A woman and a man stood beneath the soaring stained-glass win- dow, the most inspiring of all the glorious parts of the cathedral. As the woman looked in silence from a distance, the man stepped close, peering at the glass and moving from panel to panel. As they walked away the woman said:
“Did you ever see such a magnificent picture? I felt as if 1 was in paradise as I stood in front of it.”
“Oh, yeah,” the man replied. “But, you know, that glass is rather hard to see through. I could barely make out the trees outside.”
For too long now we have believed that the Bible is a window through which we are intended to see what lies behind it. We have supposed that the primary purpose of the biblical writers was to report historical events but that unfortunately they did not do an adequate job. Their glass was stained.
But perhaps the colors in the glass are the meaning and not just an obstacle. Perhaps the Bible is a glorious stained-glass window and we have been looking at it with blinded eyes.
That, in brief, is the contention of a growing number of biblical scholars who are looking at the Bible with a new literary approach.
In 1970 I finished a book on biblical interpretation entitled T h e Bible in Dialogue with Modern Man. ’ That book attempted to present the most important debates on biblical interpretation over the 1,948 years since the time of Jesus’ ministry. Looking back at the book I see hints of what has become quite obvious now: we were at the end of an era in biblical studies. I wish I had seen it then, but it was only a cloud the size of a man’s hand on the horizon. The revolution in progress is this: we are moving from the historical era to the 1. Macky, The Bible in Dialogue with Modern Man (Waco, Tex.: Word Books, 1970).
Reprinted from The Theological Educator 9 (Spring 1979): 32-46.
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literary era in biblical studies. “Today the historical-critical para- digm is in process of potentially revolutionary change.“2
This change is a paradigm shift, to use the language of Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scient$ic Revolutions. A paradigm shift is the movement from one particular hypothesis on the subject before us to another. It is a time of turmoil, of great conflict, of name-calling, of threat to the established order. But it appears to be moving steadily.
Biblical scholarship has endured such a paradigm shift once be- fore, a movement from the philosophical to the historical approach to the Bible. Up until the Reformation, theologians approached the Bible from philosophical-theological perspectives seeking the ideas to be found there.
The reformers, however, rejected church theology and philoso- phical systems as their starting point. They advocated finding the historical meaning of the text by reading the Bible in the light of its own times. The reformers were still looking primarily for ideas to use in their own time, but they started a new way of looking. This new way sprang to full life in the Enlightenment and its development of historical criticism which was adopted by biblical scholars inthe nineteenth century.
The crucial change, the paradigm shift, from philosophy to his- tory was this: the goal was no longer to find ideas to use in the present; now the goal was to uncover events in the past. The his- torical critic’s goal was to answer the question of what really hap- pened? Naturally the historian paid attention to ideas, but they were simply part of the pattern of events that had to be woven into a whole by the historian.
Today we cannot doubt that that was a revolution, and indeed a fruitful one. Much of what is now taken for granted by conservative and liberal alike on text, language, form, context, and so on, is the result of two hundred years of historical criticism.
Now too it is clear that with the rise to power of historical crit- icism the older philosophical-theological approach did not disap- pear, especially in the various orthodoxies (Catholic, Eastern, Reformed, Lutheran, and others). Likewise, we can anticipate that the historical approach is not going to disappear with the advent of the literary approach. What will happen is that the absolutism of the historical is going to be undermined. In addition it is possible that the absolutism of the philosophical approach in the orthodoxies may begin to be subtly undermined also. But that remains to be seen.
2. N. R. Petersen, Literary Criticismfor New l&tament Critics (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973), pp. 9-10.
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In this article the thesis that we are now in a revolutionary stage in biblical studies will be explained, argued for, and its implications for the future suggested. The first section will show the anomalies in historical criticism of the Bible, for it is precisely the recognition of weaknesses that leads to a revolution. The next section will be concerned with seeing the Bible’s literary dimension and explaining the new literary approach and why it is offered. The third section will be a more detailed look at one aspect of the literary approach, God’s accommodation in metaphor, symbol, and the imagination.
Finally, based on the arguments of the preceding sections we shall discuss transculturation.
THE ANOMALIES IN HISTORICAL CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE
From the very beginning of historical criticism in the Enlightenment, conservative theologians have objected that it was not as objective and presuppositionless as it claimed. In particular, British biblical scholars as a whole took a moderate view on this matter, seldom adopting the “functional atheismyy3 that was common among Ger- man historical critics of the Bible. The British early recognized that
“all historians write on the basis of their personal philosophies, none of which can be proved or disproved.“4 Alan Richardson’s History, Sacred and Profane, is an excellent presentation of this perspective view of history.
In particular, moderate biblical criticism has long noted what George Ladd states succinctly: “Underlying the ebb and flow of successive schools of criticism is to be found the continuing theo- logical assumption that the nature of God and history is such that a proper critical method can make no room for the immediate acting of God in history.“5 Ladd then goes on to present the typical British view that this assumption is false and that historical criticism can function more accurately without it. Ladd’s own “evangelical crit- icism,” his “historical-theological method,” shows well how this may be done.6
Such evangelical objections are nothing new, but when we hear left-wing scholars raising profound objections, that is new. For ex- ample, some of Bultmann’s students have propounded the new her- meneutic based on Heidegger’s views of the power of poetry. Gerhard
3. See Walter Wink, The Bible in Human Transformation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973), p. 4.
4. Macky, The Bible in Dialogue with Modern Man, p. 134.
5. Ladd, The New Testament and Criticism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), p. 49.
6. See Ladd, The New Tatament and Criticism, pp. 13, 16.
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Ebeling proclaims, “the primary phenomenon in the realm of under- standing is not understanding of language, but understanding through language. “7 His meaning is that the Bible is not a problem we are in charge of solving, which is the historical critic’s view.
Rather we are the problem, and we need to stand under the light of the Bible to let it solve us. This does not deny the necessity for historical study as a preliminary. The major protest is that for too long scholars have stopped when historical results were obtained instead of going beyond them.
Even more revolutionary in his criticism is Walter Wink, who argues in The Bible in Human Transformation that historical criticism of the Bible is a false ideology he calls “objectivism.” His specific objections are (1) that this approach is not neutral and objective but is a handmaiden of the particular philosophical-theological per- spectives of its users; (2) that as a result, historians come up with widely varying “assured results,” as can be seen in the contradictory portraits summarized in Bowman’s which Jesus?; (3) that the attempt at objectivity produces a heavy-handed rationalism that ignores much of the emotional, irrational, imaginative aspects of human life that are continuously present in the Bible; and (4) that by standing over the Bible like a coroner over a corpse, historical critics are unable to stand under the Bible and hence are unable to under- stand it.
Scholars of literature, in addition, have suggested that the biblical critic’s concern for what lies behind the text (rather than for the text itself) is a waste. Roland Frye notes, for example, that in lit- erature there have been scholars who tried to divide works into sources, but “it has been found that such analyses are at best only marginally productive, and far more often they are counterproduc- tive. They almost always divert attention from the literary work itself by breaking it up into fragments. In my field such efforts are called disintegrating criticism . . . [which] has been almost entirely abandoned as unproductive.“*
A writer with a unique perspective drew similar conclusions:
“C. S. Lewis, speaking both as a literary critic and a writer whose works had been analyzed by critics, records his distrust of critics who presume to explain the process that lies behind a written text, noting that the critics who theorized about the composition of his
7. Ebeling, “Work of God and Hermeneutic, ” in New Frontiers in Theology, II: The New Hmneneutic, ed. James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb, Jr. (New York: Harper
& Row, 1964), p. 93.
8. Frye, “A Literary Perspective for the Criticism of the Gospels,” in Jesus and Man? H@e, ed. D. G. Miller and D. Y. Hadidian (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Publications, 1971), p. 214.
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own works had never once been right.“g The crucial criticism is not that it is improper to look behind a literary text. Rather the accu- sation is that only highly speculative results are possible so it is a waste of time to try.
The conclusion which this series of objections thus brings us is this: historical criticism cannot do what it claimed it would-namely, provide an adequate interpretation of the Bible. A child stood up and said, “But the King has no clothes on.” So the King is sliding off his throne. A new day is dawning with the new literary approach.
SEEING THE BIBLE’S LITERARY DIMENSION The new literary approach is not to be confused with the Bible-as- literature movement of liberalism at the turn of the century. That movement denied the authority of the Bible as the Word of God, asserting that it was just another example of religious literature.
In addition this new approach is not to be confused with the literary criticism that has been practiced by biblical scholars for several centuries. The questions of author, date, audience, place of origin, sources, and so on are historical questions. They do not touch the literary-aesthetic qualities with which the new literary approach is mainly concerned.
This new approach suggests there is a third dimension to the Bible that has been largely ignored. The philosophical-theological search for useful ideas sees one dimension. The historical search for background provides insight into a second dimension. Now the claim is being made that the depth dimension has been missed, that the literary/aesthetic dimension of much of the Bible must be plumbed.
For too long biblical scholars have been living in a two-dimen- sional world. Flat. Now the sky and the mountains and the bottom of the sea have come into view. This approach has been developed on the basis of the new criticism or formalistic criticism that sprung up in literary circles in this country in the 1930s and 1940s. This new approach concentrates on the work itself, rather than moving away from the work to something else, whether author, readers, historical background, or ideas. To get to the depths of a work “we must narrow our attention to what the literary work says, and to do that we must first consider how it is said.“‘O
In this section we will consider three aspects of this subject: the
9. Leland Ryken, “Literary Criticism of the Bible: Some Fallacies,” in Literary Interpretations ti Biblical Narratives, ed. K. R. R. Gros Louis (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1974), pp. 36-37.
10. W. L. Guerin et al., A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (New York:
Harper & Row, 1966), p. 47.
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meaning of a new literary approach, the assumptions lying behind it, and the argument for using it to see the depths of the Bible.
What is the new literary approach? This approach does not ignore the insights gained from traditional interpretations. Traditional ap- proaches have been textual-linguistic, historical-biographical, and moral-philosophical, and all have offered considerable insight. But now we must go beyond these and ask what the particular work itself has to contribute because of its own form. Norman Perrin points to the kinds of questions that must be asked of a narrative by mentioning “the inter-relatedness of plot movement, activity of the characters involved, the human encounters and their outcomes.“11 Leland Ryken gives a more detailed list of questions used in the literary approach: “How is the story structured? What are the unify- ing narrative principles . . . ? What is important about the ordering of events? . . . What archetypal plot motifs are important in the story? How is the thematic meaning of the story embodied in the narrative form? . . . What are the meanings of the poet’s concrete images and metaphors and allusions? What feelings are communi- cated by his hyperboles, images, exclamations . . . ?“12
Clearly this approach is an attempt to pay much closer attention to the text itself than is done in other approaches. Unlike the his- torical approach, it is not looking for the historical process that led up to this text but is concerned with seeing and hearing the fullness of the text itself. Unlike the philosophical-theological approach, it is not using the text to develop a system of doctrine but is concerned with the text as it is. This does not mean that those other questions are forbidden. It just means that if this text is God’s Word to us, our primary and ultimate task is to hear it in all its fullness.
The assumptions undergirding this approach. At the root of this ap- proach is the belief that human language has a variety of functions.
Most people believe that conveying information is the purpose of language, and so in reading the Bible they look for information. But to inform, to declare, to assert constitute only one of several func- tions of language. A second very important function is based on the biblical view that language, the Word, is powerful, that it effects change, that it performs actions (cf. Genesis 1; Jeremiah 1:9-10;
Mark 1:25-26; 2:5, 11). This kind of language is called performative.
Examples of performative language are the minister marrying a couple, the jury foreman announcing a verdict, and one person mak- ing a promise to another. Literary language is this kind of language, for at its best it does something to the reader, making him someone 11. Perrin, Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), p. 148.
12. Ryken, “Literary Criticism of the Bible,” p. 24.
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different. This difference involves not merely an increase in infor- mation but a new experience, a new feeling, perhaps even a new life.13
The possibility of this happening in literature is seen in Aristotle’s distinction between “rhetoric” and “poetics,” background pointed out by William Beardslee in Literary Criticism of the New zstament. l4
“Rhetoric” is an ornamental form used to make content more at- tractive. Biblical scholars have usually treated the biblical narrative- poetic materials this way. But in “poetics” the form is essential to the meaning. Almost he could have said, “the medium is the mes- sage.” The new literary approach claims that to a significant extent the Bible is “literary” or “poetic,” that its meaning is not separable from its form.
This insight has been stressed above all about Jesus’ parables, especially by Dan Via. His book The Parables offers the basic theory used to see deeply into some of Jesus’ parables. In a later article he summarizes the view this way:
The narrative parables, as fully realized artistic works, present a union of form and content so that meaning depends as much on form as on content. The content is composed of the episodes in the pro- tagonist’s fate- his actions or nonactions, his encounters, and his moments of recognition and understanding. The form is not the dis- posal container for these parts but is rather the arrangement and fusion of them. Form exerts a kind of pressure on the matter, or content, with the result that meaning is diffused throughout the tex- ture of the parable. Meaning, then, is not found in any one isolable part or “point” but in the configuration of action and understanding as a whole.15
Most conservative biblical interpreters have imagined God’s self- revelation as a treasure hidden inside an earthen vessel which was the biblical form; once you have found the doctrine inside, you have all you need and then you can ignore the stories. The new literary approach suggests, however, that God’s self-revelation is the story itselc the story is a flower that is beautiful when whole, but is destroyed when you pull it apart to try to see what is inside it that makes it beautiful.
In a literary work the author intends that something happen to the reader; he does not intend merely to pass on information. In particular, literary works touch our imaginations, providing us with 13. Cf. R. C. Tannehill, The Sword of His Mouth (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 197% pp. 1, 7.
14. Beardslee, Literary Criticism of the New TRFtament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 197% pp. 3-4.
15. Via, “The Relationship of Form to Content in the Parables: The Wedding Feast,” Interpret&on 25 (197 1): 175.
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new, vicarious experiences that make us somewhat different people.
Experiences cannot be fully contained in ideas, or information. Thus a literary work cannot be fully translated into other words. James Barr expresses this basic insight well:
In so far as a work is really literary and not merely information . . .
it can perhaps be said to be its own meaning. . . . For a work to be literary in character means that it does not have a detachable mean- ing which might have been stated in some other way; the way in which it was stated in the work is in fact the message or the meaning of this work. Any comment on such works can therefore aim only at elucidating the work and sending the reader back to the work itself.r6
“Back to the work itself” could well be the motto of the new literary approach. Commentary may be helpful as a means of help- ing readers understand the text, but neither the theology nor the history behind the text is an adequate expression of a literary-poetic text. Amos Wilder, the pioneer in this approach, sums up this cen- tral tenet briefly: “We should reckon with what we can learn about metaphorical and symbolic language from students of poetry: that it cannot really be translated, least of all into prose.“1’
Justification for the new literary approach. The most effective way to test the value of a new pair of glasses is to try them on. The best way to test the new literary method is to read some of the books and articles by scholars approaching the Bible this way and find out if indeed they provide valuable new insights. But in order to get us to give up our attachment to our old glasses, we often need reasons. What arguments can be offered to justify looking at the Bible as literature (as well as theology and history)?
Leland Ryken offers a number of criteria for identifying artistic narratives, so the more a biblical text exhibits these criteria the more literary it is. Literature focuses on human experience, not abstract thought, presented as “characters in action or concrete images and sensory descriptions.” Further, “at the consciously ar- tistic end of the narrative spectrum it is possible to discern three things: (1) a story that is carefully unified . . . , (2) a plot that has structural unity and pattern, and (3) a story that makes use of such narrative forms as foreshadowing, dramatic irony, climax, suspense, poetic justice, foils, image patterns, and symbolism.” As an example of this literary form, in which the meaning is fully incarnate in the story, Ryken points to Genesis 1- 3 and says, “in these chapters there is not a single instance of a theme stated in propositional form. All
16. Barr, The Bible in the Modern World (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 70.
17. Wilder, Earb Christian Rhetoric: The Language of the Gospel (Cambridge: Har- vard University Press, 1971), p. 125.
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of the themes and creation ordinances that we might deduce from the story have been incarnated in the actions and the dialogue.“‘a
By the standards of characters in action, concrete images, unified story, use of literary techniques, and meaning incarnated in the story, there is a great deal of biblical material that can be defined as literary. This does not mean that it is not theological or historical, but it does mean that there is more to the poetry and narratives- much more- than a theological or historical approach can discern.
Ryken himself offers a superb example of this approach in action in The Literature of the Bible. Kenneth Gros Louis’s collection, Literary Interpretations of Biblical Narratives, is also a noteworthy source. Dan Via’s The Parables and the April 1971 number of Interpretation show the best work done on the literary dimensions of Jesus’ parables, though Robert Funk’s essay on “The Good Samaritan” in Semeia 2 is a gem, too. One other extraordinarily insightful book is Tanne- hill’s The Sword of His Mouth, which is concerned with the forceful and imaginative language in the sayings of Jesus. Finally we should note two others works in this field, Leonard Thompson’s Introducing Biblical Literature: A More Fantastic Country and J. P. Pritchard’s A Literary Approach to the New Testament.
Try them, you’ll like them.
A note of warning: some literary scholars have become enamored of a philosophical approach called structuralism and have begun applying it to the biblical texts. It is unbelievably jargonized, worse even than Heidegger’s existentialism. After reading a number of such works, e.g. in Semeia 1 & 2 and Interpretation 28, my conclusion is the same as Perrin’s: “At this point a student of the discussion begins to wonder whether the recourse to structuralist analysis in the form of actantial analysis of the narrative has helped very much.“i9 GOD’S ACCOMMODATION: METAPHOR, SYMBOLS, AND IMAGINATION
Central to all literature is the use of metaphorical language, con- crete images pointing toward some deep meaning that cannot otherwise be specified. The new literary approach takes biblical metaphor, imagery, and symbolism seriously, seeing it as the win- dow onto the great mystery.
Up until the eighteenth century, theologians recognized the Bible’s central use of stories and symbols and spoke of it as God’s accom-
18. Ryken, “Literary Criticism of the Bible,” pp. 24-25.
19. Perrin, Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom, p. 174. An article that summarizes and advocates the structuralist hermeneutic is J. D. Crossan’s “Waking the Bible:
Biblical Hermeneutic and Literary Imagination,”Interpretation 32 (1978): 269-85.