The Bible in History

I just finished reading The Bible in History by David Kling. It is a very in-depth study of the historical importance of various key passages of scripture.

Chapter 1 explained the connection between Matthew 19:16-22 and the rise of the monastic movement.
Chapter 2 explained the rise of the papacy and the various passages - especially Matthew 16 which were sometimes used to justify the power of the Pope.
Chapter 3 talked about Bernard of Clairvaux and his allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs which was the most frequently read and expounded book in the medieval monastery. Kling points out that nearly one hundred extant commentaries survive from the sixth to fifteenth centuries. More than 500 commentaries had been written by 1700 on this book!
Chapter 4 gave the history of the Protestant Reformation and talked about how various passages, especially Romans 1:16-17, were critical in the theological development of men like Luther.
Chapter 5 talked about the Anabaptist tradition which (eventually) took the various teachings of Jesus especially from the Sermon on the Mount on loving your enemy as critical to the practice of their faith.
Chapter 6 explained the influence of the Exodus story on the founding of this nation and in the development of African American theology as a protest theology.
Chapter 7 talked about the roots of Pentecostalism and the importance of the book of Acts in its origin.
Chapter 8 talked about the rise of feminist understandings of scripture rooted in such formative passages as Galatians 3:28.

The question that runs throughout the book is how do scripture and history interact. Do scriptural texts, pregnant with meaning and relevance, find their historical moment so that various passages actually change history? Or do the events of history actually change the sense of certain passages of scripture, so that texts are used or interpreted prejudicially to suit the historical needs of the moment? It's not an easy question to answer, and, like most things, the answer is probably both/and not either/or.

He does offer five conclusions at the end of his study which are worth sharing:

1. Texts have indeed functioned as transforming agents. "Through Christian history, the Bible has functioned not merely as a book of story, instruction, and inspiration but as the vehicle of divine communication and supernatural transformation."
2. Texts have also re-created meaning. "Texts of Scripture are not merely agents of transformation but are re-created and resuscitated int he interpretive and historical process. Texts re-create people, and people re-create texts. New ways of understanding are elicited by contexts. As a particular text works its way through history, it undergoes multiple interpretations and applications."
3. Some select texts have served as comprehending sources. "A particular text of Scripture has functioned as a key text around which other texts of Scripture are illuminated, and these in turn refract back to the original text. Or to change the metaphor: a particular text functions as a centripetal force, drawing other biblical texts into its thematic orbit."
4. Texts serve as hermeneutical keys. "A text functions not only as a comprehending source but also as an interpretive key to unlock the essential meaning of Scripture or resolve tensions within Scripture."
5. Texts work as secondary justifications. "A particular text of Scripture functions to legitimize what has already occurred or to support the current climate of opinion. In a sense, many texts function in this way, for they confirm already existing notions, ideas, or convictions in the mind of the reader."

The Bible in History, 311-312

Fiorenza's Hermeneutical Authority

Schussler Fiorenza approaches the biblical text with a "hermeneutics of suspicion rather than with a hermeneutics of consent and affirmation." According to her feminist theory, "all texts are products of an androcentric patriarchal culture and history." Males not only wrote them but also have dominated their interpretation. Consequently, one must engage in a two-tier demythologization and "reclaim the Bible and early Christian history as women's beginnings and power." Because the text is the word of men, it is not authoritative and "cannot claim to be the revelatory Word of God." The Bible itself must be liberated from its "perpetuation and legitimization of such patriarchal oppression and forgetfulness of, silence about, or eradication of the memory of women's suffering."

Rather than appeal to a "canon within the canon"...Schussler Fiorenza calls for a "canon outside the canon." She proposes "that the revelatory canon for theological evaluation of biblical androcentric traditions and their subsequent interpretations cannot be derived from the Bible itself but can only be formulated in and through women's struggle for liberation from all patriarchal oppression." The New Testament is not the archetype--an ideal, unchanging, timeless pattern--but a prototype, an original, to be sure, but "critically open to the possibility of its own transformation." The text itself is no longer the interpretive authority; rather, the "personally and politically reflected experience of oppression and liberation must become the criterion of appropriateness for biblical interpretation and evaluation of biblical authority claims." The Bible "no longer functions as authoritative but as a resource for women's struggle for liberation."

In sum, "a feminist paradigm of critical interpretation is not based on a faithful adherence to biblical texts or obedient submission to biblical authority but on solidarity with women of the past and present whose life and struggles are touched by the role of the Bible in Western culture." Women's experience in their contemporary struggle against racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression is the standard by which to approach and interpret Scripture. Thus only those portions of Scripture "that transcend critically their patriarchal frameworks and allow for a vision of Christian women as historical and theological subjects and actors" are worthy to be considered divine revelation and truth.

from David Kling, The Bible in History (New York: Oxford, 2004), 302-303.

Tertullian the Feminist

And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt of necessity must live too. You are the devil's gateway; you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserted of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him who the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert--that is, death--even the Son of God had to die.

From Tertullian "On the Apparel of Women" in Kling, The Bible in History (New York: Oxford, 2004), 276-277

Is America Israel or Egypt?

Well, it depends. I suppose understanding the origins on this nation in biblical terms was a temptation too strong to resist. When you consider 1) the alien nature of the land for European settlers and 2) the deeply religious worldview of those settlers, it is not surprising in the slightest that they would interpret their settlement in a new and alien continent in religious terms. It would be more surprising if they didn't understand their discovery and settlement of this new world in religious terms. Consider the nature of the land.  This was an altogether new land--full of resources and danger--that seemed to miraculously appear on their map at just the right time for their "salvation." Then consider the first European settlers. These settlers worshipped a God of Providence who was in control of every part of life and society. And they had fled religious tryanny in England in search of a more authentic experience of religion. It would have been more surprising if they did not make sense of their experience using biblical imagery and language. This is what Bible people have always done.

The story that they gravitated toward more than any other was the story of the Exodus of God's people from Egypt. They interpreted the story typologically - the story of the Exodus provided a pattern that was being repeated among God's people in their own generation. Of course, now England was Egypt and the New World was Canaan.

Consider the following quotes from David Kling...

John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, announced to his fellow voyagers on the deck of the flagship Arabella in 1630, "The Lord will surely break out in wrath against us...and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant." He closed his sermon by quoting Moses: if we follow the Lord and keep his commandments, we will be blessed; if our hearts turn away in disobedience, we will surely perish (Deut. 30:15-17).

In their poem, "On the Rising Glory of America" (1771), Philip Freneau and Hugh Henry Brackenridge...described America as the site where "another Canaan shall excel the old."

When war broke out between England and the colonies, Nicholas Street uplifted the parallels between the biblical exodus and America's condition in his sermon "The American States Acting over the Part of the Children of Israel in the Wilderness and Thereby Impeding Their Entrance into Canaan's Rest" (1777). He identified the wilderness as a condition in which the British (Egyptians) and the British tyrant (Pharaoh) were "endeavoring to oppress, enslave and destroy these American States."

Benjamin Franklin suggested the scene of Moses with his upraised staff parting the Red Sea while Pharaoh and his army drowned as the collapsed wall of water engulfed them. The motto: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." Thomas Jefferson proposed the less violent episode of the Israelites being providentially guided out of Egypt by a cloud during the day and a pillar of fire at night. In the end, the eagle--the classical sign of ancient republics--was chosen for the seal, though it alluded as well to the biblical eagle of Exodus 19:4, where God informs Moses, "I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself."

In "The United States Elevated to Glory and Honor" (1783), Yale's president Ezra Stiles hailed the new nation as God's American Israel" and exuded with optimism over the "future prosperity and splendour of the United States."

In his "Conquest of Canaan" (1785), Timothy Dwight, Stiles' successor at Yale, envisioned American "by heaven design'd, The last retreat for poor, oppress'd mankind."

The Reverend Samuel Langdon, in "The Republic of the Israelites an Example to the American States" (1788), expressed the widely accepted view that George Washington was America's Moses.

In his Thanksgiving Day sermon, "Traits of Resemblance in the People of the United States of America to Ancient Israel" (1799), the Reverend Abiel Abbot observed, "It has been often remarked that the people of the United States come nearer to a parallel with Ancient Israel, than any other nation upon the globe."

The story of this country does not just include white European settlers, however. It also includes the experience of African slaves. Kling points out "As blacks knew only too well, there was a tragic irony to Americans' claim to be the new Israel--the reality of an enslaved old Israel in their midst. America had become a New Canaan for whites, but at what cost to blacks?" As these slaves learned about the God of their masters and came eventually to even worship that same God, it became clear to many that the story of the Exodus was really their own story. In an incredibly bold and subversive move, slaves began singing spiritual songs about crossin' over into Canaan land. They would sing lyrics like...

Gwine to write Massa Jesus,To send some Valiant soldier, To turn back Pharoah's army, Hallelu!

America, at least the Southern states, was their Egypt. And they were eagerly awaiting liberation (There is a little debate about exactly what kind of liberation black slaves were groaning for - physical/spiritual/both?) from their white Pharoahs. Thus began a long tradition in the African American community that continues today of reappropriating the story of the Exodus as a story of suffering, heartbreak, and eventually liberation for the black community.

David W. Kling, The Bible in History: How the Texts Have Shaped the Times (New York: Oxford, 2004), 206-207.