What ist bibliolog?
Bibliolog is one way of discovering a biblical story with groups of people, be they congregations, youth groups or school classes. Participants are invited to slip into the role of a biblical character and as such fill with their experiences and their fantasy the “gaps” found in the text, also called the white fire, through answering questions to which the biblical story does not seem to offer any answer. Thereby, they gain access to the black fire, that is, the written word of the text and discover the deeper meaning of the biblical story for their present life.
Where does Bibliolog originate?
Against the background of his knowledge in Psychodrama and his literary studies, the North-American Jewish scholar Peter Pitzele developed Bibliolog together with his wife Susan Pitzele who is an Anglican Christian. It is not by coincidence that this approach was developed by a Jew who, by the way, is not a theologian, since it corresponds with Midrash, a rabbinic interpretative method that allows for explanations aimed at filling gaps within a given text. Rabbinic hermeneutics distinguishes between the black fire, the “written letter content”, and the white fire as the space left between words.
How does one get to practise Bibliolog?
Even if Bibliolog might appear to be “easy” and may appear familiar to methods already used in practice, Bibliolog has to be learnt. It should not simply be tried out. Its elements are rather complex and its successful application depends indeed on various aspects that are not necessarily visible at first sight. Standardized training courses exist. They teach the basics of how to work with Bibliolog. Such courses run over one week (from Monday to Friday) or over two weekends. They are offered for various target groups nearly all over Germany, as well as in many European and in some African countries. All trainers who run these courses are joined together under the Bibliolog Network and accredited by it.