You would think I'd be ecstatic, then, that there's recently been published a Green-Letter Bible.
I'm not. I'm weirded out. Study bibles are usually intended to provide context or look at the bible from a certain theological/historical perspective. For example, the Archaeological Study Bible provides heavy historical context. I love to read my Literary Study Bible, because it helps me study the bible using themes, genres and other literary devices.
But this Bible does not provide context. It provides a series of articles contributed by an impressive roll of writers before we make it to Genesis. I'd be personally interested in reading these articles for my personal research.
But dedicating an entire Bible to it? It sounds a little sketch. Couldn't they just edit a book? That would be such a valuable asset to my collection.
But here is the oddest part- they highlight all the parts about the environment in green letters. To put a proper framework around it these highlighted parts address
· how God and Jesus interact with, care for, and are intimately involved with all of creation.
· how all the elements of creation—land, water, air, plants, animals, humans—are interdependent.
· how nature responds to God.
· how we are called to care for creation
These are the very things that I am involved in learning about. But putting them in green letters in the Bible without a proper context? To me, that's borderline heretical. That's taking God's words within the text and making them yours. These very verses I have used to support my arguments in papers, but do I go through everyone's bible and mark them up? No.
In the ChristianityToday Blog, Brandon O'brien brings up two very good points about this:
1)
"The selection of passages aside, I have two concerns with this method of highlighting biblical text. The first is this: the implicit argument in the green lettering is that by sheer bulk of words in green print, the editors prove that creation care is a central concern of the Bible. But what if we tried a different subject—say, violence. A faculty of editors color-codes a Bible so that every passage that references an act of violence is printed in purple ink. Would that, by sheer bulk, prove conclusively that violence is at the center of God’s plan of redemption? Or what about gold-lettering all the instances of sexual perversion? What I mean is this: frequency is not a compelling argument without context."
2)
"Speaking of context, I’m afraid the letter coloring will distract, in many places, from the actual theological significance of a passage. Take Genesis 2, for example. The majority of the chapter appears in green, except—oddly—a brief reference to the second river in Eden, Gihon (but the bit about Pishon is in green). The Lord’s proclamation that it is not good for the man to be alone is in black, as is the great crescendo of the chapter: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh…” I can understand why the institution of marriage is not “green.” But the predominance of green ink in that chapter diverts attention from the real significance of the passage—the completion of the creation of humankind"
When I told my dad about this Bible he said it was the Left trying to swing the Christian vote their way by taking over the environmental issues. Which I think is ridiculous because I know that the Right, in their campaigns have been addressing the environment and it will become a bi-partisan issue. But I can't help but think that this Bible takes a political turn- not to left or right or politics, but of promoting a single issue through the Bible. It reminds of the end-times Bibles they used to print all the time.
I think this is a disastrous idea, but if you plan on buying this Bible, please make copies of the articles for me. Thanks, it will help in my research.
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