[TCCM] How to Read the Bible

[Michael Medas]

How can we recover the depth and power of the Bible in the twenty-first century? Bishop Barron offers 5 interpretive strategies:

1. Always be critically attentive to the variety of genres on display in the Scriptures.
The Bible is not so much a book as a library, a collection of books. Readily identifiable within the biblical corpus are legend, saga, tall tale, history, poetry, song, prophecy, biography, epistolary literature, and apocalypse, and each of these literary types requires a particular kind of interpretive approach.

2. Scripture is, in another sense, one book.
The Bible is finally telling one great story, or perhaps better, unfolding one great drama. Each section of the whole relates harmonically to every other section and to the totality of the work.

3. Find a “canon within the canon” of Scripture.
Some of our greatest biblical masters have held that one teaching or saying within the Bible can function as the key to opening the door of the entire Bible. St. Augustine proposed Jesus’s command to love God above all things and our neighbor for the sake of God as the ultimate criterion of correct biblical reading. That is to say, every story, poem, doctrine, or saying in the Bible should be read as ultimately designed to inculcate love of God and neighbor.

4. Distinguish between what is in the Bible and what the Bible teaches.
In the Bible we can find ideas about cosmology, medicine, disease control, and the weather that are clearly outmoded, and we can find cultural practices such as the denigration of women, the marginalization of children, slavery, etc., that are patently morally objectionable. These things are undoubtedly in the Bible, but they are not, I would argue, what the Bible is teaching. In order to discover the true doctrine of the Scriptures, we have to attend not to particular passages taken out of context, but rather to the overarching themes and patterns within the Bible as a whole.

5. Always remember that the Bible is the Church’s book.
The Scriptures as we know them were put in final canonical form sometime in the fourth century. This “canonization” represented the culmination of a centuries-long process—both Jewish and Christian—of analysis, debate, and judgment. The point is that the books of the Bible were assembled by the Church and for the Church. Their purpose, ultimately, is to tell the great story of Israel, which reaches its climax in the dying and rising of the Messiah, and to draw all people into communion with Jesus Christ. The proper framework for reading the Bible, therefore, is ecclesial and evangelical.


Blessings and peace,

Fr Michael

Reverend Michael B. Medas, MSW
Catholic Chaplain | Director of Catholic Ministry
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
W11-012
40 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02139



“Jesus loves you always, even when you don’t feel worthy.
When not accepted by others, even by yourself sometimes,
He is the one who always accepts you.  Only believe, you are precious to Him.
Bring all you are suffering to His feet, only open your heart to be loved by Him as you are.
He will do the rest.”  Saint Mother Teresa

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