Genesis 1:1-2:3: Creation frontispiece
Genesis 2:4-25: Adam and Eve
A dynamic tension exists in biblical interpretation between what the faith community sees as the meaning of a certain passage and the great many thoughts given birth by that meaning. The different books from both the Old and New Testaments are connected to each other through themes, plots and vocabulary The Christian Bible relates only one message: God has brought salvation to the world through his only begotten Son and continues to do so in the Holy Spirit, and community of the baptized must respond accordingly.
Tradition itself, at least as far as it is applied to The Saint John’s Bible, has a tactile and visual dimension. We can think of the sacraments, how Christians perform them, and how they conceive of them. Water can symbolize many things, but it will always symbolize Holy Baptism, if nothing else. Similarly, bread and wine, blood and body will symbolize the Eucharist. Christian tradition expands some concepts and gives them a deeply symbolic quality, not in terms of constructing them to suit some sectarian purposes, but rather in a way that increases what is already there. For example, light, darkness, way, call, creation, birth, death, life, resurrection, fire, and law are all words that are used in countless ways in everyday speech. Christianity, however, provides a particular matrix within which these terms characterize the very foundation stones of faith. And they are biblical. Remove the faith component, and we are back to everyday speech. The faith component is the tradition, and that faith component is significant in forming biblical authority.
From Word and Image: The Hermeneutics of the Saint John’s Bible, and The Saint John’s Bible: Biblical Authority within the Illuminated Word, by MICHAEL PATELLA, Chair of the Committee on Illumination and Text for the Saint John’s Bible.
Romans 8: Creation Waits with Eager Longing
Revelation 12: 1-18 : Woman and the Dragon