Prima Scriptura

An Introduction to New Testament Interpretation

Croy, N. Clayton

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781441214447
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Crítica e interpretación bíblicas

In this volume an expert teacher of the Bible provides an introduction to New Testament exegesis that will appeal to students across the spectrum. Clayton Croy begins with the preparation of the interpreter, proceeds to analysis of the text, and concludes with appropriation of the message of Scripture in the context of modern faith communities. He combines a step-by-step plan for historical exegesis with substantive discussion of broader hermeneutical issues. The book interacts with recent scholarship and is academically rigorous but is written in an engaging style, incorporating anecdotes, humor, scriptural illustrations, and examples of the practical payoff of disciplined interpretation. Each chapter includes discussion questions and suggestions for further reading.

1

Analyzing and Preparing the Interpreter

A university professor wanted to illustrate the dangers of alcoholism to her science students. She set two petri dishes on the table before the class, one filled with water, the other with alcohol. She put an earthworm in the water, and within a few seconds it had wriggled out of the dish. She put a second worm in the alcohol, and it died almost instantly. Looking up at the class, the professor queried, “What do you learn from this experiment?” A hungover student in the back of the class raised his hand and said, “If you drink enough alcohol, you’ll never have worms.” The moral of the story? Interpretation may be influenced by the interpreter’s identity; or perhaps in this case, interpretation may be under the influence of the interpreter’s identity.

Literary critic Frank Kermode offers the startling judgment that “all interpretation proceeds from prejudice, and without prejudice there can be no interpretation” (1979: 68). Perhaps this is just the commonplace, postmodern denial of objectivity that we have seen before, now in starker dress. Kermode’s basic point is similar to the oft-heard claim, “All knowledge is perspectival.” There is a truth here, although Kermode’s formulation of it is blunt and one-sided. Over against this pessimistic assessment, one needs to place James Barr’s remark cited earlier that while complete objectivity is not attainable, a high degree of it is, and a high degree is much better than a low degree (1980: 24). If interpretation dissolves into nothing more than prejudice and opinion, then communication is thwarted, and the rationale for engaging in critical and methodical biblical study is undermined.

The partial and provisional character of our interpretations does not mean there is no truth “there in the text” to be disclosed, and it certainly does not constitute a denial of absolute truth. If God exists and is truth, then there is absolute truth. Human perceptions of truth may be partial and provisional (R. Brown, 1981: 4n8), but there is a huge difference between imperfect perceptions of absolute truth and a world void of absolute truth. The fact that all interpreters read from a certain location does not mean that we should despair of meaningful interpretation; nor does it mean that all interpretations are equally prejudiced and therefore equally valid (or invalid). It simply means that we must analyze the interpreter as well as the text.

Analyzing the Interpreter

Analyzing the interpreter refers to self-reflection leading to a better awareness of one’s identity and perspective. Subjectivity is not inherently friend or foe. A person’s social location can be a blind spot or a magnifying glass: it may obscure one’s reading of the text or enhance it. The aim, then, is neither to repress one’s subjectivity nor to revel in it, but to understand it, be aware of its effects on interpretation, and exercise it responsibly.

Several dimensions or domains of reflection could be relevant to the reader’s self-understanding vis-à-vis the act of interpretation. Some aspects of a reader’s identity pertain to group identity and have a taxonomic, check-the-box quality to them; others are highly individualistic. This reflects the obvious fact that one’s identity is a function of both personal characteristics and the groups to which one belongs. Cultural critics nowadays sometimes speak of “identity politics,” the idea that one’s views are a function of one’s group, especially one’s socioeconomic group, race, ethnicity, gender, and so forth. This is true, but only to a degree. The same critics often point out that although members of such groups may display certain trends, they seldom walk in lockstep with one another. African-Americans, for example, do not all hold the same political views, and the diversity within that group should be respected. In a similar fashion, we must recognize the limitations of “identity hermeneutics.” One’s social location influences one’s interpretation of Scripture, but not in a coercive or comprehensive fashion. It is quite possible for two white, married, college-educated, middle-class, middle-aged, heterosexual American men to have very different perspectives on biblical interpretation. In what follows, I hope that the combination of taxonomic categories and individual commitments and experiences will provide a sufficiently broad base for analyzing the interpreter.

The following three areas gather up the most important aspects of self-analysis: (1) Social location. By this I mean the basic categories of the interpreter’s social identity, the sort of information that might be asked for on a census or application form. Such factors would include one’s age, gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, educational level, and so forth. In recent years sexual orientation has also come to be seen as an important aspect of social location. (2) Theological identity. Given the obvious and pervasive religious content of biblical literature, one’s religious identity can clearly have an impact on interpretation. Issues involved here would include one’s broad orientation toward religion (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, secularist, agnostic, and so on), one’s specific religious community (e.g., a denominational heritage), the specific tenets of one’s faith and practice, and any particular or especially distinctive religious convictions and commitments. (3) Life experiences. Whereas most of the factors already mentioned are group characteristics, this last area involves more personal and individual characteristics. Here one could consider childhood experiences (either pleasant or traumatic), career experiences, relationships, health issues, cultural phenomena, marriage/divorce, childrearing, and so forth.

To illustrate the possible influence of the reader’s identity, it may be helpful to consider some actual examples of how these factors have influenced interpretation.

Social Location

Romans 16:7 offers an example of the way gender can influence interpretation, in this case with distorting results. In verses 1–15 Paul greets friends and coworkers, among whom are several women: Phoebe, Prisca, Mary, Tryphaena and Tryphosa, the mother of Rufus, Julia, and the sister of Nereus. The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translates 16:7, “Greet Andronicus and Junia . . . ; they are prominent among the apostles.” The name “Junia” denotes a woman. But a superscript letter in the NRSV refers the reader to a note that says, “Or Junias; other ancient authorities read Julia.” The 1984 New International Version (NIV), in contrast, translates, “Greet Andronicus and Junias,” construing both names as those of men, with no explanatory note attached. Can the original Greek be so ambiguous that translators are unsure of what the name is and whether it denotes a man or a woman?

There is a minor textual question concerning what Paul originally wrote. Among the many Greek manuscripts that lie behind Romans 16:7, only two have the name “Julia.” Textual scholars rightly regard this as meager support and dismiss this reading as secondary. So the choice is between “Junia” and “Junias” because, some scholars say, depending on the accent, the name might be masculine, a shortened form of “Junianus.” Are we then left with an unsolvable dilemma? Not at all, says New Testament textual critic Bruce Metzger, who notes that “the female Latin name Junia occurs more than 250 times in Greek and Latin inscriptions found in Rome alone, whereas the male name Junias is unattested.” Second, Metzger points out that “when Greek manuscripts began to be accented, scribes wrote the feminine . . . (‘Junia’)” (1994: 475–76). What this means is that, although the earliest manuscripts of Romans had no accents and so were ambiguous, when accents began to be inserted, every extant witness construed the name as feminine.

Why then do so many modern translations of Romans 16:7 render the name “Junias”? It is hard to see any other reason than the translators’ bias against the possibility that a woman could be an apostle, especially “prominent among the apostles.” James Dunn’s comment is apt: “The assumption that [the name] must be male is a striking indictment of male presumption regarding the character and structure of earliest Christianity” (1988b: 894). In this case the long tradition of biblical translation and interpretation by men who held skewed views of women’s leadership has misrepresented both Paul’s intention and the historical record. On Junia and Romans 16:7 one can now read the definitive treatment by Eldon J. Epp (2005).

Theological Identity

One’s religious commitments obviously have the potential to influence interpretation, either by way of heightened alertness and perception or by way of distortion and resistance to textual meaning. Sometimes religious identity overlaps with racial/ethnic identity, as in the case of Jewish readers of Scripture. When Jews read the New Testament, they often have special sensitivities, both positive and negative, from which Christians could learn. Adele Reinhartz is a scholar of ancient Judaism and early Christianity, especially the Gospel of John, which speaks of “the Jews” pervasively and often negatively. “As a Jew,” Reinhartz says, “the word ‘Jews’ jumps out at me in the Gospel of John” (1994: 562). Perceptive Christian readers notice this motif but would not likely feel the intensity and immediacy of its sting.

Among Christian interpreters, denominational affiliation can certainly exert an influence. The Catholic/Protestant distinction has sometimes been at the root of interpretive debates. In her commentary on the Gospel of John, Gail O’Day notes that John 6:51–58 has been variously interpreted as patently sacramental (alluding to the Eucharist) or as nonsacramental, often along denominational lines. The Catholic tradition, presumably more open to symbolic, especially liturgical, interpretations, sees a sacramental “fuller sense.” Protestant interpreters, seeing John as a more spiritual or even existential Gospel, regard the sacramental view as contrary to the whole tenor of the Fourth Gospel. O’Day rightly observes that the debate tells us more about the interpreters than about John’s Gospel. If our aim is to interpret the latter, we will seek the hard textual data, whether it coincides with our theological tradition or not (1995: 605–6).

A second example can be found in the meaning of the term “righteousness” in Matthew 5:6. Ulrich Luz notes that the two main possibilities are (1) righteousness as human acts of virtue, or (2) righteousness as the divine act of imputed, justifying grace (1989: 237). Again the debate falls largely along religious lines: (1) Catholics prefer the notion of sanctified behavior, and (2) Protestants argue for a more judicial concept of justification. In this case, Protestant interpreters may be guilty of reading Matthew through a Pauline lens.

Needless to say, a variety of other theological commitments may influence interpretation for good or ill. Pentecostal readers will be alert to the mention of the Spirit and charismatic gifts. Evangelical readers might be keen on texts having to do with discipleship, Christology, or eschatology. Pacifist Christians will not miss references to the nonviolent ethic of Jesus. In each of these cases, religious commitments may variously be assets or liabilities. Balanced and sound interpretations are more likely when conversation among interpreters crosses such boundaries.

Life Experiences

We interpret through what we live through. Life experiences, perhaps especially difficult and unpleasant experiences, imbue our perception and thinking like tinted glasses. Such lenses may be distorting, as in the case of rose-colored glasses, but this is not necessarily so. Tinted glasses sometimes sharpen one’s vision by filtering out harmful elements. Mark Allan Powell notes that victims of spousal and child abuse will hear Jesus’s teaching on nonretaliation differently from those of us who have never suffered physical violence. When the lector declares on a given Sunday morning, “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also” (Matt. 5:39), there will almost always be people present in the sanctuary who have recently been slapped or hit, and they “will hear the text with a poignancy you can scarcely imagine” (2001: 18).

The same scholar elsewhere relates a cross-cultural instance of the effect of life experience on one’s reading of the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32). Using an exercise in which a person reads the story silently and then recounts it to someone else, Powell found that only 6 percent of American readers mentioned the famine that befell the land and contributed to the prodigal’s destitution (15:14). In contrast, all of them (100 percent) recounted the prodigal’s “squandering” of his property (15:13). Powell used the exercise again while on a sabbatical in Eastern Europe in 2001. He polled fifty residents of Saint Petersburg, Russia, and found that 84 percent mentioned the famine when recounting the story, but only 34 percent mentioned the squandering. Powell notes that in 1941 the army of Nazi Germany had besieged Saint Petersburg (Leningrad at that time) for about two and a half years, causing the death of 670 thousand people. The persons polled in the exercise were either survivors of the famine, their descendants, or immigrants who shared the collective memory. Presumably the American readers had never experienced a famine but were familiar with excessive, wasteful lifestyles! This does not mean that Russian readers would necessarily come up with an interpretation of the story of the prodigal son that was dramatically different from that of American readers, but it indicates that life experiences cause one to attend to the details of a text differently, and that can certainly influence interpretation (Powell, 2004: 265–68).

I offer one final example of a critical life experience that, while not tied specifically to biblical interpretation, illustrates the profound impact that experience can have on a person’s religious outlook. Jesuit priest Michael Paul Gallagher tells the story of a meeting he had with a university student. While discussing a course assignment, the student aggressively blurted out, “I’m an atheist, you know.” Gallagher didn’t take up the gauntlet at that time, but a few days later he had another opportunity to talk with the student. Gallagher describes the tone as tense, as the student initiated the conversation:

He started by announcing that there was something difficult he had to tell me about himself. He beat around the bush a little, then said, “I suffer from asthma.” I thought this was an introduction to something bigger, but no: it was almost the whole story. Thank God I didn’t laugh. Because asthma had ruined his childhood, had cut him off from a lot of life, and became something he was ashamed of, and deeply angry over. . . . I now assume that behind many an aggressive rejection (“I’m an atheist”) there can live a softer reality of disappointment or hurt (“I suffer from asthma”). (1988: 39–40)

If a traumatic life experience can completely alienate a person from God, then such experiences can surely influence one’s approach to and interpretation of Scripture. They may sensitize or desensitize a person to aspects of the text. They may create openness or resistance to the intended effect of the text. As Joel Green says, “Presuppositions enable our understanding, as well as disable it” (2007b: 24–25).

In the preceding discussion I have described ways that a reader’s identity may influence interpretation, not determine it. If the reader’s identity determines interpretation, then we necessarily have as many interpretations as we do readers, and we descend into the postmodern abyss of indeterminacy. Influences, on the other hand, may be welcomed or resisted, and judicious interpreters will try to discern when influences encourage attention to the text or distract from it. This point is made by Roger Kimball about literature in general:

The idea that all reading is “ideological” has gained great currency in literary studies in recent years. Among other things, it implies that we are imprisoned by our point of view, that our language, our social or ethnic background, or our sex inescapably determine the way we understand things. But are we so imprisoned? Granted that such contingencies influence our point of view, do they finally determine it? (1998: 91)

Interpreters should strive, therefore, to be aware of both how their subjectivity may hinder faithful interpretation and how it may enable faithful interpretation. Social location, theological identity, and life experiences influence interpretation in diverse ways, sometimes blatantly, sometimes subtly, in manners that are sometimes predictable, but sometimes unexpected. Because of this, there is not necessarily any one privileged perspective from which to interpret Scripture. Some scholars speak of the “hermeneutical advantage” of the oppressed (Schneiders, 1991: 183), and there is reason for this. The marginalized are often able to see injustices to which others are blind, precisely because, as marginalized persons, they experience their effects. But the oppressed do not somehow escape subjectivity, and bias may afflict them as well.

There is no reason why white Euro-American male readers should produce inherently inferior interpretations of the biblical text, while minority ethnic, third-world, and feminist readers produce inherently superior ones. Social location is not bad...

Table of 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-Aland27 and UBS4 Comparison Chart
• Appendix 7: In the Laboratory with Agassiz
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Author Index
• Scripture Index
• Notes (for Appendix 1)
• Back Cover