Had thought to write a bit more about context today, but technical issues slowed me up this morning.

Instead, let me share a quote from the introduction to The New Testament in Modern English by J.B. Phillips. I love to read the Phillips New Testament, and the introduction is fascinating. Here’s the quote I wanted to share:

Paul, for instance, writing in haste and urgency to some of his wayward and difficult Christians, was not tremendously concerned about dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of his message. I doubt very much whether he was even concerned about being completely consistent with what he had already written. Consequently, it seems to me quite beside the point to study his writings microscopically, as it were, and deduce hidden meanings of which almost certainly he was unaware. His letters are alive, and they are moving—in both senses of that word—and their meaning can no more be appreciated by cold minute examination than can the beauty of a bird’s flight be appreciated by dissection after its death.

I love the imagery of that last sentence. I confess that I can sometimes be the astronomer who can’t see the beauty of the stars or the topologist who only sees mountains as something to be mapped. Sometimes we need to sit back and appreciate the beauty of the Bible.

Thoughts, comments, complaints, suggestions?