Interpretation is not an exact science. Understanding--be it of God, works of art, ourselves, or others--is both messier and more provisional than explanations that work with causal laws. Why should this be so? Three reasons: 1) because what we're trying to understand is often singular and unique, 2) because meaning is a matter of seeing the parts in relation to larger wholes of which finite human interpreters have only partial glimpses, and 3) because interpreters often have vested interests for seeing things in one way rather than another and lack the requisite virtues to see things as they really are coram Deo (before God).
Kevin Vanhoozer, Everyday Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 36
Showing posts with label preunderstandings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label preunderstandings. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Exegesis is a dust cloth...
But, inconvenient or not, we are stuck with the necessity of exegesis. We have a written word to read and attend to. It is God's word, or so we believe, and we had better get it right. Exegesis is the care we give to getting the words right. Exegesis is foundational to Christian spirituality. Foundations disappear from view as a building is constructed, but if the builders don't build a solid foundation, their building doesn't last long.
Because we speak our language so casually, it is easy to fall into the habit of treating it casually. But language is persistently difficult to understand. We spend our early lives leaning the language, and just when we think we have it mastered our spouse says, "You don't understand a thing I'm saying, do you?" We teach our children to talk, and just about the time we think they might be getting it, they quit talking to us; and when we overhear them talking to their friends, we find we can't understand more than one out of every eight or nine words they say. A close relationship doesn't guarentee understanding. A long affection doesn't guarantee understanding. In fact, the closer we are to another and the more intimate our relations, the more care we must exercise to hear accurately, to understand thoroughly, to answer appropriately.
Which is to say, the more "spiritual" we become, the more care we must give to exegesis. The more mature we become in the Christian faith, the more exegetically rigorous we must become. THis is not a task from which we graduate. These words given to us in our Spiritures are constantly getting overlaid with personal preferences, cultural assumptions, sin distortions, and ignorant guesses and pollute the text. The pollutants are always in the air, gathering dust on our Bibles, corroding our use of the language, especially the language of faith. Exegesis is a dust cloth, a scrub brush, or even a Q-tip for keeping the words clean.
Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, 53
Because we speak our language so casually, it is easy to fall into the habit of treating it casually. But language is persistently difficult to understand. We spend our early lives leaning the language, and just when we think we have it mastered our spouse says, "You don't understand a thing I'm saying, do you?" We teach our children to talk, and just about the time we think they might be getting it, they quit talking to us; and when we overhear them talking to their friends, we find we can't understand more than one out of every eight or nine words they say. A close relationship doesn't guarentee understanding. A long affection doesn't guarantee understanding. In fact, the closer we are to another and the more intimate our relations, the more care we must exercise to hear accurately, to understand thoroughly, to answer appropriately.
Which is to say, the more "spiritual" we become, the more care we must give to exegesis. The more mature we become in the Christian faith, the more exegetically rigorous we must become. THis is not a task from which we graduate. These words given to us in our Spiritures are constantly getting overlaid with personal preferences, cultural assumptions, sin distortions, and ignorant guesses and pollute the text. The pollutants are always in the air, gathering dust on our Bibles, corroding our use of the language, especially the language of faith. Exegesis is a dust cloth, a scrub brush, or even a Q-tip for keeping the words clean.
Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, 53
Monday, October 26, 2009
Feminist Hermeneutics
Fiorenza makes it clear that the point of departure is not the bible as normative authority. Rather, women’s experience and their struggle for liberation becomes the locus of authority. The canon is not the Bible but the struggle. The Bible becomes a prototype, or what she calls a formative root model, from which examples and insights are taken that explain one’s struggle to find one’s place and to find solidarity with those women that are recounted in the biblical religion. Fiorenza stresses with power and pointedness the fact that all interpretation of the Bible has come from an advocacy point of view, whether that advocacy happens to be patriarchal or feminist or, I might add, black, Asian, Reformed, Wesleyan, liberal or evangelical. Fiorenza wants to argue in reconstructing her feminist hermeneutic that everyone has an advocacy position in the interpretation of the Bible. She wants to make clear what hers is and challenges all others to do the same.
David M. Scholer, “Feminist Hermeneutics and Evangelical Biblical Interpretation,” Evangelical Review of Theology 1 (January 1991): 309.
David M. Scholer, “Feminist Hermeneutics and Evangelical Biblical Interpretation,” Evangelical Review of Theology 1 (January 1991): 309.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Feminist Hermeneutics
Excerpts from Anne Carter Shelley: "What are we to think of Jezebel?"
A Paper Submitted for Hermeneutics and Biblical Studies
At the 1997 meeting of the Academy of Homiletics
Hermeneutical Method:
“. . . Although it may seem that texts like I Kings 21:1-16 should stand still, should mean one thing only, they don’t. Multitudinous factors influence and keep in motion the reader, the author, and the text. The result is that none of the elements—text, author, reader—remain stationary. None is fixed in meaning. Consequently, we can never uncover completely a text’s original meaning, because the text is on the move and its meaning is a combination of action, imagination and dialogism.”
“. . . My method is feminist and self-critical. As a feminist I do not pretend nor aim to offer the only possible viable reading of I Kings 21:1-16. I engage in conversation with the text, other readers, critical tools, and feminist ideology. I also acknowledge up front that my interpretation is subjective, self-interested, and only one of many which the text may disclose . . . I see part of my function as a feminist hermeneut to direct my reading towards those readers and church members who are often overlooked by other readings. My goal is to be inclusive and attentive to the marginalized and the oppressed . . . Finally, I do not take an absolutist stance towards the text. The way I read remains open-ended and open to future insight, revelation, and correction.”
In Practice:
“. . . But does Jezebel ever really have a chance to speak for herself? Her marriage is a political act not a romantic one. The religion of her childhood is continually criticized and challenged. Her concept of government and kingship has been formed at her father’s palace, not taught to her by the prophet Elijah. Most importantly, her story is told not by herself or her immediate family and friends, but by her enemies: To the authors of the Deuteronomic history, which includes this portion of I Kings, Jezebel is a harlot, a whore, an independent aggressive, domineering woman. She’s a warning to young girls everywhere not to grow up to be emasculating shrews, she-devils, or worst of all, autonomous women . . . We have here a biblical text in which there are three key players: Ahab, Naboth, and Jezebel. It is, as most biblical hermeneuts agree, a story about human injustice and sinfulness and God’s outrage at both. But ironically this text which is about God’s concern for the little guy, the common man Naboth instead has been used as a rationale for the injustice, abuse, subjugation, and denigration of women by men. That’s why feminist biblical scholars find I and II Kings’ treatment of Jezebel so offensive.”
“. . . Ironic, don’t you think? After all, according to her own cultural, political, social and matrimonial custom, wasn’t Jezebel doing what she has been taught that a good wife, and a good Queen should do? She is the first woman we know of to experience a backlash for being the good wife rather than a good feminist . . . Jezebel accepts her husband, admires him, adapts to him, and appreciates him. A woman can technically fit this traditional image of the good wife who accepts her divinely-assigned role as submissive, helpmate to her husband, yet fail to live and be the ideal human being when her life extends no farther than the walls of her husband’s castle because she always puts the welfare of her husband before all other individuals welfare, including her own.”
“. . . All women are not Jezebel’s anymore than all men are King Ahab’s. All women are not Jezebel’s. In fact, Jezebel herself may have not even been the Jezebel she’s portrayed to be. So the good news for us and the good news for Jezebel is that God cares about justice and righteousness for all people, all the time, and in all of our relationships no matter who we are.”
A Paper Submitted for Hermeneutics and Biblical Studies
At the 1997 meeting of the Academy of Homiletics
Hermeneutical Method:
“. . . Although it may seem that texts like I Kings 21:1-16 should stand still, should mean one thing only, they don’t. Multitudinous factors influence and keep in motion the reader, the author, and the text. The result is that none of the elements—text, author, reader—remain stationary. None is fixed in meaning. Consequently, we can never uncover completely a text’s original meaning, because the text is on the move and its meaning is a combination of action, imagination and dialogism.”
“. . . My method is feminist and self-critical. As a feminist I do not pretend nor aim to offer the only possible viable reading of I Kings 21:1-16. I engage in conversation with the text, other readers, critical tools, and feminist ideology. I also acknowledge up front that my interpretation is subjective, self-interested, and only one of many which the text may disclose . . . I see part of my function as a feminist hermeneut to direct my reading towards those readers and church members who are often overlooked by other readings. My goal is to be inclusive and attentive to the marginalized and the oppressed . . . Finally, I do not take an absolutist stance towards the text. The way I read remains open-ended and open to future insight, revelation, and correction.”
In Practice:
“. . . But does Jezebel ever really have a chance to speak for herself? Her marriage is a political act not a romantic one. The religion of her childhood is continually criticized and challenged. Her concept of government and kingship has been formed at her father’s palace, not taught to her by the prophet Elijah. Most importantly, her story is told not by herself or her immediate family and friends, but by her enemies: To the authors of the Deuteronomic history, which includes this portion of I Kings, Jezebel is a harlot, a whore, an independent aggressive, domineering woman. She’s a warning to young girls everywhere not to grow up to be emasculating shrews, she-devils, or worst of all, autonomous women . . . We have here a biblical text in which there are three key players: Ahab, Naboth, and Jezebel. It is, as most biblical hermeneuts agree, a story about human injustice and sinfulness and God’s outrage at both. But ironically this text which is about God’s concern for the little guy, the common man Naboth instead has been used as a rationale for the injustice, abuse, subjugation, and denigration of women by men. That’s why feminist biblical scholars find I and II Kings’ treatment of Jezebel so offensive.”
“. . . Ironic, don’t you think? After all, according to her own cultural, political, social and matrimonial custom, wasn’t Jezebel doing what she has been taught that a good wife, and a good Queen should do? She is the first woman we know of to experience a backlash for being the good wife rather than a good feminist . . . Jezebel accepts her husband, admires him, adapts to him, and appreciates him. A woman can technically fit this traditional image of the good wife who accepts her divinely-assigned role as submissive, helpmate to her husband, yet fail to live and be the ideal human being when her life extends no farther than the walls of her husband’s castle because she always puts the welfare of her husband before all other individuals welfare, including her own.”
“. . . All women are not Jezebel’s anymore than all men are King Ahab’s. All women are not Jezebel’s. In fact, Jezebel herself may have not even been the Jezebel she’s portrayed to be. So the good news for us and the good news for Jezebel is that God cares about justice and righteousness for all people, all the time, and in all of our relationships no matter who we are.”
Monday, October 5, 2009
Preunderstandings
If God has revealed truth in the Bible, then it seems reasonable also that He has made us capable of apprehending that truth, or at least some measure of it. Thus, though we inevitably bring preunderstandings to the texts we seek to interpret, this does not mean that we cannot apprehend the meaning they impart…Since we accept the Bible’s authority, we remain open to correction by its message. There are ways to verify interpretations or, at least, to validate some interpretive options as more likely than others. It is not a matter of simply throwing the dice. There is a wide variety of methods available to help us find what the original texts most likely meant to their initial readers. Every time we alter our preunderstanding as the result of our interaction with the text we demonstrate that the process has objective constraints, otherwise, no change would occur; we would remain forever entombed in our prior commitments.
Klein et al in Zuck, Rightly Divided (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996), 80-81.
Klein et al in Zuck, Rightly Divided (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996), 80-81.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Principles of Interpretation
1. A close reading of the text cannot be done without a perspective provided by one’s preunderstanding as identified by a “sociology of knowledge” perspective.
2. I must distinguish presupposition from prejudice.
3. We must seek controls that enable us to work with presuppositions (the positive) rather than to be dominated by prejudices (the negative).
a. We must be open to new possibilities.
b. We must understand the dangers of merely assuming our presuppositions.
c. The interpreter must not only address the text but must allow the text to address him or her (the hermeneutical circle).
d. Polyvalent interpretations per se are unnecessary, but a pluralistic or polyvalent attitude is critical.
4. We must all good hermeneutical principles to shape our exegesis and to control our tendency to read our prejudices into the text.
a. Consider the genre or type of literature and interpret each according to the proper rules of their particular language game.
b. The structural development of the passage provides a control against artificial atomistic exegesis.
c. Semantic research further helps the reader to discover the sense and reference of the passage.
d. A judicious use of background information helps us avoid the opposite error, namely, ignoring the historical aspect in favor of the poetic.
e. The implied author and implied reader in the text provide an indispensable perspective for the intended meaning of a text.
f. The question of verification of competing interpretive possibilities is essential for any system. This is a threefold process: inductively, deductively, sociologically.
Grant Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006), 516-519.
2. I must distinguish presupposition from prejudice.
3. We must seek controls that enable us to work with presuppositions (the positive) rather than to be dominated by prejudices (the negative).
a. We must be open to new possibilities.
b. We must understand the dangers of merely assuming our presuppositions.
c. The interpreter must not only address the text but must allow the text to address him or her (the hermeneutical circle).
d. Polyvalent interpretations per se are unnecessary, but a pluralistic or polyvalent attitude is critical.
4. We must all good hermeneutical principles to shape our exegesis and to control our tendency to read our prejudices into the text.
a. Consider the genre or type of literature and interpret each according to the proper rules of their particular language game.
b. The structural development of the passage provides a control against artificial atomistic exegesis.
c. Semantic research further helps the reader to discover the sense and reference of the passage.
d. A judicious use of background information helps us avoid the opposite error, namely, ignoring the historical aspect in favor of the poetic.
e. The implied author and implied reader in the text provide an indispensable perspective for the intended meaning of a text.
f. The question of verification of competing interpretive possibilities is essential for any system. This is a threefold process: inductively, deductively, sociologically.
Grant Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2006), 516-519.
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