St. John Russian Orthodox Christian Mission Church in Lewisburg, PA, with the Bucknell University Orthodox Christian Community, is co-hosting a series of campus-community Bible Studies entitled “On Eagle’s Wings: Inspiration in Difficult Times from the Gospel of John and the Book of Exekiel.” Guided by the Church Fathers, we will explore Holy Scripture in light of Orthodox Christian tradition. The in-person Bible Study meets in-person usually on Sundays at 2:30 p.m. in the Bucknell University Barnes & Noble Bookstore Cafe, Fourth and Market Streets in beautiful downtown Lewisburg (you can confirm the schedule on the calendar linked here). We use the Orthodox Study Bible, but also have Bibles available for when you visit. All are welcome, and the discussions are designed so that you can join at any time. There is no homework, and no prior knowledge is needed. Please also feel free to catch up with the weekly video summaries provided below. Discussions are facilitated by Priest Paul Siewers of St. John’s, who is also a professor of literature at Bucknell University, where he teaches a class on the Bible and Literature, and specializes in early Christian literature as a teacher and scholar.
The Orthodox Church takes an approach to Scripture that embraces both literal and symbolic meanings, drawing on St. John Cassian’s description (c. 400) of four ways of reading Scripture, of which the second through fourth involve symbolic readings as well: 1. Literal/historical (accepting Scripture as telling of real events in the continuous tradition of the Church, as developed from the time of the Prophet Moses, gathering also earlier accounts, and in a narrative and poetic whole); 2. Moral (personal application to our lives); 3. Allegorical (relation to the life of Jesus Christ and the Christian Church); 4. Anagogical (also called Spiritual or Mystical, or Eschatological, dealing with the life to come and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ). In our studies, we rely on inspired Tradition of the Church of Jesus Christ founded at Pentecost, including commentary such as that of the 11th-century Byzantine writer Blessed Theophylact on the New Testament (drawing on St. John Chrysostom’s commentary of the 4th century), and on other Church Fathers, from sources such as the Early Christian Commentary on Scripture anthology series, the Ancient Faith Edition of the Holman Bible, and on the app Catena’s patristic sources. For Exekiel, we’ll look hopefully to St. Gregory the Dialogist’s extensive commentary in particular as well.
About the name of the series: The Evangelist John and his Gospel have long been identified with the symbol of the eagle, because of the spiritual vision of the account by the “beloved disciple.” The eagle symbolism derives from the Old Testament prophecy of Ezekiel and the wheel or tetramorph with figures of four beasts, the Four Evangelists. The prophetic books of Jeremiah “the weeping prophet” and Ezekiel include much applicable not only to the crises of their own times, including the Babylonian Exile, but also pointing to the Incarnation of jesus Christ, His Church as the fulfillment of Israel of the Old Testament, and current tribulations in our latter days. (In studying Jeremiah we also include related prophetic books of canonical Scripture in Orthodoxy, namely Baruch, the Epistle of Jeremiah, and the Lamentations of Jeremiah.)
Glory to God!
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John 1 to John 3:16