Is the Bible a History Book? Interpreting Scripture with the Early Church

Why do we read the Bible? I wonder if this is a question which many Christians have asked themselves recently.

Ever since its canonization, Christians have stressed the importance of reading, studying, and understanding the Bible for the maintenance, growth and strength of the Christian tradition. The earliest dogmas of the church, theological truths which we still hold to today, relied on a proper interpretation of scripture as they came into being.

For many who do not find themselves in the Christian tradition, scripture will be at best a good moral document, and at worst a fairy tale. However, what remains is that the Bible is a book of (usually) black words on white pages. What makes these words any more important to us than other ancient classics such as Homer's Iliad or Plato's Republic.

Christian's have always asserted that there is something more to the Bible than the words on the page, that there is something behind the text that is significant for the life of the Christian. But what is it that we find to be behind the text of the Bible?

Whether we realize it or not (and many do not), Evangelical interpretation has been greatly influenced by the historical-critical scholarship of the modern era. Historical-critical scholarship has primarily focused itself on the historical events behind the text, debating whether they happened and how the text of the Bible both coincides and differentiates from said events. 

From this method of scripture interpretation arose the discipline of biblical archaeology. While this no longer is the case, biblical archaeology began primarily as a method of proving the events, places, and people of the Bible, primarily concerning itself with the Old Testament narratives. Consequentially, Evangelical interpretation began to concern itself primarily with a historical reading of the text, with any alternative interpretations being labelled as heterodox. 

While there certainly is value in understanding that God has acted in the course of human history, must our primary concern be whether the events to which scripture attests happened exactly as penned?

My argument, informed by the Fathers of the early church, is no.

Consider this: for the Patristics, "the Bible was not a perfect historical record. Scripture was, for them the orienting, luminous center of a highly varied and complex reality, shaped by divine providence. It was true not by virtue of successfully or accurately representing any one event or part of this divinely ordained reality. Rather, the truth rested in the scripture's power to illuminate and disclose the order and pattern of all things" (John J. O'Keefe and R.R. Reno, Sanctified Vision, 11). 

For the earliest interpreters of scripture, what was important was not how things happened, but rather how the events of scripture pointed to something greater, the person of Jesus Christ. Scripture was, to the Patristics, not a history book, but rather an active and living document that revealed the saving work of Jesus Christ to his bride, the church. 

While the Patristics did not go as far as to say that the events to which scripture attests did not happen, they show no remorse for not having a historical interpretation as their primary hermeneutic. Rather, it was understood that through the documenting of these events, scripture pointed to the One behind these events. 

What is our lens in interpreting scripture? Do we read in order to prove the events, hoping that this will aid our apologetic in proving God's existence to the unbeliever? Or, rather, do we take a step of faith and allow the text to speak of something greater, to speak of our saviour, Jesus Christ?