Searching for the Self: Classic Stories, Christian Scripture, and the Quest for Personal Identity

by Adrian T. Smith

Before we leave this chapter, I cannot resist briefly mentioning another (re-)emerging medium for indwelling God’s story. I’m referring to the contemporary recovery of an ancient practice—the memorization of scripture for oral recitation in community. This practice recognizes that the Bible was the product of an oral (mass illiterate) culture. Back then, most written texts were scripts for public performance. So think of the four Gospels as dramas to be reanimated, with voice and gesture, in a communal setting. Or the letters of Paul as speeches in the classical tradition, to be “channeled” by a sympathetic interpreter, whose vocalization and gesture embodied the virtual presence of Paul in the church gathering. In response to these insights, I helped form a “troupe” of performers of Scripture. Our basic method: 1) select a sequence of texts, from Genesis to Revelation, which work together to highlight the narrative arcs of Scripture; 2) internalize and embody these texts, via interpretative vocalization and gesture; 3) perform the sequence for a live audience. You have probably never experienced anything like this, neither as a performer nor as an audience member. But the feedback we get, from both performers and audience, typically goes like this: “You enabled me to dwell in God’s story in a new and fresh way.”699