this book or some other book about the Bible. It is necessary to read the book itself.

Within this awful volume lies
The mystery of mysteries;
Happiest they of human race
To whom their God has given grace
To read, to fear, to hope, to pray,
To lift the latch, to force the way;
But better had they ne'er been born,
That read to doubt, or read to scorn.

Catalogue Information