Marginalia

I would recognize their handwriting anywhere.

Right beside Numbers 18, where God is instructing Aaron on how the tribe of Levi needs to keep itself separate, there’s a vertical note to look up the Catholic interpretation in my dad’s distinctive scrawl. And adjacent to Deuteronomy 1:6, after the description of Yahweh, “who brought you out of Egypt by night,” my mom wrote: “What for us now?”

These notations are in a thick brown Bible I plucked off the shelf recently. It’s an English translation of La Bible de Jérusalem, originally published in 1956. From Liverpool, its UK Editor wrote that for Christianity to remain relevant it must do two things: keep abreast of the times and deepen theological thought. Not that I read the intro in May 1994, when my parents – knowing I liked old books – let me claim it. I just used the extra space above the Foreword to write ANGELA’S BIBLE.

At age 15, I loved this Bible. It had interesting sections that weren’t in the NIV, like Tobit and Judith. It had wide margins and long columns of tiny notations (Ws 7:9, Pr. 2:6, Si 1:8-9), which felt like doorways to another world. I wanted to crack their code. Its pages were yellowed and crackling even then, as though it were a much older book.

I slept in a loft in a room so small that a regular bed would have used all the space up. The Jerusalem Bible just fit in front of my mattress, beside the clock radio. Once I spilled cough syrup on Jeremiah 2 and it stained almost 20 chapters.

A matter of interpretation

At the time, I had never heard of the Talmud, though later I’d be fascinated by the idea of rabbis across centuries debating the interpretation of Scripture right alongside Scripture. For some reason – maybe inspired by my mom and dad? I don’t remember – I started writing in the margins, too.

I was a young 15, or so it seems to me now. I wrote about fights with my sister, my first school dance, not making the volleyball team. The notes aren’t random, though: there’s always a clumsy connection to a nearby verse. Not making the volleyball team made me feel like the Israelites in exile, apparently. There’s a lot of gratitude peppered throughout the Psalms (“Thank you God for my bed! I love it so much”). And I seemed to feel sorry for myself in the days of the Prophets, which is curious. I don’t think I deliberately read a Psalm of praise when I was happy or Lamentations in the low moments. But certain passages must have resonated with regular life enough for me to pay attention when it did. Next to “Once more have pity on us, Lord” (Micah 7:19) – I wrote: “I have strep throat for the fifth time this year.” It’s a pretty strange solo teenage Bible study/diary combo. (With a few literary references thrown in: Genesis 41 apparently reminded me of The Sky is Falling by Esther Vogt, a “seriously awesome book.”)

For some reason I loved Maccabees. And I had a lot of questions, even then – and even though, presumably, they were rhetorical. I wondered: “Are we babies in your eyes, Lord?” (Jeremiah 10:24); “Is this the same Rahab from Jericho!?” (Matt. 1:5); and “What kind of compliment is that?” (Song of Songs 7:4). I can almost hear an indignant foot stomp along with every place in Proverbs where I added “+ women” to “men,” not to mention this line: “How can un-Jewish churches cut Baruch out of the Bible?!”

A few places in Job, I just wrote “What?”

It remains a fair question.

Beautiful echoes

My dad was in the hospital recently. Reading Bonhoeffer and writing notes in the margins. And, while he was recovering, asking the nurses how they were.

What a magnificent, terrifying exercise I undertook in 1994: holding my very life up to the light alongside ancient Scripture. Seeing the gaps. Seeking beautiful echoes.

Now, 30 years later, as my own kids become young adults – as family life shifts and adjusts and shifts again – I can see how the texts we weave into our lives deeply shape us. “What for us now?” as my mom said.

What we do in response is more than marginalia.

Turns out, it’s the whole story.