My review of Paul Borgman and Kelly James Clark’s book “Written to be Heard”, on how we miss one of the most important dimensions of the Gospels when we only read our Bibles.

Goals of the Book:
What if we were not getting all we could out of our Bibles? What if the medium through which we receive the Bible wasn’t the one that the biblical authors had chosen as their primary motive for getting their message to us? Borgman and Clark, in Written to be Heard argue just that.
We Americans are used to owning more than one physical copy of the Bible. More than that, we are used to, well, not really reading those Bibles. But when we do, we, as a culture, have been formed in ways not conducive to reading well and paying attention for long periods of time. Not only that, but our minds don’t process information that has been read the same way that we process information that we are hearing or having presented to us. Because of this, American Christians aren’t in a great place vis a vis their Bibles.

Why Should I Care?:
We don’t want to lose any of our Bibles, right? If every word in the Bible is a revelation from God to us, every single word is important! And James Jordan notes that the form itself is important, and the structure of the text is just as important as what it says. In light of this, if Borgman and Clark’s central claims, that the Gospels and Acts were to be performed, it is tantamount that we investigate the claim and interact with the Bible the way that the authors intended.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the Book:
Overall, I think this book is worth dealing with. In terms of the argument, I think the authors did a great job of tracing a logical argument and providing enough examples to follow through with their claims. I left the book more convinced that I need to hear the Bible and maybe find some way to have it performed.

But more importantly, as someone prayerfully looking to enter the ministry, I want to grapple with this book for what it means in a church setting. How much more should we acknowledge the need to read Scripture? How much more important is it for the reader/pastor to be more theatrical in their reading? If this helps open up more of the Scriptures to God’s church, then the whole endeavor will be entirely worth it.

The one thing I do have to note is that some of the concepts may not be entirely interesting to the lay reader. That’s not to say that it was extraneous or useless; just that it may not reach the popular levels that this concept may want to. I would love to see more popular level interactions with this text to see what this information would do in the hands of lay people!

All in all, I think this book is worth engaging with. You can grab more information at the Eerdmans website here. You could also pre-order it on Amazon, but it seems like there is a 1-2 month wait, so you might also consider Christianbook.com or Barnes and Noble!

This took me longer to finish than expected, mainly because it requires a lot of thought (I tend to speed-read my way through a lot of things, which isn't really optimal, but is what works for me). Written to be Heard, however, is the kind of book that you want to mull over and read with your Bible open at the same time, not because you don't trust what Borgman and Clark are expounding on in the text, but because you want to see with your own eyes the patterns that are being pulled out for you--and maybe read aloud to yourself.

Part Bible exposition, part literary study, the writers cover each of the Gospels in great detail, teasing out the biases, aims and structure of each writer, or in this case, storyteller of the Good News. Rather than cross-referencing the Gospels to each other and arguing about their differences, as we tend to do, they suggest that we consider each Gospel as individual stories, and as a transcription of an oral heritage. Variations, repetitions, and the way each book is structured then becomes understood as less of haphazard and poorly-constructed narrative--they are instead cues for listeners to pick up the points and themes of each Gospel.

Written to Be Heard: Recovering the Messages of the Gospels gives modern Christians a lot to chew on. As society moves from heavy reliance on text and the written word back to a preference for audio-visual forms, maybe the church should also reconsider what it means to read the Bible aloud.

We live in a culture that is obsessed with written ways of learning. Hundreds if not thousands of books and e-books are published everyday designed to communicate information via the medium of reading. Anachronistically, we presume that this is the normal way of learning/formation throughout the world for all centuries. But clearly this is a false assumption. Even today, most of the world uses oral, not written, modes of communication. Ancient stories and valuable histories are passed down throughout the centuries orally. While oral ‘things’ are being converted into written form, we lose an element of their richness in the translation process.

‘Written to be Heard’ argues that the Bible, particularly the words of the gospels, were meant to be heard, not read. Consequently, when we read instead of hearing, we lose some of the richness and even miss the mark in grasping their key messages due to an unintended medium. This has the potential to lead us into erroneous interpretation.

Paul Borgman and Kelly James Clark attempt to recover and understand the message of each gospel as it would have been received by its original (oral) hearers. They argue that the gospels were oral performances. This method of learning was advantageous and common in preliterate societies. In modern society, this is lost because our mode of understanding is different. On account of this, the authors of this book attempt to analyze with fresh ‘ears’, re-’hearing’ the gospels through the lens of ‘oral performance’.

This book is stimulating. Somethings you won’t agree with and other things you will find compelling. It’s primarily written for an academic audience, but that is not to say that anyone cannot learn much from this book.

I thank Eerdmans for providing me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book is great in regards to outlining the 4 gospel accounts. I dont think the authors did a good job proving their point though. The doctrines presented at the beginning of the book I got by reading the gospels. What they outline you can get by reading the gospels. There are random asides that dont come from the text but from the authors philosophical prepositions. (Examples are that the sin of sodom is not sexual but in regards to food. Actually Sodom had many sins, which fall into both of those categories. Another example is where they say God is limited by man. It was not drawn from the text they were looking at, and I could pull out dozens of texts that say otherwise.)