Dive In: Design's Pericope

We’re transferring our old VHS-format home movies to DVD’s this summer. One of the biggest reasons is so that we can edit them.

You know how it is with home movies: 20 minutes of ho-hum scanning the crowd for the one minute of hilarious footage of that precious one-year-old digging into the birthday cake.

Although we’ll keep the raw film somewhere, we’re hoping to edit out the boring stuff and make an interesting movie to give to the kids someday.

Not everything that happened is going to be in that movie. We’ll pull out the important, interesting things and put them in a relevant order. In other words, this movie should eventually show signs of design.

The Bible is a beautiful book – the most magnificent piece of literary work I’ve ever read. Please note that literary does not mean fictional. It means a written work with a design and purpose. The Bible contains every evidence of design.

So our job as readers is utilize that design to help us gain meaning.

I will be posting words at the Sumballa-Dive In site that help us to get deeper into the Word. Today’s word is pericope.

It is a Greek word (pa-RIH-kōp-ee) that means “cutting around.” It’s used in Biblical texts to indicate a complete literary unit. For example, Mark 3:1-6 contains the story of Jesus healing a man’s withered hand.

How do we know this is a complete unit? It begins with Jesus entering the synagogue in v 1 and ends with him leaving to go to a lake in v 7. The location, in this unit, indicates it is complete.

We have to be alert to word choices or action that indicates the completion of a pericope. Don’t trust chapter or verse division (or subtitles, for that matter). A pericope can be short, like this one in Mark, or several chapters.

Another pericope, for example, is the story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50. The account must be read as a whole to understand the point. The story of how God brought the family of Jacob to Egypt is revealed through the life of Joseph. We wouldn’t want to limit our study to one chapter and think we’ve gotten the story.

An interesting twist on that is the story of Judah and Tamar in Gen 38. We’re just getting rolling on Joseph’s life when we seem to take an irrelevant detour into this strange incestuous account of Judah. Yet the design tells us that this story is part of the understanding of this pericope. (I’ll be talking more about this tomorrow.)

Once we identify a pericope, then we look for clues in the design. It’s more than “this is what happened.” Our hoped-for family movie won’t include all that happened but what’s significant. The pericope includes what’s important, what makes a point. Our job is to begin digging for that point. We’ll continue adding “digging” tools next week.

Here’s your assignment for the next week:

1. Locate a pericope. It’s fine to use something you’ve read (or are reading) from your daily Bible reading.

2. Read the entire pericope in one sitting.

3. Identify what indicated the start and end of your pericope.

4. Had you seen this pericope as a complete unit before? Do you have questions about events included in the pericope?

I will examine the Judah-Tamar story tomorrow to show why it should be included in the pericope of Joseph, and how that affects the purpose of the pericope.

If you would like, include a post on your blog about your findings regarding your pericope. You could also include a report on your week of daily Bible reading. I’ve included a form below where you can share your blog entry (put the specific address in the form) with the rest of us as we journey together.