Antonius Virdei Eresto Gaudiawan

To Each Its Own Meaning

Steven L Mckenzie and Stephen R Haynes (eds)

Reading the Bible sometimes does not familiar for many Catholic. They afraid to
interpret and understand the bible wrongly. Many lay people respet the Bible as a Holly Book
that cannot be interpreted freely. As they know, The Bible will not contain any wrong
conception. What is written in the bible is always right. They always think that God created
this universe in seven days. That was such an amazing understanding and interpretation if we
see it from our perspective.

Reading the book To Each Owns Meaning challange me again and again concerning
our understanding on the Bible, morover for the Old Testament. There are two important
concept to understand and to interpret the bible. They are historic critics and form criticis
(form geschichte).

Historical-critical methodologies is a way to understand the maening of the bible text

through its history. Scholar tends to understand the Bible throug the history that exist and
surround it. Hitory-crititics also using some evidence in their research they are epigraphical
evidence, archeological evidence, and sociology. Its a sign that understanding the bible
cannot solely based on single method or assumption. There are so many understanding,
evidence and theories to understand the bible itself.

The most struck me when reading this book is the enlargment of myth about the
history of Israel. Actually Israel is not very popular. There is no evidence that stated that
Israel is a big country with twelve tribes. The other big kingdom is Assyria and Babylonia. In
the evidence of Babylonia there is only stated the last part of the Old Testament.

Maxwell Miller stated that actually the story from Abraham until the kingdom of
David is not exist as have been written down in the bible. Morover, David and Saul were
known not as a king of Israel but as an leader of a private soldiers which gave protection for
the people who paid them.
 For me, the most confusing is not about how I my self understand that reality. But
how I can teach it for many lay people that believe in their heart that what was written in the
Bible are correct; not only correct as a book of faith, but also as a book of knowledge. I can
say just like this because I had teach some leaders of the Catholics basic community. When I
taught that the Genesis chapter I until X is actually not real and just kind of Saga, they
confused. And for them, learning the bible is very heart and difficult, especially when
learning the Bible through such theory. They prefer to learn the morality from the Bible. And
as I know, morality without any right understanding will make them new fundamentalist
people.

For me, understanding the Bible is not only a single way of thinking and approaching.
There are so many ways that should be done to understand it correctly, though we will not
comprehend it completly and exactly. Then, the other task rise, that we are, as a scholar,
called to teach so many lay people to understand the Bible more broadly.