Eat This Book... And Keep Chewing

As the prophet Ezekiel was faced with the humbling task of offering the Lord's word to the exiled Israelites, God tells him, "Son of man, eat this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it." The prophet does as he's commanded, and it is sweet in his mouth, like honey. (Ezekiel 3:3) I'm not sure how long it took Ezekiel to eat that scroll, but that kind of meal takes me weeks.

In seminary, I had a brilliant young professor named Kavin Rowe who taught two of my New Testament courses, Intro to NT and Acts. These two courses were two of the most challenging courses I had at the Div School (and two of my lowest grades), but I learned a heckuva lot. One of Dr. Rowe's maxims was that to read Scripture properly, a significant task is to try and read each book in its entirety, in one sitting, without interruption. Now, for our modern, impatient minds, this task is very diffucult- for instance, I am in the midst of reading Jeremiah straight through, and I can only handle about 3-5 chapters per night. But indeed, this is how the original readers and hearers (mostly hearers) of these texts digested them. So the idea is, that if you want to perceive these texts as closely as possible to their original authorial intent, you must read them in one sitting.

And let me tell you, this completely changes the way one understands these texts. In reading a book all at once, I have caught so many verses, passages, etc. that I have previously interpreted out of context, and so this is a strategy that I fully endorse. In a day when football players show their faith by listing a verse on their eye-black, this practice of Scripture reading reminds me of how much deeper and comprehensive Scriptural faith is than our fast-food, reductionistic view.

For a good intro to the art of reading Scripture, I recommend the following two books:
Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book: This book is accessible and really thoughtful.
Mariano Magrassi, Praying the Bible: This book is very Catholic, but very good and short.