Why We Need Biographies

Whenever I read a work, one of the first things I do is research the Author. I look for any interviews the Author did, I look for any kind of biography on the author. I look for anything I can to help me understand the Author's thoughts, and what might have been going through their mind as they wrote.

This is helpful, because then I can properly extrapolate the theme from the Author's stories or essays. By knowing who the Author was, and what the Author spoke, and what he or she actually believed, I can reference that as a Rosetta Stone for interpreting any Author's work.

It's almost imperative that someone know the author, before they interpret their work. And doing so, one can look at the four Gospels in the Bible, and use it to fully understand the Bible. Both Old and New Testament, we can see Jesus' extreme mercy, His extreme kindness, His meekness, and understand this characteristic was the personality who blessed David and told Joshua to go out to battle. We can understand that Jesus, Who is the same God Who told Israel to defeat Canaan, is the same God Who died upon the Roman cross.

It's imperative that we understand this, too, as most people believe the Old Testament is a different God than the New. The fact is, they are not. Jesus, when He returns, will bear the sword in wrath, and will exercise all of God's judgment upon the world. He came in the Roman times to demonstrate His mercy, and to later bestow the gift of His ministry to men and women, so they could share in the impartation of blessing which Jesus had lived. Yet, it is imperative that we understand every word in the Bible is a red letter. It's all Jesus' words, and it's all Jesus' sayings. Save the dialogue, when one of the people are speaking. Yet, even those, in their certain way, are paraphrases used by Christ to express the person's true feelings, and to concisely speak their words, not His.

When we understand an author, we can have better insights into the work they've created. We can know their beliefs, their motivations, their systems and ways of thinking. When reading a book, one ought to absorb every ounce of information they can about the author, if there is ever going to be any kind of understanding the text. It's a part of the circle of readership. The text is a mediator between Author and Reader. It's been said before, yet with one of the pieces missing, there can be misinterpretations of the text.

 For works which we do not know the author, there is only the times we can understand. That is equally as important. When we do not know the Author, we must understand the times, the traditions, the works' place in history. What previous commenters had said about it. Yet, with the Bible it is quite different. We need only know the man responsible for Writing it, and that is Jesus. Who, I'm sure, was like any other writer, and wrote His book in His spare time, between sanding and shaping stools and tables; or whatever materials His family could afford. Jesus probably was gifted vellum from His mother, on which He'd carefully inscribe the scriptures the way He wished them to be read. And Christ would write, both Old and New Testament. He would set down, and slowly scribe out His masterpieces, prophesying the entire thing. That's how I imagine it, as it's a lot easier to understand the Bible when we know it's written by one Author. And we need to have faith that God is careful enough to preserve a work for us to study, so that we don't believe He would leave His children in the dark.

When I'm studying other authors, I use the same methods. I look over their life, I study their beliefs, their patterns of thinking, their phraseology, their mentality, their age, the way they died. I pore over their interviews, their biographies, their extraneous philosophies. That way I can get an accurate portrait of who the Author was, or is. As, without it, there is no way one can conceivably understand the works they read. Without knowing the man or woman behind the voice, there can be no true knowledge of the stories one reads, and their meaning. Aesop, we know, was a slave. Therefore, we understand his fables as concealed metaphors which hid their meaning from the slave owners, and they were passed down from slave to slave. And we know that he was freed for his cunning. Plato, we know, knew Socrates, and was intent on finding a perfect Form on which to base all other things. He, as it were, was looking for the Author of Creation. And we, being in the current century, have found Him and His name is Jesus. Then there is philosophers, writers, thinkers, theologians. Their lives are important to study, so their works can be accessed. Whether miserable failures, victims, prosperous or conquerors of the world---we must know the Author of a text in order to understand their work. And without it, we must condescend to the time period it was written.
 
Yet, sometimes, also, there are things we shall only know about the Author through his or her writing. And that, my friends, is why we read. We can only, truly, know a writer by reading their text. As many biographers try to piece together the puzzle of an author, they cannot unless they were there to meet them. And sometimes, biographers can be outright wrong about the great ones, if there is political interest to skew the authors' personal lives. Thus, we come full circle, as the other thing which is true about the Bible, is that all we know about Jesus is written in the scripture, as if by His own hand. Just like Shakespeare's sonnets betray our modern scholars are wrong about him, so does Jesus' words betray that modern Scholars are wrong when they wish to frame Him as a sinner or otherwise try to defame Him as a lunatic. His words do not betray a decrepit mind. We know Jesus existed for two reasons: One, His census still exists, and two because Paul, after his conversion, eight years after Jesus' death, approached James and Peter. James, who was Jesus' little brother, confirmed the teaching that Jesus had resurrected, and that He was indeed God made into Human Flesh. And that is how we know, for Paul indisputably is a historical figure, and we know he did indeed persecute the church. Therefore, the Gospel was not, nor could be, an invention of his mind. It was, from its beginning, the gospel handed down to us we see today.