This is something from my scripture study that I posted on Facebook this morning, and thought might be worth preserving here.
Do you know the “slave Bible”? Published in 1808, it is an expurgated text, leaving only those parts of the Bible that were “safe” to preach to enslaved people. It preserves all of the “submit to authority” verses, deletes any mention of Israel escaping Egyptian slavery, and so on.
I noticed a few days ago that the visit of Nicodemus to Jesus (John 3) is missing, and I’ve been puzzling over why. Then today I found this, by Mary MacLeod Bethune:
“My teacher had a box of Bibles and texts, and she gave me one of each for my very own. That same day the teacher opened the Bible to John 3:16, and read: ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’
“With these words the scales fell from my eyes and the light came flooding in. My sense of inferiority, my fear of handicaps, dropped away. ‘Whosoever,’ it said. No Jew nor Gentile, no Catholic nor Protestant, no black nor white; just ‘whosoever.’ It meant that I, a humble Negro girl, had just as much chance as anybody in the sight and love of God. These words stored up a battery of faith and confidence and determination in my heart, which has not failed me to this day.”
The enslavers had a better grasp of the power of the Bible than I do.
Walker Wright added a link to his 2016 post at Times & Seasons, A Supreme Act of Love, about his own response to John 3:16, and then we had this conversation (the FB post is public, so I hope you don’t mind my recording these thoughts here, Walker):
Walker: I remember reading a BCC post that preaching Jesus did nothing for someone like a Congolese child soldier.
For people who are used to hearing about God’s love and human dignity in their churches or (in secular form) their legal systems or politics, this may seem trivial. For one that has known nothing but the evils of existence, it is a profound revelation. And we should not deprive those we help of it.
Ardis: That’s exactly the sense I get from the passage I quoted — and exposes the evil behind the withholding of it in the case of the makers of this bastardized Bible. They knew what they were doing, because they recognized what those words would mean.
Walker: Exactly. This is an incredible, real life example of something I only thought and felt.
Ardis: Mary MacLeod Bethune’s story, by the way, comes from Black Women in White America (1972); I found it quoted in True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary (2007), a commentary that draws on the scholarship/artwork/experiences/words of African Americans to illuminate what the New Testament means/has meant in that community.
I tend to emphasize verbs when I read out loud. A pronoun like “whosoever” slips by almost unnoticed in favor of “believe.” So, I have sometimes found it a bit strange that a tune we sometimes sing in the Utah Sacred Harp group, with the chorus a poetic paraphrase of John 3:16, really leans on “whosoever,” and holds it for a while, before moving fairly quickly past “will believe”.
Sometimes, in this tradition, you’ll sing something where the emphasis sounds strange, and think “This tune must have been written with another text in mind.” But in this case, I’m starting to appreciate why a composer would deliberately emphasize “whosoever.” Thanks to you and Mary MacLeod Bethune, I’ll sing this with a little more appreciation next time.
(Oh, and if you want to hear it sung, here’s a recording. The words will start about halfway through after the singers go through the tune once on just the notes. Traditional notions of choral beauty are less important than unrestrained, wholehearted (and loud!) participation, so it might not be your thing — but it’s definitely not too slow!)
I really liked that, Mike. Thanks!
As a good friend of mine is wont to say, “Every day’s a schoolday”. Ardis, from your OP I’ve learned about Mary McLeod Bethune and her work, and from Mike’s comments I’ve been amazed to hear and learn about a musical tradition that is new to me – one that has clearly re-crossed the Atlantic nearly to its roots, in the strict Presbyterian Free Church of Scotland in which my ancestors worshipped and my father’s family grew up. One of his brothers was a “precentor” in their services, in a kind of “call and response” music. No instruments, little tune, and always psalms. An example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxtTrRtd8Oo
(unless your Scots Gaelic is very good, you won’t understand a word of it – I don’t!).
Isn’t it wonderful how one thing leads to another?
That was some interesting singing!