+Generally when reading the Holy Scriptures I like to read from a Bible that +contains a lot of footnotes. In one of them (a large edition of the Jerusalem +Bible in Spanish) four fifths of the first page of Genesis is actually filled +with footnotes. For some I've met this is a hindrance for the reading of +Scripture - a distraction - and to each their own, I guess. But for me it is a +great aid for the reason that I want context. +
+ ++While reading Scripture we often come across passages, both in the New and +especially in the Old Testament, which are quite incomprehensible to our modern +minds. This is because we lack a lot of the knowledge of the culture, customs, +and language of the time. For me this makes the reading of said passages to be +greatly difficult and even misleading, since at a loss for the proper context we +may come to an erroneous conclusion (something which the devil truly desires as +we attempts to use Scripture to confuse for his own purposes). Thus it can also +be perilous to our spiritual life to read the Bible without proper guidance. To +borrow a silly example given by Trent Horn, imagine two thousand years from now +someone were to look at media from our era and find the term “lady-killer,” and +assume we're speaking of someone like Ted Bundy, because they lack the cultural +and linguistic context to know that it is a colloquial term used to refer to men +who are unusually attractive to women. This demonstrates, therefore the +importance of contextualizing texts. +
+ ++This being said, it's important to know the difference between contextualization +in order to know the meaning underlying the text (which in the case of Scripture +is inerrant) versus contextualization so as to arbitrarily dismiss parts of +Scripture as merely products of their time. This sort of practice is very common +among the more liberal Christians (and sometimes even not so liberal) who will +look at certain passages, particularly of St. Paul's epistles, and claim that we +can completely disregard them because it was “merely a product of his time,” in +what ultimately amounts to suggesting that we strike through an entire passage +of Scripture. Yet, this is not to say that the passage ought to always be +interpreted in its most superficial meaning, but to understand that there is an +underlying meaning to the passage that must be sought. A clear example of this +can be seen in the case of St. Paul's teaching on women's head coverings (1 Cor. +11:2-16). Surely today even the Church does not require, as it did, that women +wear veils in churches, yet this does not mean that this passage may simply be +ignored, because although we are no longer bound by the disciplinary ruling that +St. Paul prescribes, the teaching underlying it about the place of man & +woman respective to one another in the order of creation. A similar point can be +made for all the disciplinary laws found in the Old Testament: we do not simply +get rid of the Old Testament as something no longer applicable, but we maintain +it as part of our Bibles as something which has perpetual significance in spite +of its most superficial meanings having been fulfilled already in Jesus Christ +and no longer binding on the participants of the New Covenant. +
+ ++I am not saying that reading with footnotes is necessarily the superior way of +reading Scripture. After all, I do not think that the Church Fathers had +footnotes while reading the Scriptures either. In fact, much of Scripture, +particularly in the Catholic tradition, is meant to be read in a liturgical +context where one has the guidance of a priest, is prepared spiritually by the +context of the Mass, and is primed for the reading by the flow of the liturgical +seasons. However, especially when reading the Scriptures privately I think it's +worth the effort to have some clarifying contextualization that helps us to +understand the meaning behind the words of the text. We must remember that +Scripture, like any sign, is a visible symbol of an invisible (and spiritual) +reality. +