Have you ever heard of the “flip and pick” method of reading the Bible? Basically, you open up the Bible and whatever point the page falls to is where you start reading. It was made famous by Augustine, who in his Confessions, told the story of how he decided to pick up the Bible and read the first chapter his eyes laid on, which happened to be Romans 13.
This method of reading is not usually how scholars, teachers, and pastors encourage their learners to read. It’s important to read the text extensively and with as much context as possible. My old Greek teacher used to say, “Context—you are my best friend, and you will always be! Nothing will ever change that.” I grew up memorising individual Bible verses completely devoid of context and disconnected from their larger narrative or rhetorical aims. Now I encourage my students to read whole chapters or even letters if they’re trying to understand even a single verse or word. But this is not the only that way early Christians understood texts of the Bible could be encountered.
Dr. Jeremiah Coogan has recently penned an article examining how early Christians used technology to make parts of Gospel literature accessible without having to read through the whole thing. As ancient book culture developed, people used simple technologies like reference charts, tables, paragraphing, and various symbols to organise and mark texts for easy reference to the material. It’s a lot like a book index today or the search function on your computer. You don’t have to read through the whole book or look through every file to find what you need. You put in a keyword and the technology will lead you to where you want to go.
Dr. Coogan shows us how early Christians organised the Gospels as a “practical text,” using simple tables to connect parallel passages with each other. This allowed readers to flip between the Gospels to see the similarities and differences. Another way the text was organised was with titles and markings for lectionary or liturgical use. If you needed to get to a particular passage for a church celebration or event or feast, you could easily access that material. Reading the whole thing was great, but Christians also used creative methods of accessing the stories of the Gospels in piecemeal.
These technologies suggest that the Gospels can be accessed in many different ways, and that there isn’t just one single best way of using these texts.
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