Metabiblical

The prefix meta- owes its origin to Aristotle. His collected works, the Corpus Aristotelium, have come down through a process of collection, arrangement, and manuscript transition that resulted in a standardized order of materials. As the collection came to stand, materials on logic were followed by materials on physics, and after that came materials referred to as των μετα τα φυσικα, “the things after physics”, which came to be rendered in Latin as Metaphysica, which must be the source of the English metaphysics.

The matters which came to be known as metaphysics include issues concerning the nature of reality, causality, form, and matter. Because we might say these things go beyond or transcend physics, by analogy people have used meta- to form other compound words, involving concept of increasing layers of abstraction or self-referentiality.

The term biblical is similarly ambiguous. In one sense, it means “having something to do with the Bible”, as in the phrase biblical literature or biblical studies. In another sense, it used to mean, “in agreement with the Bible”, as when people argue over whether some idea is biblical. In this latter sense, the question is loaded with assumptions, including the idea that “the Bible” is a well-defined concept, and that it is univocal enough to be thought of as having coherent opinions.

The English word Bible is singular, and refers, in the mind’s eye, to a large black book, often with Holy Bible written on the cover. Both in materials terms and in theological terms it is presented as a singular entity. This large black book, according to many supporters, is an important guide to how we should think, live, and perhaps even how we should organize our political lives. At the same time, there is a vigorous and ongoing controversy, perhaps 2200 years old, over what exactly it is the black book communicates and what, if anything, should be done about it.

The casual observer, or even a very involved observer, steps into this swirling dialogue, almost always without any sort of full introduction. We find ourselves encountering bits and pieces of the biblical just as a result of living in a world impacted by Christendom. If we are particularly ambitious, we might even read some or all of one of those big black Bibles, and we might imagine that we understand it.

To get a firm gasp on the massive collection of texts, and ideas, and historical events that collect around the term biblical, however, we will need to go up and down a few levels of analysis. On one end of things, it can be useful to get down into Hebrew and Greek languages, into the manuscripts that passed down the biblical texts, and into the world of textual criticism. At another level, it is useful to read up on the history of Christianity, canon formation, and biblical interpretation. And, of course, there is reading the Bible itself, in at least one of its various canonical forms, and trying to come to grips with the origins of its various books.

To get a grip on what all things biblical are doing in the world is to take on the metabiblical challenge: to dig through the various layers of the long and complex history of the Bible and come out with a better understanding of the space in history that we inhabit.