Ruden - The face of water: a translator on beauty and meaning in the Bible

Im probably supposed to start with the story of some inspirational encounter with the Bible, or some rebellious discovery about it, which sent me self-consciously down a life-changing road of learning or unlearning.

Sorry, not this time. You want a moment of inspiration? I am six or seven, and walking on the freshly mown lawn in my backyard, off the highway in Ohio. I am imagining how wonderful a pair of new Keds sneakers would beand then there are all the other purchases I crave: bright, in fresh packaging, nothing homemade, mended with epoxy, or handed down. I have just been watching Saturday morning cartoons, and a commercial for Kedsshowing children running and jumping in colorful footwearhas propelled me outdoors, humming the jingle, in the sheer ecstasy of hope for a lifetime of consumerism.

About the Bible, I felt nothing more than about the bowl of rubber fruit in the parlor at Christ United Methodist Church in the town of Portage, after the weekly worship service and Sunday School. If you were particularly bored, waiting for the adults to shut up about local politics and crop prices and take you home, you might pull a synthetic grape off its stem and try to turn it inside out. You could never quite do that, or tear the thing either, but the sheer foreign toughness of the material was more interesting than nothing. I had an hour-a-day TV limit at home, so sometimes I read the Bible in the same spirit as kept me fiddling with the grape.

To the eye, the book typically offers a pebbly black vinyl cover (like nothing on a book youd yearn to open up and explore), a gold-colored inset title (The Holy Bible, which to a lot of people says, I think Im too holy for you to touch), and a withered-looking ribbon bookmark attached at the spine (as if it would be a big problem to lose your place in the ordinary way, and stray from the prescribed devotional verses).

Whats more, if youre unfamiliar with the Bible and open it at random, you may be put right off, as when you venture into the higher digits of cable TV and narrow your eyes at Extreme Mutt Makeovers or Dirty Dirndls: Hitlers Secret Porn Stash or whatever. Given the Bibles content by proportions, youre likely to land on a long genealogy or the recited failures of one kingship after another, or a strong-lunged praise-song or lament or sermon or set of regulations. Hefty commentaries and minute footnotes, both commonly full of modern religious doctrine, hardly enliven the text, which may seem as uniquely dull as its encasement. The Bible is in a rut; it seems to need professional help.

But how do I dare try to expound the book? Im the opposite of a cleric or theologian or philosopher: Im a Quaker, which means Im admonished to speak my own mind plainly and briefly if I feel an undeniable need, but otherwise to search quietly for the Lightin whatever form It happens to takein other people. Many Quakers (though not myself) stop short of calling themselves religious. How can I have the gall to pronounce on the character of Scripture, in the original languages or not?

Whats more, I have no formal qualifications whatsoever as a Biblical scholarnot one degree, not even a single course credit, let alone peer-reviewed publications in scholarly journals, or a teaching post. I can only read the Bible in Hebrew and Greek and give my impressionsall the while remembering that old stricture: Using a language doesnt make you an expert on it, any more than spending money makes you an economist.