The Bible is Boring

A few years ago, on my way across Harvard Yard after a Hebrew literature class, I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine. In class we had been studying a passage of the Old Testament, and we were discussing the place of sacred texts in our lives. “I just don’t understand why people read them,” he said. “I mean, I guess if you’re religious, it’s different, maybe. But they just don’t seem very interesting.”

Why read it?

I have heard similar views from many of my friends. They know religion holds a mysterious attraction for some, but they’ve read the books, and they seem dull. What is the point? Why do people read them?

A fundamental misunderstanding between the religious and the secular mind underlies this question. In the minds of many of my secular friends, religion is a matter of convenience, entertainment, or socializing. Of course, if you are selecting from novels, or movies, or musicals, you pick the most interesting one. You might appreciate the lyricism of Shakespeare or the raw energy of Stravinsky, and you choose according to this preference.

But you wouldn’t select a biography of Shakespeare or Stravinsky based on its lyricism or its energy – at least, not unless you’d first satisfied yourself as to its reliability. Religious scriptures are not works of art – or at least, they are not merely works of art. Their function is not to entertain, but to teach, to inform, to correct. Given this, per the religious mindset, we adhere to a holy book or a set of beliefs not because we find it interesting, but because we find it trustworthy.

A monotonous myth?

This leads me to another point. Many of the very same friends who consider the Bible boring also consider it a myth. But this seems unlikely. Myths really are works of art; Homer wrote an epic, not an edict. Myths are fantastic and interesting because they were written to be entertaining. They were meant for plays and festivals, not moral codes and philosophy texts. For those, you should go to the Stoics or the Epicureans, whose writings no doubt will seem comparatively dull. The most quoted parts of Plato are not the long prescriptions in the middle of, say, The Republic, but the myth he includes at the end.

Given this, the pattern of the Christian Scriptures is not that of a myth. Take the creation story, for instance. The pagan stories are fantastical; they involve love-making, incest, death, blood, and sometimes all of these. The Hebrew creation story says, more or less, “God created A. A was good. That was day 1. God created B. B was good. That was day 2.” The man who told this was not trying to be entertaining. He was not trying to write a myth; he was trying to write a history. And while the pagan poets freely embellished, altered, and mixed their stories over the years, the Hebrew people faithfully copied every word of their accounts to the letter, with next-to-no change over thousands of years. Why? Because they did not see themselves as telling stories, but rather as setting down facts.

The Destination

Why did one of my friends find Chronicles “criminally boring?” Probably for the same reason schoolboys find history textbooks criminally boring. History textbooks are bounded by the stolid, down-to-earth, sometimes-dull considerations of fact: long lists of names and places and numbers and years that you’re not allowed to mix up to suit your fancy. This is what we find in Chronicles; it is a chronicle, a historical record. Could it be made more interesting? Doubtless. But the point is to be factual.

And this very dullness, in the end, leads us back to the question: If I don’t find this book interesting, why should I read it? Because if this book is not merely a set of stories and axioms, or a cultural relic, but rather a truthful record of where the world came from and where it is going, then you should find it interesting, the way a general finds an intelligence report interesting or a shipwrecked man finds a lifeboat interesting. Otherwise said, the Scripture is only a pathway. The path may not be particularly scenic, but who cares? It is the destination that matters.

“bible” by stockcatalog is licensed under CC BY 2.0