Contemplative Inquiry

I’ve made an inward turn in recent days. Partly to serve my recovery and partly in harmony with the season. I am working with sacred texts, specifically early Christian texts excluded from the New Testament. Works like The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, The Gospel of Philip and The Gospel of Thomas. These are sometimes described as ‘Gnostic’, but the value and accuracy of this term is now disputed.

This post is about how to read ancient texts and learn from them without treating them as infallible or having to agree with their contents. Below are four suggestions, paraphrased and adapted from the introduction to A New New Testament (1). This work combines traditional and recovered books, all thought to be written between 50 and 175 CE. They create a diverse whole which, collectively, cannot be turned into an orthodoxy.

This leaves the modern reader with the responsibility of making meaning and responding to the teachings of a movement that was dynamic and expanding but still vulnerable and far from the levers of power. I think there’s a good deal to be learnt here, presented in this way. I’m not a Christian, but Christianity is part of my heritage and does have meaning and relevance for me.

Here are the suggestions about how to read an ancient sacred text.

1 Read Personally

Read as if these documents matter deeply and immediately to you. Read as if the words might bring something to your relationships, your life in the world and your inner life. Where there are stories, enter into them and see how they feel. Where there is a letter, imagine that it was written to you. If the document is a poem or a song, see what feelings or memories it prompts.

Reading personally does not necessarily mean that you have to agree with the document or that its instructions need to be followed. Nor does it mean that you should try to wring meaning out of every sentence or word. Reading personally can involve gratitude for the beauty and wisdom of the document or a dislike for what is being said, sometimes both, even within the same text.  Most of all, this kind of reading invites us to make active connections to our own lives. Without always finding solutions, we may identify things in our lives that we tend to ignore or repress.

2 Read Thoughtfully

Think about the time and social setting in which the document was written, who might have written it, and why. When these questions come up, stop to read other sources that reveal what what life was like in the first and second centuries  Consult the introductions to the ancient texts and ponder why the particular document was written. Think about what kind of person might have written each document.

Muse about the similarities and differences between the circumstances of our world and those of the ancient world  Notice how they affect what the particular document might have meant in the first century versus what, if anything, it might mean in our time.

3 Read Imaginatively

Open your memory, heart and imagination to these texts. Let them affect you. Let them surprise you. Let them trigger your curiosity. Open to worlds that are different to yours. Let images live in your mind or heart. Notice how you feel. What images or stories draw you? Which ones make you afraid? Which ones  liberate joy?

4 Read Meditatively or Prayerfully

Dwell on the words of the text that attract your attention. If certain words make you feel gratitude and warmth, go back over them and the ones around them again, lingering on them. Let them sink in. Similarly, if certain words are upsetting or offensive in the text, return to them and ask why they stir you up in this way.

Notice what ideas in the document hold you or make you feel loved. Do not read further until you have received those feelings those feelings or acknowledged their place in you. Whether the words hold, repel, inspire or confuse you, stay with them long enough to acknowledge their impact. Then let them go by giving thanks or releasing them into the universe  Let this release be a larger reality beyond you.

(1) Hal Taussig (ed) A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-First  Century Boston & New York: Mariner Books, 2013 (Foreword by John Dominic Crossan)