Excavating Bible Stories

Have you noticed your child’s eyes light up as you tell of animals’ flooding into an ark of salvation, a clever woman’s tricking enemy chariots into a crippling bog or a teenage boy’s outwitting a massive giant with the artillery of a slingshot? Children love Bible stories. Not only are these tales chock-full of adventure, they also convey deep and timeless truths that resonate at the level of the soul. Sacred stories are not designed for a shallow reading, but rather are to be slowly and meticulously mined like fathomless treasure troves. Their dynamic nature yields nuggets of golden wisdom every time.

Excavating truth and meaning from Scripture is a process theologians call exegesis, which means “to draw out.” While exegesis can be a complicated process even for adults, parents can equip little exegetes with tools to dig deep and unearth narrative gems. Here are a few ways to sift through the sediment and discover treasures rooted deep within in these ancient tales:

Get grounded. Dedicate the dig into Scripture with a prayer to encounter the Spirit that breathes life. “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”

Compare excavation sites. Locate the passage in various forms. For instance, try reading it in at least two different children’s Bibles and a formal translation, then compare and contrast them. Are there any notable differences?

Locate boundaries. Context is the key to exegesis. Locate where the story fits within the big story of the Bible. Which stories come directly before and after? Who is the biblical author, if known? Who is the author’s intended audience? What is the genre of the biblical book? Does the writing follow a specific structure? Taking Scripture out of its intended context is like mining out of bounds on barren ground.

Find the common core. To pull from the Common Core Standards your child knows oh-so-well from school, find text-to-text, text-to-self and text-to-world connections. How does this story relate to other stories your child knows? (Example: Cinderella is strikingly similar to the book of Esther.) How does your child personally identify with the story or characters? Does the story relate to or inform something going on in your child’s world?

Consult with fellow excavators. Research what scholars say about the story and you’ll quickly realize how multi-faceted these narratives are! For added fun, seek out cinematic, musical, dramatic and artistic adaptations of biblical narratives, but do so with a critical eye. (Artistic interpretations are subjective and therefore produce the opposite of exegesis, called eisegesis, or “to draw in.” It would be unwise, for instance, to allow Michelangelo to inform one’s mental picture of Moses: His own literal reading of a Latin word resulted in his famous sculpture sprouting horns instead of rays of glory!)

Faith columnist Wendy Connelly is a mother of two and seminary student at St. Paul School of Theology, Leawood.