Kruse Kronicle

Interpreting the Bible: Conclusion

We’ve come to the end of this series on Kenneth Bailey’s DVD lectures on Interpreting the Bible. I’m sure I haven’t done it justice but I hope you have at least captured a sense of Bailey’s teaching.

Personally, I appreciate the succinct way he deals with the issue of inspiration and the way he describes the origin of the Bible. His overview of the formation of Luke gives a lot of good material to reflect on.

The recurring theme with Bailey throughout these lectures is that the Bible was written by people to people in specific social and historical contexts. The Bible is a faithful witness to the work of God in those contexts. Therefore, we must begin with social and historical context before moving to meditation, inspiration, and application.

We can’t do this perfectly and that is what I like about Bailey’s notion of having perspectives that are tentatively final. That is not license for timidity. We musn’t wait until we have things all figured out before we act. In fact, I believe that is in acting on what we learn in scripture through God’s leading that our interpretive skills are sharpened.

Finally, Bailey has a phrase he uses frequently. He says, “It doesn’t so much matter where you are on the ladder. What matter is did you get there by climbing or falling.” His point being that we all know imperfectly. The central issue is whether or not we are wrestling with the issues and trying to work our way up the ladder. Or are we just being sloppy and slothful. I hope that maybe this series helps move us another rung or two up the ladder.

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Sins of Interpretation #7: Electrical Shock Theory

The final of Kenneth Bailey’s Sins of Biblical interpretation as presented in the Interpreting the Bible is what he calls the Electrical Shock Theory. If I were naming it, I’d probably call it the Free Association Theory.

Bailey makes clear that it is entirely appropriate to read the Bible for inspirational and devotional purposes. All of us should. But as we read in this manner, there still must be a connection between the author and audience’s context in our minds. There should be a relationship between what we read and what we know the author intends for his readers.

For instance, Bailey mentions that he is sitting in his study in Jerusalem on a hot summer’s day when he reads Psalm 42:7, where it says “…all you waves and billows have gone over me.” Bailey thinks to himself, “Aha! God is calling me to quit studying and to go take a nice cool swim in the ocean.” Taking a cool swim may or may not be a good idea but this is not the way God uses scripture to guide us.

To use another example of how this can play out with a document of significance to American history, Bailey begins a humorous reflection on the Gettysburg Address.

“Fourscore …”

Ah! It is a football game and they’ve reached the score of four.

“…and seven years ago….”

The game is very long. It has been going on for seven years.

“…our fathers brought forth…”

Very interesting. The mothers didn’t give birth the fathers did. I wonder what this is all about?

You can see the absurdity. But when we think of the Gettysburg Address, context immediately bursts on our minds: Lincoln. American Civil War. Battle of Gettysburg. When we read these words in this context they can be deeply inspirational but they become nonsense when we engage in free association.

The foundational principle of interpretation is this: “Try to discover what the original author intends for his readers or the original speaker for his listeners.”

Clearly some who’ve had chance to study more in depth can do this better than others but we can all do it to a substantial degree. We can at least begin by keeping in mind who the communicators are and the context they are communicating in. Our practice of this over time and in community will improve our insight and interpretation.

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Sins of Interpretation #6: Changing the Ground Rules

The sixth sin of biblical interpretation in Kenneth Bailey’s Interpreting the Bible is the sin of Changing the Ground Rules.

Today, when we think of historical description, we equate accurate history with precision in the facts of recorded events. This was not the case with Middle Eastern accounts of history. Indeed, it has not been the case of most historical accounts in most civilizations throughout history. Only when we began to approach the Enlightenment in Western civilization do we begin to see the emphasis on precise factual reporting. Middle Eastern accounts of history are always theological interpretations of history. Utter precision is not important. The theological truth revealed by historical events is. Consequently, to read biblical history with the expectation that the author was writing with the mindset of a news reporter shifts the ground rules in interpretation.

Bailey invites to imagine a modern event and think about how we might describe it. For instance, we could say:

“On November 22, 1963, a man was shot.”

That is factually precise. But we might say: 

“On November 22, 1963, the president of the United States was assassinated with a rifle shot to the head while riding through Dallas, TX, in a motorcade.”

This is more factually precise and gives some clues that this was an event of significance. But we might also say:

“On November 22, 1963, the nation’s innocence was slain and the people mourned as a bullet found its mark on the streets of Dallas.”

This last rendition tells fewer details but it communicates the significance of the event in a way the factual accounts do not. Middle Eastern writing about history had this later aim far more in mind than we do and factual precision was of secondary concern. Thus, if we are to interpret authors correctly we must be conscious of their ground rules of communication and not substitute our own.

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Sins of Interpretation #5: Colored Glasses Theory

Today we visit Kenneth Bailey’s fifth sin of biblical interpretation as presented in Interpreting the Bible. He calls it the Colored Glasses Theory.

Bailey reminds us that we are each shaped by our culture and context. How we read the Bible is influenced by the sermons we’ve heard, Bible translations we’ve used, what our parents taught us, what we learned in Sunday School, books we’ve read, and in general the interpretive tradition we were raised in. The danger is that we give these factors more credence than what the Bible itself says.

Bailey uses an example from Romans 16:7. The verse speaks of “Andronicus and Junias” as “men of note” among the apostles in the Revised Standard Version. Yet we if we examine the original language and the history of interpretation up to the time of the RSV we find that in fact the early manuscripts and early interpretations say “Junia” and that there is no indication of gender, simply that “they were prominent among the apostles” (NRSV). Every indication is that there was a lady apostle. I know others will debate various aspects of this verse but the point Bailey is making is that if such is the case, and we had always been told otherwise, will we persist in reading scripture with “colored glasses” or will we change our understanding to conform to scripture?

We must begin our interpretation of scripture with a level of humility that acknowledges what we personally are bringing to the interpretation exercise. We have to be open to modification. Yet Bailey appropriately points out that we can’t wait until we have exhausted every angle of interpretation to decide how to live our lives. Bailey says that he tends to hold his interpretations as “tentatively final.”

I think the idea is that we want to move boldly forward but also be open to further correction and learning. To do so requires us to be aware of our own colored glasses and I suppose you could say we need to occasionally try on the colored glasses of others to see what they see. Sometimes this will bring us into conflict with others but more often it gives a more holistic view the text we are interacting with.

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Sins of Interpretation #4: Mathemitazation of Scripture

The fourth of Bailey’s interpretation “sins” in Interpreting the Bible is the mathemitazation of Scripture.

Bailey is referring to a dehistoricizing and decontextualization of scripture. Passages in scripture are treated as though they were a set of mathematical formulas. Much like we could translate “two plus two equals four” into any language without and loss of understanding, so too may passages of scripture be translated from context to context utterly divorced from any historical context. These formulas are combined and systematized in various ways that reveal “objective” truths.

If we go back to the first three posts in this series to see how the Bible came to be, then we know that this approach does violence to an accurate interpretation of scripture. Clearly there are propositional truths revealed in scripture and there is nothing wrong with systematically examining them. But all of scripture was communicated within the context of particular authors writing particular audiences within a particular culture during a particular set of circumstances.

For instance, it is common today to acknowledge that “God is love.” Do we therefore mean that God is sex? We use the word “love” to mean many things including sex. We must examine the original language in its context. When we do so we find that the Greeks had different words for differing aspects of what we call love and sexual love (eros) is not one that is applied to God. The context from which we learned that God is love is critical reflecting on the proposition that God is love.

As you may have picked up by now, a recurring corrective theme in Bailey’s analysis is that scripture is the word of God spoken through people in history.

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Sins of Interpretation #3: Cut and Paste Method

Third sin of interpretation presented by Kenneth Bailey in Interpreting the Bible is what he calls the “Cut and Paste method.” As he introduced this method I expected to hear about Thomas Jefferson’s famous effort to edit out of his Bible those portions that dealt with supernatural acts or other issues with which he differed. This is not the direction Bailey was headed. What Bailey has in mind is the practice of selecting isolated passages and stringing them together to have them say whatever you want. Alternatively, one can lift a passage and, quoting it isolation from its context, it comes to mean something quite different.

To illustrate this cut and past method from outside the Bible, Bailey draws on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Juliet says, “What is in a name? If a rose were called by any other name it would smell as sweet.” Today you will frequently hear people say “Well a rose is still rose, even if called by a different name.” The implication is that names don’t matter. And yet, if you know Romeo and Juliet, this is precisely the opposite message of the play. Indeed, names mean a great deal. Despite Juliet’s desire that names should not matter, the names “Capulet” and “Montague” create an insurmountable barrier that bring Romeo and Juliet to their deaths.

Bailey, quoting another scholar, notes that “Shakespeare did not write quotations.” Shakespeare wrote plays, sonnets, and the like. The same is true of the Bible. It is not a collection of isolated quotations to be lifted and rearranged according to our agendas. Each passage much be understood within its context of the surrounding discussion, the context of the book it is written, and ultimately within the larger corpus of the whole Bible.

Maybe you have heard examples of this method used. One example I’ve heard many times is people justifying acts of retaliation by claiming they are just following Jesus instructions about “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” Of course, Jesus was quoting this Old Testament command to highlight his new instruction of “turning the other cheek.” Others cite 1 Corinthians 14:34 as justification for women not speaking in church despite the fact that earlier in the letter Paul gives instruction on how women are to conduct themselves as the prophecy in church.

To avoid errors, we need to be diligent about understanding passages of scripture within context.

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Sins of Interpretation #2: "Blink Off / Blink On" Method

The second sin of biblical interpretation as presented by Kenneth Bailey in Interpreting the Bible is the “Blink-off / Blink-on.” I can’t say I found the name that helpful but here is the basic idea.

The idea is that God inspired authors to write passages that were unintelligible to the authors, or the authors wrote passages that were intelligible to themselves and no one else. These passages “blinks off” to all other readers for years, even millennia, until one day the true meaning “blinks on” to a future reader. Through this we discover that Ezekiel didn’t really know what he was writing about but now we know he was writing about the Russian 6th Fleet. The key to interpretation is to interpret along with the original audience not apart from it.

This is not to say that the original author and audience understood the full ramifications of the passage under discussion. Through later events we sometimes come to see earlier events in a different light. Furthermore, it is entirely possible that over the centuries, aspects of meaning have been lost to us and are rediscovered. However, as we approach each passage we need to begin with the idea that the author knew what he intended to communicate and wrote it with the intention that his contemporary audience would understand it.

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Sins of Interpretation #1: Allegorical Method

Kenneth Bailey has given us some food for thought about the origin of the Bible and its authority in Interpreting the Bible. Now we turn to his seven sins of biblical interpretation. The first sin is the allegorical method of interpretation.

The allegorical method is an interpretive method that began to take hold as early as the second century. Bailey notes that Philo of Alexandria, a Jew devoted to Greek philosophy and a contemporary of Jesus, used it to interpret Old Testament stories. Third century theologian Origen used it regularly. From that time until at least the Reformation, allegory was a prominent means of biblical interpretation. It continued to be so in some circles even into the twentieth century.

The allegorical method assigns symbolic meanings to characters and events in a story. Therefore, St. Augustine or a contemporary might explain the story of the Good Samaritan this way:

Jerusalem is heaven and Jericho is hell. The robbers are the barbarians. The priest symbolizes the Jews and the Levite symbolizes anyone else you might dislike. The Samaritan is a monk or even Jesus himself. The oil symbolizes the Holy Spirit (never mind that Holy Spirit had not been revealed at the time of the story) and wine is Holy Communion (never mind that communion was not known at the time of the story.) The donkey symbolizes Jesus carrying us (never mind that “Jesus as a donkey” would have been highly insulting to a Middle Easterner.) The inn is the Church. The innkeeper is the apostle Paul. The 2 pence are the two golden rules (or any other two sided value you might wish to convey.) Finally, the promise by the Samaritan to come back is about the second coming.

There is no way Jesus’ listeners could have had this understanding of the story. Bailey points out that many teachers who used allegory were well grounded in basic theology, so their allegories tended not to stray too far from orthodox Christian thinking. So what is the harm in allegorizing? Bailey offers an alternative allegory to make is his point:

Jerusalem symbolizes the state of the noble primitive savage and Jericho is capitalism. The robbers are the feudalists. The priest symbolizes religion and the opiate of the masses that do nothing for you. The Levites are the Democratic Socialists who claim to be socialists but aren’t. The Good Samaritan is the Good Marxist. The oil and the wine are dialectical materialism, the only philosophy that will heal humankind. The donkey is the working class that carries us to the safety of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The innkeeper is the comrade who runs the dictatorship of the proletariat. The promise to return symbolizes the coming of the great classless society. From this allegory we can conclude that Jesus was proto-Marxist.

If allegory is legitimate, then on what basis would we conclude that this second allegory is preposterous? There really isn’t any. Bailey suggests that widely varying allegorical interpretations were assigned to Jesus’ stories in early centuries. Each bishop had his own code that interpreted the stories. Eventually, the idea that you could build faith on the stories of Jesus was abandoned. Though Jesus was seen as our salvation through his life and deeds, he ceased to be a serious theologian. Paul became the theologian of the Church.

Having said this, not all symbolism is bad. In fact, symbolism is a very powerful means of communication. But for symbols to work, they must signify realities that hearers instinctively identify. For instance, a ferret and a hippo in a political cartoon in the United States signify nothing to American readers. If the characters are a donkey and Elephant, then the readers immediately know the cartoon is about Democrats and Republicans. However, we don’t go on from here to suggest that the donkey’s left ear means one thing and the right another, while the elephants trunk symbolizes yet another idea.

The key to symbolism is the audience and what they perceive. Items in the story have symbolic meaning only insofar as the teller and the hearers have a common shared symbolic understanding of the various facets of the story. Therefore, in order to understand a parable or metaphor, we must enter as closely as possible into the mind of the original people interacting with the story.

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Luke's Origin

How did books like the gospels come to be? Luke actually gives us considerable information about how he composed his gospel. Kenneth Bailey, in Interpreting the Bible, invites us to look at the opening verses of Luke. There are four key points that Bailey abstracts from these verses and places in a timeline. Here is the passage with the key points in bold:

Luke 1:1-4

1 Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, 2 just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants [huperetes] of the word, 3 I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. 

Bailey takes these four points places them along a timeline that is by no means precise but rather gives a sense of the approximate flow of events.

• 30 A.D. – “…events that have been fulfilled among us…”
• 45 A.D. – “…eyewitnesses and servants [huperetes] of the word….”
• 60 A.D. – “…many have undertaken to set down an orderly account…”
• 75 A.D. – “…write an orderly account…”

Bailey first draws our attention the “eyewitnesses and servants [huperetes] of the word.” He notes that there is only one definite article on those two titles, likely indicating that “eyewitness” and “servant of the word” are dual traits of single individual. So who were these eyewitness servants of the word?

Huperetes means servant, officer, or minister. In Greek speaking synagogues there were “servants of synagogue.” In Heberew speaking synagogues they were called the hazan. These folks were the keeper of the keys to the cupboard in which the scrolls were kept. Additionally, they were responsible for the school that taught young students Hebrew and they lead the worship service. They were not head of the synagogue, which was a separate role.

When Jesus reads the scroll in Nazareth we see mention of the huperetes. Jesus reads the scroll and when he is finished, Luke 4:20 records: “And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant [huperetes], and sat down.”

But note that Luke says he consulted the eyewitness servants/ministers of the word not of the synagogue. What word? The Old Testament? No. That was the scripture. Bailey concludes that these were eyewitnesses to Jesus’ teaching who recited Jesus teaching to the worshiping communities. They were the watchdogs of the oral tradition and they were the ones to recite the oral tradition to the worshiping communities. The Church created an office that would die out within a generation.

What language were they speaking in? Was it Greek or Aramaic? What were these collections of writings that Luke had access to? Who wrote them and what language were they written in? Was the Q source one of them? Were one or more gospels among the writings Luke investigated? We don’t know.

One interesting point of speculation is pinning down when Luke might have had access to these huperetes of the word and the written documents. In another resource, Bailey notes that when Paul returned to Jerusalem in Acts 21 and was arrested, Luke was along with him. This was likely in the late 50s C.E., or about thirty years after Jesus. While Paul was doing at least two years in prison (Acts 24:27) Luke would have access to the local huperetes and whatever documents had emerged from within the Church. He may not have compiled his gospel in final form at that time but he certainly had access to first rate sources.

Bailey’s central point of emphasis is that the Bible was not dictated by angels as illustrated on the front of ancient manuscripts. Rather, God moved through a community to create the written word that became scripture. By looking at Luke we can get an imperfect glimpse of some of the process involved.

These three posts give us some sense of the nature of the book we are dealing with when we come to the Bible. It should inform our understanding as we read scripture. But as we interpret the Bible there are any number of errors we can make. Bailey has identified seven sins of biblical interpretation. We will turn to those next.

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New Testament Origins

Yesterday we began a review of Kenneth Bailey’s Interpreting the Bible DVD by looking at the idea of inspiration and looking at the origins of the Old Testament. Today we visit the origins of the New Testament.

Each of the gospels is believed to have been written in the last half of the first century. By the beginning of the second century, the gospels were considered to have unique authority among the Christian community. They were added to the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative. Other books were seen to have varying degrees of authority as well.

The issue of which books were to be considered authoritative was brought to a head by controversial teachings of a man named Marcian (c. 140 C.E.). Marcian believed that the god of the Hebrews was different from the god of the Christians. Bailey points out that Marcian believed that only Luke was authoritative among the gospels. He included various edited writings of Paul. He eliminated the entire Old Testament. Church leaders rejected Macian’s teaching but the controversy put pressure on the Church to think about what books did carry authority. By the end of the second century the books attributed to Paul were considered authoritative.

Other books were still being debated as late as the fourth century, especially 2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude, Revelation, and Hebrews. The first statement we find listing our present 27 books of the New Testament was made in by Athanasius in 367 C.E., in which he observes that there was general consensus that these were the authoritative books. Thus, it wasn’t until more than three centuries after Christ that the New Testament scriptures came to be recognized as such.

But what does it mean to say that these books have authority? Bailey writes that early in the process the Church asked, “What are the books the apostles have passed down to us?” Notice this is not the same as asking "Which books did the apostles write?" The question was one of apostolic endorsement and determining which ones have broad acceptance across the Church community. Furthermore, the driving agenda was not “What can we include?” but “What can we throw out?” Bailey suggests these were the driving questions for at least the first 250 years after Christ.

Late in the process, the Church began to ask “What did the apostles write?” Luke was okay because he supposedly got his information from Paul, but questions of authorship began to creep into the picture. Along with this, questions of inspiration began to emerge as well. But as you can see, if the earlier question is the driving issue, then authorship becomes irrelevant.

Bailey goes on to point out that the Church does not give the books of scripture their authority. Rather the Church surrenders to the authority of scripture. Imagine a thief holds you up with a gun. You don’t give the gun its authority. You surrender to its authority and hand over your wallet.

The books of the New Testament have authority because they spoke to the hearts of early Christians across a broad range of communities (just as they do today.) There was no rush to create an authoritative list. Over time, the authenticity of the books made themselves known to the Christian community. Rather than imposing a list of official books in the fourth century, the fourth century can be seen as the culmination of a slow brew process.

Next we will look at the origins of the gospel of Luke, one of the few books of the Bible that explicitly states how it came to be.

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Biblical Inspiration and Old Testament Origins

Today I’m beginning a ten to twelve part series on Interpreting the Bible. This series is drawn from Kenneth Bailey’s two lecture DVD Interpreting the Bible. We will spend three or four posts examining how the Bible came to be and then look at Bailey’s seven sins of biblical interpretation.

How the Bible was Inspired

Bailey starts by reminding us that we each have our assumptions, examined or not, about what the Bible is and where it came from. We need to examine our assumptions and make some assessments but Bailey is not interested in doing our work for us. Instead, he offers some “raw materials” for us to consider as we form our view of how the Bible came to be.

Bailey has done considerable work with ancient manuscripts. At the front of these manuscripts is usually a depiction of the author faithfully writing down the words an angel is dictating to him. I’ve included a ninth century example from the Riems School that portrays Matthew at work (Source).

This idea of the dictated word is familiar one from the past but Bailey suggests that our understanding of biblical inspiration can be loosely grouped in five categories:

1. Mechanical inspiration views the author as a “human tape recorder.”
2. Verbal inspiration allows that the human personality of the author is involved but God inspired the precise words.
3. Another view is that the ideas were inspired but not necessarily the precise words.
4. Some would argue for an inspiration in much the same sense a poet is inspired but at a higher level.
5. Others would so they Bible is inspired but no more so then Shakespeare or other great writers.

Others have sought to find a basis within the Bible itself for what is inspired. Bailey points out the frequent reference to  2 Timothy 3:16  “All scripture is inspired by God [theopneustos]…” The idea here is that scripture is “God breathed.” But “the scripture,” for the author of 2 Timothy, whether Paul or one of his students, could only be referring to two thirds of the Old Testament. The Jewish community had not fully selected all the texts that would come to be known as “scripture” and none of the New Testament books would be included. This passage can only refer to books known at that time 2 Timothy was written and this doesn’t ultimately help us resolve our question.

How the Old Testament was Formed

Either during exile or in the fifth century after the exile, the Old Testament community concluded that the first five books, the Torah, should be given unique authority. Samaritans have held that only the Torah is authoritative. Some time after this a second body of texts came have authority called the Nevi’im or “the prophets.” These included most Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and the prophets. Chronicles was not yet included.

By Jesus' day Psalms had achieved an authority near that of these other books. But the remaining books called the Ketuvim, or “the Writings,” had not yet been given the same status. Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles were eventually included in the Writings along with Psalms.

Bailey points to this passage about Jesus in Luke 24:44:

Then he [Jesus] said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you -- that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled."

This illustrates what was authoritative for Jesus.

Not long before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., rabbi Yochanan ben Zachi escaped the destruction of Jerusalem and set up a school in the costal town of Jamnia. In the years following his death, in a manner not precisely known, his followers felt it necessary to make a determination about which books would be considered authoritative and “the Writings” were added to the scripture. The Church went along with this decision but later added some apocryphal books written in Greek. At the time of the Reformation, the Reformers excluded these apocryphal books.

That is the whirlwind tour of Old Testament origins. Where did the New Testament come from?

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