Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
That is what you get when you think the purpose of the Bible is to reveal hidden nuggets in every word without reference to any, or only a few, of the words around them.
I have come to call it the fortune cookie view of the Bible. All those pages and books are to bring us lots of little chopped-up fortune cookies to analyze one-by-one without reference to each other. It really started in earnest when they chopped it up into chapters and verses without any real reference to the sentences and paragraphs. Just roughly a similar number of syllables (or something like that).
|
I love this term "fortune cookie view of the Bible", and certainly see Nee and Lee as having this view
. I still tend to think of the Bible that way myself
Gene Edwards (seed sowers.com sells his books), a former local church brother, shares that view about the problem added chapters and verses presents to the reader. He freely admits that he has a reading disorder (Attention Deficit?) that makes it really hard for him to not be distracted by the chapters and verses. To make his point he published a Bible without added chapter and verses and suggests Christians read it to get a feel for what the original recipients of those writings would have been reading and how it makes truth hit home easier.
How about adding section headers, cross references, and footnotes to the equation.... quite an assault on the reader with attention deficit at a minimum!