Contemporary biblical interpretation

The following document is a summary (with comments added) of Carol A. Newsom, “Contemporary Methods in Biblical Study,” (2227-34) in the New Oxford Annotated Bible, 4^th edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Literary approaches

The 1960s saw a proliferation of courses in “the Bible as literature.” The focus was not on the source documents that preceded the text as we have it, nor on other historical aspects of the text, but on what study can show simply focusing on the text itself. The movement of “New Criticism” (1930s through 1950s) emphasized the text itself in abstraction from the intention of the author; its goal was to see “the way in which the text itself is structured so as to produce the observed or expected effect and understandings. Thus, the plot, characters, setting, point of view, and other aspects of the story’s rhetoric are analyzed.”

Structuralism developed with the analysis of language by Ferdinand de Saussure: the meaning of a word is given in terms of what it is not in a network of contrasts. Thick is not thin. Wet is not dry. Claude Levi-Stauss extended structuralist analysis to cultures; binary oppositions play a prominent role in the analysis: (“life/death; male/female; hunting/farming; outside/inside” [2228]). A. J. Greimas applied structuralist analysis to narrative, and biblical interpretation made use of structuralist ideas. Structuralists saw their fundamental oppositions as applying to every culture in every era of history.

Reader-response theory challenged structuralism’s universals with analysis of how every reader necessarily constructs his or her own interpretation, producing meaning by putting the pieces together that come in over time, by filling in gaps in the text (e.g., details concerning characters, aspects of motivation or causality, connections between events)” (2228). Interpretation touches on values, which the reader may embrace or resist. Reading takes place within the perspective of what is plausible in the readers interpretive community.

Thus the idea of a single, fixed, fully definite, authoritative interpretation becomes an impossible hypothesis. Now, “instead of seeing [premodern] readings as naïve or simply wrong, interpreters now ask about the assumptions and values that govern the reading practices of Christian typological and allegorical exegesis and of Rabbinic midrash. Midrash in particular has engaged contemporary literary scholars, because some of its interpretative practices bear an intriguing resemblance to forms of postmodern interpretation (for example, the acceptance of multiple, even contradictory interpretations of the same text . . . .).”

Post-structuralist, deconstructionist, or postmodern interpretation was developed by Jacques Derrida, who criticized the tendency of Western philosophy to interpret all of reality as centered around a single term—God, reason, the human being—whereas a close reading would uncover flaws in the appearance of a simple and stable center. For example, without a son [or daughter] a father cannot be a father; thus it is the son that causes the father to be what he is. Derrida at simply played with the text by reversing the privilege normally assumed to be associated with the first member of standardly aligned binary oppositions: male/female, reason/emotion, white/black, presence/absence, oral/written. Derrida would use etymologies [historical roots of the word in more ancient languages] associations from Freudian psychology, and sharp analysis in order to show that texts are not the solid entities that they are taken to be. (2229)

Social-scientific criticism

This kind of study addressed questions regarding “the social location of early Christians” and why Christianity succeeded “among Gentiles but not among Jews” (2229); how the world of the Bible can be better understood if we know the background of “the roles of honor and shame in Mediterranean social ties and the functioning of patron-client forms of social relations” (2230). “Aspects of discourse and categories of thought were organized in characteristic patterns that reflected these social values and assumptions.” Debates about what types of sociological or anthropological approaches were most helpful. “Social functionalism examines the ways in which society, considered as an organism, attempts to contain and manage conflict, integrating disparate members and subgroups in to the whole. . . . By contrast, conflict models . . . emphasize the ways in which different groups in a society pursue their own interests and the ways in which different ideologies struggle with one another. . . . [Of interest is to study] the way in which societies create ‘symbolic universes’ by which to negotiate issues of identity, legitimacy, and the creation or resolution of conflict” (2231).

Cultural hermeneutics

[Hermeneutics is the academic discipline concerned with interpretation: interpretation-ology]

18^th century “Enlightenment” social thought upheld ideals of objectivity that many have rejected since then, because of the increasing discovery and emphasis on the importance of how a person’s particular situation (especially in terms of gender, ethnicity, and class) shapes that person’s interpretation of things. There is no neutral interpretation. Therefore (according to this approach to interpretation) each group (especially oppressed groups) have every right to gather in their communities and interpret the Bible from the perspective oriented to their own interests in social progress. [For example, in Latin America it is common to interpret biblical references to the devil as referring to the United States.] Examples of this style of hermeneutics include Latin American liberation theology [drawing on Marxist analysis as applied to Latin America] and African-American biblical hermeneutics.] “Liberation theology has tended to place special emphasis on such specific portions of the Bible as the story of the Exodus, the social criticism of the prophets, the figure of Mary (as singer of the Magnificat, with its imagery of social transformation in Luke 1.46-55), Jesus preaching of the kingdom of God in the Gospels, the depiction of the liberating Christian community in Acts, and the struggle against evil in its imperialist and cosmic guide in the book of Revelation” (2232).

Jewish and Christian feminist biblical interpretation comes in many varieties, from moderate interpretation of how the Bible affirms the full humanity of women to radical dismissal of the Bible as hopelessly sexist. Feminist interpretation is also intertwined to various degrees with concerns about ethnicity and social/economic class.

The last phase in the sequence as narrated by Newsom is a recovery of a premodern way of reading the text. This way is called “post-critical” where the term “critical” is used to name the fabric of modern assumptions dominant in the past two centuries. This way reinstitutes the Bible as a grand narrative or master narrative “within which persons can live and by means of which they understand reality” (2234).

[Conclusion]

“If anything ties together the various strands of newly developing approaches to biblical interpretation, it is a concern for the relationship of language, meaning, and power. . . . Cultural hermeneutics . . . focuses on the ways in which access to the power to interpret the text and construe its meaning serves to empower those who have traditionally been marginalized. And postmodernism has attempted to underscore the ironies of all such interpretive strategies, since in its view a stable and definitive meaning always eludes the interpreter. Yet its very skepticism about any final and objective understanding is what opens up space for a reappropriation of traditional forms of interpretation that attempt to challenge the interpretive power of modernity itself.” (2234)

[JHW’s comments.

Power is discussed in simplified terms of oppressor and oppressed. While gross inequalities of power and abuse of power are important aspects of history and of contemporary existence, power is also necessary to leadership, teamwork, effective organization, and historical progress—a side of the story often omitted today.

We live in an age when the Xs, Ys, and Zs, who have been marginalized by power relations, are gaining their independent voices and challenging the systems that have unjustly marginalized them. Liberal and radical sympathies, scholarship, and efforts toward justice say, “You Xs have been marginalized, but there are ways of reading the Bible that show more respect for Xs than the dominant interpretation has recognized. Or “The Bible was written by people who were prejudiced against Xs, but here are ways for you to read the Bible as a document of liberation.”]