Prima Scriptura , livre ebook

© 2011 by N. Clayton Croy
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakeracademic.com
Ebook edition created 2011
Ebook corrections 06.28.2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-1444-7
Except as otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
To my parents, Otis and Helen Croy,
who were my first teachers of the Bible
and examples of Christian living
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1: Analyzing and Preparing the Interpreter
2: Analyzing the Text
3: Evaluating and Contemporizing the Text
4: Appropriating the Text and Transforming the Community
Appendix 1: Sample Exegesis Paper
Appendix 2: Sample Exegetical Brief
Appendix 3: Pictograph of Philippians
Appendix 4: Pictograph of 2 Corinthians
Appendix 5: Chart of the Gospel of Mark
Appendix 6: Nestle-Aland 27 and UBS 4 Comparison Chart
Appendix 7: In the Laboratory with Agassiz
Bibliography
Subject Index
Author Index
Scripture Index
Notes (for Appendix 1)
Back Cover
Preface
A Complex and Contested Enterprise
I n January 2005 the Executive Council of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), the largest professional association of teachers and scholars of the Bible, faced a dilemma. The council had received a resolution from a group of members responding to the recent U.S. election in November 2004. The resolution observed that “values,” sometimes specifically called “Christian values” or “biblical values,” had emerged in the campaign as a key political issue. The group contended that the values “most commonly identified in public debates were the issues of gay marriage, abortion, and stem-cell research.”
The resolution went on to argue that these values “are not major concerns in the Bible, and in fact are not even directly addressed in the Bible. Rather, they tend to reflect the underlying problems of homophobia, misogyny, control of reproductive rights, and restraint of expression (including scientific research) in U.S. society today.” The proponents of the resolution asserted that “the moral issues dominating the biblical texts focus instead on concerns such as the well-being of individuals, the integrity of community, care for the powerless and the vulnerable, economic justice, the establishment of peace, and the stewardship of the environment.” They concluded that the Society should work toward securing these goals and values.
The Executive Council had at least three alternatives: to reject the resolution out of hand; to endorse the resolution as an official statement of the Society; or to refer the resolution to the membership for responses and comments.
The council wisely chose the third course. The resolution was sent electronically to 5,585 members, asking them to vote “agree” or “disagree” and inviting comments. The response was quantitatively strong (35 percent of those receiving the resolution) and qualitatively vigorous (thoughtful and spirited comments were given by 46 percent of the respondents). When the dust settled, the vote was 56 percent in agreement with the resolution, 44 percent in disagreement. The vote was unscientific since participation was voluntary, but the response was large enough to indicate a deep divide on the issues raised by the resolution.
There are several lessons in this controversy. The Society of Biblical Literature is a diverse group. The Bible is regarded as relevant, by one group or another, to a wide range of public policy issues, including social justice issues traditionally, and stereotypically, identified as “liberal” concerns, as well as “family values” similarly identified as “conservative.” Finally, and perhaps most poignantly, the response to the resolution indicates that biblical interpretation is a complex and contested enterprise. The SBL is a professional organization of scholarly experts, most of whom hold doctorates or are student members in the process of earning them. When trained experts disagree so sharply, what hope of consensus can be entertained by laypersons (in either the ecclesial or academic sense)?
The status quo need not be wholly discouraging, however. As Brevard S. Childs observes about the general state of contemporary biblical scholarship, “The very intensity of the conflicting voices serves to confirm the impression that the problem of biblical interpretation does not arise from apathy. . . . Cannot one draw the implication that in spite of confusion and conflict in respect to biblical interpretation, there is an unexpressed consensus that the Bible still possesses a seriousness of content and an evocative power for raising basic questions which offers hope in a search for its renewed understanding in the twenty-first century?” (Childs, foreword to Bartholomew, 2000: xv). While Childs rightly observes that indifference to the Bible is seldom a problem, nevertheless, complex and sometimes contradictory visions emerge from its study.
Several factors complicate the interpretation of the Bible (Porter, 1997a: 11–15; Hayes and Holladay, 2007: 12–16). Some of them have to do with the Bible itself, its distance from us, and its foreignness. Other factors have to do with the interpreters, the modern readers of the text, their limitations, biases, skills, and perspectives. Both kinds deserve some elaboration.
1. Our outsider status. All modern readers are outsiders to the original communicative act of Scripture. In this sense, the Bible was not written for us. Our common humanity, the providence of God, and the illumination of the Holy Spirit enable the Bible to continue to speak to persons today, but they neither erase its foreign qualities nor provide a quick and easy bridge to a critical understanding of its message. Most of the writings of the Bible are more aptly described as having a timely message than a timeless one. Their assumptions, modes of thought, teachings, exhortations, laments, and exultations are rooted in another era and are addressed to circumstances that prevailed in the two millennia prior to the birth of Jesus and in the first century CE, not the twenty-first century CE. Among the New Testament writings our outsider status is especially evident with respect to epistolary literature. The old quip has an element of truth: when we read Paul’s Letters, we are reading someone else’s mail (Hayes and Holladay, 2007: 12). The other side of this coin, however, is that Christian readers of Scripture often feel directly addressed by its words, sometimes to their comfort, sometimes to their dismay (Green, 2007b: 50–59).
2. Language. Modern English translations make most passages of Scripture fairly intelligible, and we should be grateful for the generations of scholars who have toiled over manuscripts, lexicons, and manuals of style to make the Scriptures available in the vernacular. But the ease of reading such works belies the fact that they are the product of countless hours of intense study, debate, and decision making. We have learned much over the centuries about Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek lexicography, syntax, idiom, and style, but difficult decisions remain in which even highly trained experts are compelled to make their best guesses. Translations by necessity do not reveal the difficulty of those decisions. Neither is it a transparent fact to all readers that translation involves interpretation. Although the goal of translation is to convey the meaning of the original text into the target language and not to modify it, differences between the original language and the target language often require translators to choose among possible nuances of a word or alternative construals of grammatical phenomena. A person only needs to read a few English translations of the same passage to see how slight, and sometimes significant, differences emerge in the process of translation.
3. History. Almost two thousand years separate us from the writings of the New Testament. One need not read much of the biblical text for that distance to become apparent. Medicine was primitive, infant mortality was common, and physical ailments were sometimes attributed to evil spirits. Roman rule was sometimes brutal. Democracy at best was a Greek institution of centuries past, only traces of which existed during the Roman Republic, and human rights as a concept lay a millennium and a half in the future. The economy was chiefly agricultural, slavery was a given, and lifestyles were modest for the vast majority of people. Transportation was slow; mail service was limited to official correspondence. Religious traditions were often polytheistic, and deities were frequently conceived in anthropomorphic terms. Animal sacrifices were commonplace.
4. Cultural assumptions. The ancient Mediterranean world differed markedly from the modern Western world in its cultural assumptions (Achtemeier, Green, and Thompson, 2001: 284–88). Novelty was viewed with suspicion rather than favor, and old ways were assumed to be superior to innovation. Religion and politics were thoroughly intertwined rather than kept separate from one another. Political decisions were seldom made without first seeking divine guidance by auspices and omens. Our modern practice of beginning sessions of Congress with prayer pales by comparison to the intermingling of religion and politics in