We miss a great deal of the New Testament… because we are so poorly informed about the Old. And the point to make here is that the first readers of these New Testament documents, those whose heirs we have become, had a much greater awareness of what was going on not simply because it was written to them, in their language and culture, but because they were biblically literate in ways that most contemporary Christians are not.
In this lecture, Gordon Fee examines some of the Reasons why Christians read their Bibles poorly. He then points out some of the Results of this reality; and third, he points toward some Remedies.
Among the reasons cited for poor reading are: the over-stimulation of the senses making sustained reading difficult, the non-contextual individualization of verses, the fragmentation and flattening of Scripture. The negative results of this mean that people have ‘a terribly fragmented understanding’ of what the Bible is all about.
Fee proposes the following remedies:
1. People need to learn to read in meaningful sections.
2. People need to learn to read Scripture aloud.
3. Most people will need to read with some kind of guide.
