Biblical Interpretations
Study 6F Is the author dead?
In our studies thus far we have concentrated on the nature of the text, its complexity, the difficulties encountered by the use of ancient manuscripts and copies of the same, the variations brought about because of translation, the questions of authorship, the different ways of interpretation and the impact that modern scientific knowledge has made on people’s thinking.
The discussions have emphasised the importance of trying to understand correctly what the author was trying to say when the text was written. It has been stated that it is important to identify, as closely as possible, what the original text actually was, that it is important to try to date the material under consideration and that it is helpful to have some idea of the historical, social and cultural setting of the passage.
But have we completely ignored the reader?
It has already been stated, in these study papers, that when someone misinterprets something, we can say, “People hear only what they want to hear”. It has been suggested that it is more accurate to say, “People hear what their minds are already prepared to hear.” We relate to new things according to our pre-understandings.
We can do a lot of work on the text regarding its context, its correctness, its originality, etc., etc, but it is still the reader or the listener who responds to it. It is the reader or listener who brings to the text, a life of certain attitudes, perspectives, experiences and presuppositions - pre-understandings.
It is consistent with experience that, whether we like it or not, readers can and routinely do, create meanings out of texts they read. This is probably true for literature of all types, not just the Bible or religious literature. In Biblical interpretation this has been called a ‘Reader - Response’ emphasis.
In so far as the readers bring themselves with all their particular attitudes and experiences to the text, they create a framework for it, from within which, they do their thinking, responding and interpreting. To this extent, they generate a new meaning that, in turn, creates a new text. We may continue to discover or create meanings which are satisfying to our present condition.
A person with an alcohol problem when reading Proverbs 20:1 (from the Good News Bible) -
Drinking too much makes you loud and foolish. It's stupid to get drunk. -
may probably have a lot of different thoughts about what stupid means. He/she may have a number of memories which could spring to mind. This may not be the case for others, who do not have a drinking problem.
A Christian who is divorced may interpret passages like Matthew 5:32 (These are written as Jesus’ words.) very differently to those who have not experienced divorce -
But what I tell you is this: “If a man divorces his wife for any other reason than unchastity he involves her in adultery; and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
Another passage on the same subject is Mark 10:11‑12 (These are also the words of Jesus according to the gospel author.) -
He (Jesus) said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her: so too, if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
Should we ask questions like, "What is the right interpretation of these passages? Does anyone have the right or responsibility to interpret these passages with authority, for other people? How much freedom should there be for different interpretations?"
When considering a painting or abstract photographs or graphics there are people who would say that once the artist or photographer has created his/her work, it is then up to the observer to interpret it.
Some modern writers emphasise the Reader - Response way of interpretation. Attention is focussed on the Reader, rather than on the text. More attention is paid to how the text is received than how it originated. It is possible to take this emphasis too far.
The extreme position of this method of interpretation is stated in the New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. 1, p 144 from Carl Holladays article previously quoted –
.. the text is essentially something created in the reader's mind as the reader interacts with the words on the printed page.
and again -
When the reader's role is given such prominence, the importance of the text can shift to the reader, who is seen more as the maker rather than the receiver of meaning.
Our perception always has a strong influence over our interpretations of things, however when this is the only basis of interpretation, the questions can to be asked: "Is the author dead? Does the author and what she/he has written still possess some claim over its meaning? Does not the author still have some influence regarding how his/her material should be understood? Does the author have the right to say, 'That is not what I meant. You are wrong in your interpretation.' "
One of the positive effects of this shift, in modern times, to this Reader ‑ Response emphasis in Biblical interpretation, is that the focus has moved to letting the Bible speak to the present day situations. When using the Bible as a guide for living, if that is how it is being used, we need to have a balance between what the author meant and how the reader receives it today.
It is suggested that there is little point doing a lot of research on the text itself, if it is not going to be used by the reader. We talk of user friendly today, particularly about products for sale, and maybe this is what the Reader - Response method of interpretation encourages.
In the first volume of the New Interpreter's Bible, it is significant that in the third section, ‘How the Bible is read, interpreted and used’, the sequence of articles is ‘The Authority of the Bible’, ‘How the Bible has been Interpreted in Jewish tradition’, ‘How the Bible has been Interpreted in Christian Tradition’, ‘Contemporary Theories of Interpretation’, ‘Contemporary Methods of Reading the Bible’.
These articles are then followed by ‘Reading the Bible from Particular Social Locations’, ‘Reading the Bible as African Americans’, ‘Reading the Bible as Asian Americans’, ‘Reading the Bible as Hispanic Americans’, ‘Reading the Bible as Native Americans’, followed by, ‘Reading the Bible as Women’.
It would seem that a real emphasis is placed on the Reader. When reading these articles one after the other, the differences in understanding and interpretation are very evident. The readers, because of different social, cultural, economic and historical situations, play an influential part in the whole process of how the Bible is approached; what guidance is accepted from it and how it is interpreted. Yet it is the same book and the same text.
You may have heard the forceful assertion, ‘The Bible says .....’. Very often this is followed by some dogmatic assessment of what the text means and what should be the response of the audience. This approach is certainly challenging but it can be exclusively dogmatic, disallowing real thought, limiting to only ‘one way’ any personal individual engagement of the members of the audience with the text. This can be dynamic and stirring but it can also be bullying. This is often the way TV evangelists preach. For me, Billy Graham is a prime example.
The ‘one way’ attitude can prevent interaction of any real consequence. Probably the way forward is to take seriously the last two quotes from the New Interpreter's Bible, Vol 1, p 149, in the previously quoted article by Carl Holladay, ‘Contemporary Methods of Reading the Bible’ -
...when one method of interpretation extends its reach far beyond its grasp and becomes imperialistic, its practitioners tend to assume that it is the method to use in interpreting all material, or is the method by which all other methods are judged.
When method becomes dogmatic, people can become straight‑jacketed and can be prevented from thinking and growing. People need personal freedom and encouragement to explore.
The final quote from the New Interpreter’s Bible on the subject of interpretation -
The way forward is to be more modest and recognise the possibilities and limitations of different approaches, and to recognise that informed reading will require knowledge and experience in many methods and approaches. Actual interpretation will involve a combination of approaches.
A personal comment
As I continue to read and study the Bible, and as I continue to go to church, and have the Bible as the major source for material on which preaching is based, I am amazed at the wisdom it contains. One of the aspects of the Old Testament that impresses me tremendously, is that it does not hide the sordid and dirty side of life. This gives a completeness, a reality and a honesty to it.
Of course, this creates a problem when choosing passages to be read in worship. I would think that some passages like Deuteronomy 28 would not be particularly well received by any congregation. This passage sets out punishments that the Lord will bring upon his people if they do not obey his commandments.
Some sections of this chapter read, Deuteronomy 28:15-20 -
But if you do not obey the Lord your God by diligently observing all his commandments and statutes which I lay upon you this day, then all these maledictions shall come to you and light upon you: A curse upon you in the city; a curse upon you in the country. A curse upon your basket and your kneading-trough. A curse upon the fruit of your body, the fruit of your land, the offspring of your herds and of your lambing flocks. A curse upon you as you come in; and a curse upon you as you go out. May the Lord send you starvation, burning thirst, and dysentery, whatever you are about, until you are destroyed and quickly perish for your evil doings, because you have forsaken me.
Deuteronomy 28:56-57 (This is about the worst I have come across, probably because of my cultural upbringing.) -
The pampered, delicate woman, the woman who has never even tried to put her foot to the ground, so delicate and pampered she is, will not share with her own husband or her son or her daughter the afterbirth which she expels, or any boy or girl that she may bear. She will herself eat them secretly in her extreme want, because of her dire straits to which you will be reduced when your enemy besieges you within your cities.
Deuteronomy 28:63 -
Just as the Lord took delight in you, prospering and increasing you, so now it will be his delight to destroy and exterminate you, and you will be uprooted from the land which you are entering to occupy.
To end this horrible chapter is Deuteronomy 28:68 -
The Lord will bring you sorrowing back to Egypt by that very same road of which I said to you, “You shall not see that road again”; and there you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves and slave-girls, but there will be no buyer.
For me, this is about the worst example of this dirty side that the Bible contains, particularly with respect to the concept of God. I suppose I have laboured the point a bit too much here, but I do this to try to correct a commonly held view that the Bible is a beautiful book full of only spiritual guidance, wisdom and profitable reading, all to enrich the soul with wholesome thoughts. I suggest the above demonstrates that this is not quite the case.
The above represents the other side but we are never exposed to it by our church leaders. I would suggest that many people would be shocked to realise that such material is even in the Bible. I think that this, maybe unconscious, censorship enables ordinary church people, who do not search the Bible for everything it contains, to have an unrealistic opinion of the Bible.
This, I think, is a contributing reason that can lead to fundamentalism and the idea that the Bible is without error, without inconsistency and without contradiction; the infallible Word of God. If some of the above quotes from Deuteronomy are not contradictory to the message of Jesus, I don’t know what is!
Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and a world renowned Bible preacher, says that the Bible, from its early writings, goes ‘three steps forward and two steps back’ in its proclamation of spiritual truths.
As an example of this, he says that -
The Old Testament god is violent, not because God is violent but because we are violent. We need a violent god to back up our need to be violent. We make God in our own image!
Richard Rohr goes on to say that by 'the resurrection', all the violence in God is removed, buried, cancelled, expunged.
In the stories of the resurrection; remember it is only three days after the disciples have betrayed, denied, deserted and abandoned Jesus in his hour of desperate need. Yet in the stories after the resurrection there is no mention at all of their cowardly, mean, cruel behaviour. I think, that with all the good will in the world, most of us could not have resisted saying at least something about it, like, ‘Hey you guys. Where were you when I really needed you? You could have at least been there.’, or something to that effect. But no! Jesus mentions nothing about it. It is as if it was all forgotten, as if it didn’t happen. ‘Love keeps no score of wrongs’!!! Unbelievable!!!!
These, for me, present the extremes that are in the Bible. What a wonderful book. It doesn’t hide the seamy side of life. It tells it as it is, with all the warts of its heroes.
Yet, our Bible is so easily open to abuse, if we are not careful. With a lack of information and with dogmatic and sometimes superficial understandings, using the Bible can do so much damage to humanity. It has been used to justify war and motivate warriors to violence in many different eras. It has been used to justify slavery. Reference is made to it to condone the repression of women. Now it is being quoted to condemn homosexuals, to refuse the sacrament of Holy Communion to them. How tragic!
Maybe the way we view and interpret the Bible is determined to a large extent by our own psychological make-up. Maybe, if we are an open sort of person, if we are people who think for ourselves, we can take this attitude with us to the Bible. Maybe, if we are unsure or need a lot of certainty, if we need a set of answers to live by, then we may also take this attitude to the Bible.
Interpretation of the whole Bible, for me, always has to be in basic agreement with what I understand to be the teachings and the gospel of Jesus. If I think the passage or the interpretation is contrary to this, then I reject it, or I look for further information that will help me understand it in a way that brings it into line with Jesus. If not, I leave it back in the 1st Century or before, in its cultural and historical setting, as interesting but only interesting.
For me, Jesus Christ is king of Scripture, and so any method of interpretation that helps me understand this more clearly is OK by me. I do understand this is very subjective and may be in error. I also understand that with this basis, I will probably leave many questions unanswered. That’s OK with me too. I’m happy to live with unanswered questions even though, as is very obvious by these studies, I often search for answers diligently.
Happy interpreting and happy listening to others’ interpretations.
A group exercise and questions for discussion
Read the story in Luke’s gospel about the visit by Jesus to Simon, the Pharisee’s home when the woman of questionable repute washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and anointed them with perfume. Read Luke 7:36-50 and share your insights with the group. What was interesting? What was new? What did you like about the story? What did you dislike? Did it raise any questions for you?
Are there differences in what was important to each member of the group? By sharing your insights, have you found more in the story than when you read it first? If there are other insights that you didn’t see yourself, are they as important as the ones you yourself uncovered?
What does this say about Reader - Response interpretation?
What do you think of the seamy side of the Bible? Are you surprised that such material is in our sacred book? Should we ever read such passages in church? Should we let others know of their existence or should we ‘keep quiet’ about them?
Print Booklet (Download and print double-side, flip on short edge) The text above has the text of the bookblets edited somewhat and because there are many pictures in the booklets, all reference to them has been omitted.