Is Blogging about the Bible a Waste of Time?

It would be, if the Bible were a book of antiquarian interest only. Does the Bible have anything to say about issues that burn holes through the flesh of actual people? It has plenty to say. But should we pay attention?

Here is an example that rubs people in opposing ways. Many people look to the Bible for normative guidance on the social construction of gender. Others choose to take their cue from Madonna or Betty Friedan, Steve Martin or Robin Williams. I suppose there is some kind of middle ground, but it’s harder to find than one might think. A riproaring conversation on the subject is being hosted by a blog with an unpronounceable name. The posters are doing a wonderful job. Some people sniff at a blog like this. The long comment threads are a sign that the conversation serves a purpose. I think the blog disproves the following generalization: "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at." -John Berger. I know, it still is a remarkably accurate generalization. When the Mormons claim that women relate to men and to God through men, they succeed in giving theological approbation to a widespread sociological reality. They fail to give theological approbation, thank goodness, to the flip side of the sociological reality Berger notes: men relate to women and to God not at all. My questions are the following, and yes, I do turn to the Bible to help me answer them: in a society after God’s own heart, how would men and women look at each other? Would they relate to God through each other, apart from each other, or both?

The Bible speaks to all kinds of issues. The fact raises issues of its own. In what context should the Bible be read? Are we to approach the text clothed as it were in a specific history of interpretation, or are we to approach it in a state of nakedness, letting it touch us more directly? Or should we discourage interest in the Bible, as Hector Avalos suggests?

The historical-critical approach to the Bible, properly understood, aims to allow the text to touch us more directly. To be sure, dangers lurk in every corner. The Jesus of Borg and Crossan, Jesus, supposedly, as he was before tradition got hold of him, may have less in common with the historical Jesus than does the Jesus of tradition.

It is healthy, I would argue, to approach the biblical text in more than one way. It makes sense to ponder the text’s significance by setting a varied table. In the context I work in on a daily basis (a religious community), I try to set a table of interpretive roast beef, white wine, strong coffee, and pumpkin pie. My wife, who is a pastor as well, tends to serve saucy pasta dishes and red wine topped off with gelato and limoncello. It’s not hard to guess who is more enjoyable to listen to, is it?

The origins of the interpretive dishes one serves can and should be varied. It is sometimes important – not always! - to explain what origins the dishes have.

Interpretation of the Bible is strongest if built on three supports. One support: an understanding of what the text might have meant once upon a time, according to the intentions of whoever wrote the compositions contained in it. A reconstruction of authorial intention must be based on signals embedded in the text itself. The signals, however, are not to be treated in isolation from data derived from other texts and extra-textual sources. In short, a text is to be interpreted in light of everything we know about the cultural and historical contexts in which the text was produced. That’s how we approach all texts. That’s how we should approach the Bible.

A second support: a knowledge and understanding of the history of interpretation of the Bible in Judaism and Christianity. Because some biblical texts were meant from the start to be of abiding significance, and the others have been so construed by the traditions that preserved them, the traditioning of biblical texts at and beyond the compositional level deserves careful study. It is also possible to reconstruct snatches of the history of interpretation of components of the Bible before the Bible as we know it existed. The Bible’s history of interpretation extends throughout the ages, and continues into our own day. It is a powerful, blessed experience to read the Bible through the lens of the Talmud, though the eyes of Irenaeus and Augustine, through the prism of the liturgy of any of the ancient confessions, through the eyes of Luther, Calvin, and Kierkegaard, through the reflections of Buber, Heschel, and Levinas. 

It is short-sighted to ignore the history of interpretation. Most people today continue to read the Bible from deep within a specific interpretive tradition, even when they claim to approach it from outside of any tradition. I do wonder about people who think they interpret the Bible in some sort of mantic state, in isolation from the corrupting influence of their spiritual ancestors or peers, under the sheer guidance of the Holy Spirit. What a strange doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The fact is, they tap into a tradition of interpretation too, but at a subconscious level only.

A skilled interpreter of the Bible will interact with the history of interpretation. If and only if an interpreter does so, she/he has a chance of contributing to it.

A third support: a knowledge and understanding of one’s own culture. If you are not an insightful interpreter of the world around you, you have no chance of becoming an insightful interpreter of the Bible. If you are unaware of your social location and that of your intended audience, if you cannot name the confessional idiosyncracies that codetermine your point of view, if you are in denial about the differences which distinguish one biblical culture from another and from our own (the cultures of ancient Israel, Greco-Roman antiquity, and the modern Western world are all distinct), you will make one category mistake after another in the process of interpretation.

If just one leg of the three-legged stool on which an interpreter sits is wobbly, the interpreter will risk tipping over into the muck below. As for those who treat the ethical and theological construction of earlier ages as so much cultural baggage of no use in the modern world, it’s hard to take them seriously. Do they really think they can flourish as human beings without some sort of rootedness in the broader human experience?

Even if one thinks that religion and religious literature are to be understand as works of art and not as gifts of revelation, as if art and revelation were disjunct sets, even if one believes that religion is, at best, “a lie which tells the truth” (Picasso’s definition of art), one might still believe that posing the truth question is a peculiarly human thing to do. And one might notice that the religiously sensitive – I’m channeling Schleiermacher here – do this more insistently and more profoundly than those who are not (footnote: Nietzsche falls into the category of the religiously sensitive, as does Camus).

Theology, ethics, the construction of a particular communal pietas, an aesthetics of life, all these and more are tasks that every generation must take up anew. Canons of scripture and tradition will serve as indispensable guides in that work. If both scripture and tradition are allowed to critique contemporary culture, especially contemporary religious culture, which often passes itself off as faithful to the word of God and/or tradition in the very act of supine obedience to a contemporary fad, the makings of a healthy situation is in view. To the extent that what passes for wisdom in today’s world sits on a barren mountaintop a tiresome journey away from mountains built up by previous generations, the resultant sense of loneliness, I think, eventually becomes overwhelming.

Ultimately, interpretation is a listening process. If you are not a good listener, what makes you think you will be a good interpreter of the Bible?

The issues to which I have just alluded are recurrent topics in Bible blogdom. Doug Chaplin, Stephen, Phil Sumpter, Dave Beldman, Daniel Driver, and Nick Norelli are bloggers I read who touch on these questions with insight and verve. Angela Erisman Roskop has thought a lot about these topics. She may have incorporated some of her thoughts into the dissertation she is completing. With any luck, she will provide an executive summary for her blogging friends. Iyov and Kevin Edgecomb show a keen interest in more than one strand of the Bible’s history of interpretation. People like Ros Clarke, Eclexia, Kyle Covett, Bob MacDonald, Esteban Vazquez, and David Ker know how to wrap their minds and spirits around just about any topic. Suzanne McCarthy, Rich Rhodes, Wayne Leman, Peter Kirk, all of the Better Bibles blog, along with Rick Mansfield and Elshaddai Edwards, help make online discussion of Bible translations perennially interesting. For links to all these blogs, see the right hand sidebar.

It is a peculiarly modern heresy to prefer an “unmediated” and culturally ignorant encounter with the biblical text to an encounter mediated by a rich interpretive tradition or failing that, at least a degree of linguistic and anthropological competence. I heard more than one paper at SBL in San Diego that seemed to have been put together while sitting on a stool with not one, but three wobbly legs. What do you do with interpretation that is insensitive to the text and earlier interpretation of it and takes a sledgehammer approach to interpretive controversies based on a controlling ideological predilection?

You let it go in one ear and out the other.

Is blogging about the Bible a waste of time? Judging by the blogs I read, the quality of the comments they attract, and their informed readers who follow but do not comment,[1] the answer must be a resounding no.

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[1] I am amazed at how many people walked up to me at SBL San Diego and told me they read my blog, or someone else’s.

Comments

[Nitsav]

"When the Mormons claim that women relate to men and to God through men, they succeed in giving theological approbation to a widespread sociological reality."

As a Mormon, I question the claim that "the Mormons" assert this. I'm unaware of any formal or informal statements or folk theology asserting this.

[JohnFH]

Hello, Nitzav, whoever you are. I like your pen name. As a Mormon, you would do us non-Mormons a favor if you described in your own language what Mormons claim about women and authority and such.

Here is a site I like, though I imagine you don't:

www.feministmormonhousewives.org

I know that my brief characterization of the Mormon position requires qualification. Are you willing to qualify it after the manner of Maxine Hanks? What do you think about the Sonia Johnson case?

[Nitsav]

Actually, I browse and even comment on FMH from time to time.

I'm not familiar with whichever of Hanks specific claims you're referring to (though I have read some essays from her edited book), but following others (scroll down to response), I have serious doubts her claims are either accurate or representative.

As for Sonia Johnson, it was before my time. I find myself largely in agreement with Orson Scott Card's essay "Walking the Tightrope" which discusses her story to some extent.

But neither Hanks' nor Johnson's books or experiences establish the claim that Mormon women have access to God solely through men. "The Mormons" simply do not make this claim, and uniquely Mormon scripture explicitly refutes it, in my view.

Regardless of the group in question, it's not methodologically safe to make generalizations solely on the basis of the writings of the disaffected, as you may or may not be doing.

[Nitsav]

I believe that all men and women regardless of faith or denomination have direct access to God by prayer, and that accordingly God can speak directly to each individual.

From the Book of Mormon- "And now, [God] imparteth his word by angels unto men, yea, not only men but women also. Now this is not all; little children do have words given unto them many times, which confound the wise and the learned. "

My pen name, as you may well guess, comes from two of my favorite passages- Psalm 82 and Isaiah 3:14.

Nice blog, btw :)

[JohnFH]

Nitsav, thanks for your helpful comments. What strong and wonderful images we find in Ps 82 and Isa 3:13-15! You clearly know your Bible well. I like your blog, too. If you had to name the top three Bible bloggers in Mormondom, who would they be?

The Mormon men and women I have known over the years have taught me much. Once upon a time, I spent a summer excavating in Syria with a team from BYU. Since I was practically the only non-Mormon on the team, they often forgot I was there, so to speak, and spoke unguardedly and often about Mormon things, their doubts as well as their faith.

Disaffection is not the word that describes what I heard. Quiet pain mixed with love and pride sums it up better.

[Peter Kirk]

Roast beef with white wine? I thought there was something wrong with the meal I was being served up on this blog. I appreciate the strong meat, perhaps even more than your wife's pasta stuff, but it needs the right drink with it. White wine? You might as well serve whey! Let's have a good full-bodied red to help us digest the meat.

[JohnFH]

Perhaps I've been moving in the red direction lately.

[Iyov]

John: you have a particular fascination with American fringe movements such as Mormonism or Unitarian Univeralism -- you mention them regularly. I don't recall you posting much on Islam, Greco-Roman beliefs, or religions from outside the Ancient Near East (Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, aboriginal religions, etc.)

The history of Mormonism in 19th century America is interesting (full of colorful, complex characters, particularly Smith and Young, and many dramatic and bloody episodes) and it is of course central to understanding the growth of the American West from Illinois to California -- and especially in the Utah Territory.

However, I have never considered the claims of Book of Mormon's theories about the Ancient Near East or the aboriginal peoples of the Americas seriously. (In contrast, for example, non-Christians can learn about Second Temple Judaism and the Greco-Roman world from the Christian Scriptures and early Christian writers; the Hebrew Scriptures, even to biblical minimalist, have a great deal of information about Ancient Near Eastern culture.) Thus, I am afraid I have little knowledge or sympathy to Mormonism outside of its historical role in the 19th century.

Do you think I am shortsighted in this? Given that I have only a small number of orbits about the sun, would my time be better spent learning more about Mormonism than about, for example, Islam or Buddhism?

[JohnFH]

Iyov,

I've just been saving up my Buddhist and Bahai posts for the right opportunity.

I'm a curious George by nature, but it's the intersection of people, ideas, and their experience of God (however understood) that has always intrigued me the most. When I'm on good terms with someone from another faith tradition, I eventually ask them to give me lessons in their faith, Thus I have been catechized, if only briefly, in a dozen different traditions. It's fun to watch a Muslim or a Buddhist trip over the same questions we all do. The result is that I go back to trying to make sense of my own faith tradition with a little more humility.

[Jenelle]

I have a couple of thoughts, John.

1. I think you could write a whole series on what you said here:

Ultimately, interpretation is a listening process. If you are not a good listener, what makes you think you will be a good interpreter of the Bible?

Simple truths. I like those.

2. I'm glad someone else already questioned the white wine choice.

3. I'd agree that a treatment of Islam's perspective here would be phenomenally relevant. Maybe you could have a few continuations of this post?