Jan Meyer and Ray Land (2006) describe threshold concepts as core ideas that, while initially “troublesome” or counter-intuitive for novices within a field of study, become “transformative” and “integrative” once they’re understood. Moreover, once we understand them, we’re not likely to forget them. The more we interact with, understand, and apply these concepts, the more we think like disciplinary insiders. I’ve drawn or adapted the following concepts from Adler-Kassner and Wardle (2015), Breed (2015), Brettler (2005), Lester et al. (2014), and a host of others I’ve encountered over several years of studying and teaching this literature.

1. What we today call “the Bible” is a cross-cultural library, not a single book by a single author with a single point of view from a single period of time.

2. When approaching sacred texts, we can distinguish between confessional readings and critical readings. These approaches are motivated by different assumptions and goals, but the two approaches may inform or enrich one another. (See, for example, Brettler, pp. 1-6.)

3. Because texts are rhetorical—that is, designed to communicate between particular people at particular times for particular purposes—critical interpreters seek to understand texts in light of their contexts. (When it comes to ancient texts like those collected in the Bible, however, these efforts are particularly complicated; see Breed.)

4. Texts are processes: by their very nature, they live beyond their originating contexts and meanings, unhindered by authorial intentions, free to be read and understood in a variety of ways by a variety of readers in a variety of places and times. (See especially Breed.)

5. Meaning is constructed by readers interacting with a text in light of other texts, experiences, perceptions, categories, etc. (There’s always another interpretation.)

References & Further Reading

Adler-Kassner, L., & Wardle, E. Eds. (2015). Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing studies. Utah State University Press.

Breed, B. (2014). Nomadic text: A theory of biblical reception history. Indiana University Press.

Brettler, M. (2004). How to read the Bible. Jewish Publication Society.

Kugel, J. L. (2007). How to read the bible: A guide to scripture, then and now. Free Press.

Lester, G. B. (2014). “Understanding by design.” In G. B. Lester, et al., Understanding the bible by design: Create courses with purpose. Augsburg Fortress.

Meyer, J., & Land, R. (2006). Overcoming barriers to student understanding: Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge. Routledge.

Mroczek, E. (2016). The literary imagination in Jewish antiquity. Oxford University Press.

Satlow, M. L. (2014). How the bible became holy. Yale University Press.