What do we mean when we ask ‘What is the Bible?’ Think about it for a moment. Think about the question, about what the question might already assume or take for granted. Think about the ways in which we might respond to such a question, about the assumptions or predispositions we might harbor that would influence our response prior to actually examining and studying the biblical text itself.
For instance, is what I as a biblical scholar mean by this question the same as someone whose relationship to the text is defined by their faith? Should it be different? How exactly does one, or should one, go about answering our question in the first place? Might one’s faith or inherent presuppositions about the text prematurely prescribe what the response ought to be, prior to actually investigating the biblical text on its own terms? In other words, have we as individuals, faith communities, a culture, already imposed a predefined answer to the question ‘what is the Bible?’ that is rather based on what the Bible means to us as individuals and faith communities? Aren’t the questions ‘what is the Bible?’ and ‘what does the Bible mean?’ two different questions? Wouldn’t the latter question elicit a subjective response, that is one that is defined by its subject, in this case the reader or hearer of the text? Does this have anything to do with what the Bible is on an objective level? That is, does not one question focus on understanding the Bible from the perspective of its subjects, what it means to its readers (real or implied); while the other question focuses on understanding the Bible from the object of study itself, namely the biblical text and what it reveals about its own compositional nature—what it is independent of what the text has come to mean to its vast and divergent readership? And how are we to distinguish between ‘what the Bible is’ and ‘what the Bible means’? If it’s a given that the Bible means something to us as a culture, as individuals, then have we not already prematurely answered the question ‘what is the Bible?’ with the response appropriate to ‘what does the Bible mean?’ Could, in fact, what the Bible means to a particular individual, community, or culture be completely different than, or even at odds with, what the Bible actually is? What if this turns out to be the case?
As we can see, the question ‘what is the Bible?’ is more complex than would initially appear. The questions above were meant to get us thinking about not only the complexities behind our query, but more so the assumptions and predispositions that we might unconsciously harbor that would influence our responses. In other words, we must distinguish objective responses (what the Bible tells us about itself and its compositional nature) from subjective responses (what the Bible means or is with respect to its readership). Our aim should be to provide an objective response to our query: what do the biblical texts themselves reveal about what the Bible is? Yet before we embark on this discovery, there are other preliminaries to ponder.