Teaching scripture in the classroom
The study of Scripture in a classroom context takes the reader into the world of Jewish and Christian believers. Teachers need to develop reading and interpretation skills to appreciate the understandings of God and religious experience that are presented in biblical texts.
The Catholic approach to interpreting Scripture is summed up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to the person in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words (n.109).
“In order to discover the sacred author’s intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of [the author’s] time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current (n.110).
This is supported by a papal encyclical stating:
For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression (Dei Verbum, 12).
The Bible is firmly grounded in history; in the history of the Jewish people, the historical events surrounding Jesus of Nazareth and the history of the early Christian communities. However, at no time do Biblical authors claim to present objective history. Each book in the Old and New Testaments has been written from the bias of faith. The aim was never to write history but rather “to proclaim the wonders that God has worked in the midst of people and to interpret those events so that others might have faith” (The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, Pontifical Biblical Commission, 1993]. Ordinary, everyday language is inadequate for such a task, so the Biblical authors made extensive use of symbol, metaphor and imagery. Therefore, for the teacher and student of Scripture the question is not just, ‘Did this (event) really happen?’ but ‘What does this text mean in the past and in the present?’
There are some important educational principles teachers need to keep in mind when engaging students with scriptural texts in the classroom learning and teaching of Religion.
All teaching of Scripture must proceed from a clear understanding that the Bible is theological interpretation of, and reflection on, historical realities and faith experiences. Engaging with biblical texts is not a ‘pre-programmed activity’ with easily predictable results that attempts to identify in the Bible a secure and reliable locus of revelation and impose an absolute meaning on a text. “The process of tradition … is to be understood as an ongoing, always new dialogue with God, telling, retelling and ‘translating’ the traditional stories” (Pollyfeyt and Bieringer, 2005, p.29).
There is no text without context.
The Bible is a witness to the ongoing dialogical process of revelation and communication between God and humans. In the Bible, we encounter how certain representatives of our religious history interpreted God’s self-communication to them (Pollyfeyt and Bieringer, 2005, p.29).