Bringing the Word to Life

Engaging the New Testament through Performing It

Richard Ward, David Trobisch

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781467437646
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

The New Testament books were written to be read aloud. The original audiences of these texts would have been unfamiliar with our current practice of reading silently and processing with our eyes rather than our ears, so we can learn much about the New Testament through performing it ourselves. Richard Ward and David Trobisch are here to help. Bringing the Word to Life walks the reader through what we know about the culture of performance in the first and second centuries, what it took to perform an early New Testament manuscript, the benefits of performance for teaching, and practical suggestions for exploring New Testament texts through performance today.

PERFORMANCE IN ANTIQUITY

Theory in Practice in Roman-Hellenistic Culture

Quintilian’s Instructions on How to Perform

Introduction

On the wall of an ancient Roman villa in Pompeii, Naples, there is a painting depicting a performance. A robed figure is standing, speaking and clasping a scroll in the left hand. The performer’s right hand is lowered, loose and at rest; an extended forefinger points to the floor of the stage. The artist has draped a toga across the left arm. The performer’s face, unmasked, is a thoughtful countenance, revealing that the piece being presented is no comic diversion; its subject is serious. It seems that we have here a visual record of a genre of communication that the culture valued highly.

What kind of performance from the Augustan period are we seeing in this painting? What traditions of oral performance are represented here, and what standards of excellence govern its practice? Is this performer an orator, a singer, or an actor? He is a solo performer of literature and is practicing a lively and pervasive form of aesthetic communication in the Hellenistic world of the first century CE. It is certainly a kind of performance that the early Christians in that culture were familiar with. Painted on that wall is a representative of performance tradition that is as old as the development of writing. It presented to the Christians of that era an image of how writings of great importance were communicated.

The performance of literature is a verbal art form that has a rich history of practices. It explores questions of meaning by transforming the expressive language found in a text into lively speech, rhythm, and sound. Effective oral performance yields for both the performer and the audience not only a deeper understanding of a text but also the experience shared by means of that text. It is a tradition of “aesthetic” communication, comparable to other forms of public address that are shaped or molded into patterns that appeal to the senses, stir the emotions, and heighten knowledge.¹ A performer of literature may find those patterns in either oral or written traditions of expressions and use them to engage an audience.

Along with other oral communicators of that era, the solo performer of “voicings,”² whether oral or written, shaped the various ways that Hellenistic Christians communicated their stories and offered interpretations of their experiences by means of gospels, rites, rituals, and letters. The literary traditions that we have received from these early communities reflect what some of the content of early Christian speech was. Looking at the conventions of literature in performance in their cultural context suggests how those emergent traditions were communicated, what the contexts were for the performances of those texts, and what aesthetic principles guided them. Today we take time to look at these principles because we are not the first to live through and experience an intense transformation in the media we use to communicate what is most important to us.

Principles that these ancients used to form and to frame their ideas and practices for communication have endured media transformations, helping to shape the ways our Christian ancestors spoke about what they had experienced through God’s revelation in Christ. We have of course adapted and modified the performance traditions of these ancestors but have forgotten much of what they taught us about communicating the texts they composed. Once we see what the social and political realities were in that era and how vibrant the art of the solo performer was in response to those realities, we will see what innovative communicators these early Christians were.

It is difficult for us — shaped as we are by the developments of print, electronic, and now digital media — to imagine the universe of communication that gave rise to Christian Scriptures. It was primarily an oral world where the technology of writing served the spoken word and expanded its possibilities for communication. “Literature” in this world was inextricably bound to speech; “reading” was done out loud. Texts were “published” by means of public performances. Poets, historians, and dramatists who hoped to gain recognition and appreciation for their work were dependent upon performance skills of their own or those of a trusted representative.

The solo performer of literature had a significant role to play in the Hellenistic culture because of the nature of the art form and the political realities of the era. Neither oratory nor theatre flourished in the Greco-Roman culture of the first century CE. The transition from the republican form of government to the rise of Augustus had an impact on freedom of expression in Rome. “Although Augustus did not set out to limit freedom of speech or suppress oratory,” George Kennedy observes, “his enormous personal power was inhibiting and could not help but affect the conditions of oratory.”³ If the rise of the imperial system of government precipitated the decline of eloquence in the empire, the politics of performance in first-century Rome restricted the development of some verbal arts while allowing others to flourish.

A major shift also occurred in sensibilities regarding the theatre in Augustan Rome. In Greek society, the theatre was a centerpiece for religious life. In Rome, the theatre became a disreputable institution. The Roman government of the early empire had a completely different motive for sponsoring performance events than did the Greeks. Religious fervor was not motivation for the events. Instead, the state committed itself to a policy of “bread and circuses” as a palliative for civic abuses.⁴ The professional actor was a familiar figure in the imperial culture, but the actor’s craft was held in such low regard that no actor could hold citizenship in Rome and continue to act.

Even though acting and oratory declined in this culture, do not assume it was a dark age in the performance history of the West. The performance of literature thrived in this period, taking various forms and demonstrating how this verbal art form could adapt to the political realities of the age. It is ironic that in an era where freedom of expression was suppressed (or at least severely constrained), Romans found ways to publicly confer honors and awards on effective solo performers of literature. There were certainly “stars” in this universe of communication, individual virtuosos who achieved excellence in oral performance.

We have only a few windows left for viewing that universe, and those few that we have are cloudy at best. As tantalizing as it would be to have the big picture to help us with our own understanding of how the early Christians communicated their writings with one other, the big picture is simply not available. Yet there are small windows that can give us a peek. Let’s take a look.

Quintilian, who was born in Spain and lived from 35 CE to after 96 CE, distinguished himself as one of Rome’s most influential teachers of rhetoric. Throughout his career, a parade of students would come before him preparing for careers in politics, the practice of law, and the performance of texts. Quintilian disdained actors but begrudgingly granted them some credit and borrowed from some of their techniques. No doubt his students brought the same questions that would-be performers of texts would ask today. Should I use a manuscript? If so, how should I hold it? What should I wear in performance? What should I do with my hands? With body movement? How do I get my audience to care about the characters in my stories? How can my performance shine a light on what a text means?

You can almost see the teacher trying to hold all these issues in front of him and find some way to address them carefully and clearly, with sensitivity to decorum and also to meaning. I imagine him soliciting the services of a scribe or perhaps a team of scribes and former students to assist him in putting his teaching into writing. Perhaps he even performs and demonstrates what he is saying in the presence of those he trusts to set it down correctly.

What we have from these imagined explorations is a multi-volume work attributed to him called the Institutio Oratoria. What might Quintilian say to the one who asked, “How do I communicate a text?”

Body Posture and Position

First, Quintilian may have addressed the way the performer was standing before an audience. A good speaker’s neck would be straight in order to relax the throat. “Relax your shoulders,” he would say. “Don’t raise them or contract them.” At some point, Quintilian would look into the performer’s eyes during the rehearsal to get a clue about the speaker’s emotional attitude. “Eyes reveal the tempo of the mind,” Quintilian taught, “even without movement.”⁵ The teacher circled the performer to make sure the performer’s weight was evenly distributed over the feet. Quintilian warned against placing either the right foot forward or “straddling the feet when standing still.”⁶ When the performer did move out of this position, Quintilian instructed that the performer should move diagonally, with eyes fixed on the audience and not averted to the right or the left. This was purposeful movement that helped to keep the listener within the grasp of the text’s effect. Movement then as now that is unfocused and without intention (except to alleviate the performer’s own anxiety!) pulls unwanted attention to the performer.

Bodily Presence and Appearance

Since Quintilian imagined that the kind of performances he envisioned were to be done only by men, he instructed his students to pay particular attention to their attire; it must be “distinguished and manly,” he wrote. The performer would pay particular attention to the cut of his toga, the style of his shoes, and the arrangement of his hair. As he stood, the performer would raise the thumbs of his hands and slightly curve his fingers, unless of course he was holding a manuscript. Manuscripts were simply memory aids. No performer could excel unless he spoke the words in a manner suitable to the thoughts and emotions expressed in the text, as if the words were the performer’s own. To do so required that a performer have such “natural” gifts as a good voice, excellent lung capacity, and general good health. Audiences would note that performers of literature were charismatic figures who practiced their art with wit and charm. Unlike the professional actor, the performer of literature, like the orator, would be known for his good character — it was what lent credibility and authenticity to the effort. “Without good character,” Quintilian would declare, “your technique is worthless.”⁷

It would be hard to suppress a smile or even a guffaw at the thought of applying Quintilian’s teaching on bodily appearance to the biblical performers of today! Quintilian was focused on preparing aristocratic young men for public careers. Performers today focus on “image” but in a different sense. For the most part, a performer of a biblical text wants to appear “natural,” that is, to dress casually and n...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Performance In Antiquity
• How Performance Criticism Informs the Interpretation of the Text
• Performance Today: From Preparation to Review
• Rehearsing
• Performance
• Debriefing
• Conclusion
• Bibliography