Reading Poetry to Reading Scripture
Even 'pagan' poetry enhances Bible reading...
Reading and studying poetry has greatly enhanced my understanding of the Bible, especially the Old Testament. Poetry has moved me to look at the text not as a rule book, or “basic instructions before leaving earth,” but to see it as a story of God and his love for his people. The Bible has become richer and deeper for me.
The Bible has influenced much of our Western culture. Many of our metaphors and idioms, if they did not come from Shakespeare, come from the Scriptures, or some understanding of Scripture. Our poetry, art, and language help us read the Scriptures as the Scriptures help us understand our culture.
When we translated our Bible, liturgies, and theologies into other cultures, the West forced upon them our culture as THE Christian culture. Anything that does not look like our culture is pagan.
The Biblical Mind Podcast recently had on Dr. Fausto Liriano who translates the Bible in Central and South American cultures.1 He says the expulsion of indigenous cultures has had a negative effect on Bible translation.
The interviewer asks Dr. Liriano for an example of where a practice from Western cultures interferes with local indigenous populations working out their own theology. He answers:
“Okay, for example, in translation, if I can give an example from Bible translation, it's really difficult to translate poetry, because all poetry and all artistic expression... it was taken out from the Indigenous community, because it was pagan. So, we have to go way, way back to, and even to people that are practicing some pagan practices... to locate... the poetry that you have. This is the way you think. This is the way you used to do art. And we can recover that to do a poetic Bible translation, which is in some cases surprisingly close to Biblical Hebrew poetry. So, it was imposed from outside, like, no, no, no, no, your poetry is pagan. You have to eliminate any trace of poetry, and you have to sing our hymns, or our songs, worship songs from outside...”
When the indigenous people lost their poetry, they lost a way to engage with the biblical text contextually for their own people and way of life. Finding and recovering their culture's poetry was key to translating the Bible they could understand. In a way it also gives them back their personhood, which was stolen by the expulsion of their art.
“So, people have these, they don't like their art, they don't feel it's art. I remember this poem by an Uruguayan poet that says, it's called 'De Nadies', the nobodies. And it says, they don't have art, they have handicraft. They don't have a language, they have a dialect. And so you have to tell them, it's not a dialect, it's your language.”
Using their own language and poetry in translating the Scriptures gives them their own voice back and allows them to be who God is calling them to be: one of the various languages, tribes, and nations within the family of God.
“You have art. So you have to recover that as an expression of art and connect that to Bible translation, even for theology, even for liturgies... I think that Bible translation now is doing a favor because the whole concept of doing translation and the whole concept of approaching culture of the people and rescuing some of their language and art and ways to do poetry or think and get that into translation is helping them to actually see themselves as persons that want to put that into place in their church community and learn their ancient ways.”
Ever since humanity could look up and wonder, knowing God and experiencing him has been through the arts. By listening, reading, and understanding a culture’s poetry, we can best communicate the gospel with understanding, and proclaim it as it really is: good news for all people.
Has poetry helped you read the Bible?
From The Biblical Mind: Theology in the Mother Tongue: Oral Bible Translation and Embodied Faith (Fausto Liriano) Ep. #216, Sep 4, 2025