Bible Study Matters / Handel's Messiah

 Dr. Carol Bechtel, shares with us how she is never tired of teaching the Bible and Handel's Messiah and her experience in writing the Biblical texts of Handel’s Messiah

Dr. Bechtel first encountered Handel’s Messiah as a member of her high school choir. In rehearsals, she admits that she would sometimes stare off into space thinking about the words when she was supposed to be singing.   

“I first started teaching a class on the Bible and Handel’s Messiah for an adult Sunday school class at First Presbyterian Church in New Haven when I was a graduate student at Yale. I worked especially hard on it because you never knew who would show up in the adult Sunday school class in that place! Richard Hays, then teaching at Yale and now a New Testament professor at Duke, would often be there.”  

“I realized then that I needed to find ways to talk about how the Old Testament texts in Messiah were about the Messiah. As an Old Testament student, I had been taught the importance of exploring the original context of the texts. I was—and still am—committed to that. But it was also clear to me that the Church hears these passages as being somehow ‘about’ Jesus Christ. Since I was working with Old Testament scholar Brevard Childs at the time, I began to listen for what he liked to call, ‘canonical echoes’ between the testaments.”

She would get the chance to wrestle with these issues when she was invited by Kerygma to write a study of the Biblical texts in Handel’s work.

“As I wrote the study, I came to realize that the question was not whether passages like Isaiah 7, 9, and 53 were about Jesus, but how are they about Jesus. While the original context was crucial, there was also a sense in which these passages had been ‘recontextualized’ as the early church attempted to understand their experience of Jesus Christ. So, in terms of context, I believe it’s not so much a question of either/or, but both/and.”

“I’m still not tired of teaching The Bible and Handel’s Messiah. That may have more to do with the quality of the music and the scripture passages than with anything else.”

Writing the Biblical texts of Handel’s Messiah

Dr. Bechtel first encountered Handel’s Messiah as a member of her high school choir. In rehearsals, she admits that she would sometimes stare off into space thinking about the words when she was supposed to be singing.   

Dr. Carol Bechtel is the author of Kerygma's Hallelujah: The Bible and Handel's Messiah, and Sowing Tears, Reaping Joy: the Bible & Brahms' Requiem.

Carol grew up on a farm near Fulton, Illinois, a small town on the Mississippi River, and some of her earliest memories of the Bible were hearing the Christmas story read on Christmas Eve. “And of course” she added, “that’s wrapped up with all of the excitement that a child feels in anticipating Christmas morning.

For the young Carol, her own story provided a unique connection and a greater appreciation for this child who was named Jesus. “The fact that I grew up on a farm meant that all of my senses were engaged when I heard that story, because I loved to hang out in the barn. Other people might think, “Oh no. Jesus was born in a barn?” But since the barn was one of my favorite places, my response was, “How cool! Jesus was born in a barn!” 

As a Professor of Old Testament at Western Theological Seminary and as an ordained pastor in the Reformed Church in America, Dr. Bechtel engages students and congregations with the many stories contained in the Scriptures.  As the author of Bible studies she encourages adults to continue their study of the Bible “in depth, over time, and in community.” “The Bible is more than just a collection of ancient stories about strange people in faraway lands. It is, in a very real sense, our story."