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August 15, 2009
Let's Try A Substitution Test.
Lane Keister (I think) over at Green Baggins said the following:
Let’s put it this way: everyone has lenses of some sort when they come to Scripture. No one can interpret Scripture from a completely clean slate. Let me repeat this: everyone has lenses through which they read the Scriptures. The question, then, has been racketing about in the wrong quadrant for a lot of people. The question is not whether one will have a lens through which to interpret Scripture, but rather which lens is the correct lens?The reason this becomes important is that there are really only two alternatives. Either one takes the lens of a church’s confession, in which case one is entering into the collegiality of the church’s reading of Scripture, or one is inventing one’s own lens that will be on a par with the standards of the church, yet separate from it. At the very least, it could be said to be bordering on arrogance to think that one’s own lens has the same kind of authority as what the church has said.
Lane had more say than just this so head over there if you're concerned that I'm taking this out of context.
I take it that Scripture, as understood by Lane, means the Hebrew Bible plus the Christian New Testament as defined in the most common Protestant canon. Even if I am wrong in my assumption, let's try a little game of substantiation anyway. Let's substitute, oh, err, say, "Mark Twain" for "Scripture." By "Mark Twain" I mean the published corpus of the writings of Samuel Clemens. You can include his letters if you like. Here's my rewrite of Lane's words with this simple substitution. Where it says "Church" think of an organized group of Twain devotees.
Let’s put it this way: everyone has lenses of some sort when they come to Mark Twain. No one can interpret Mark Twain from a completely clean slate. Let me repeat this: everyone has lenses through which they read the Mark Twain. The question, then, has been racketing about in the wrong quadrant for a lot of people. The question is not whether one will have a lens through which to interpret Mark Twain, but rather which lens is the correct lens?The reason this becomes important is that there are really only two alternatives. Either one takes the lens of a church’s confession, in which case one is entering into the collegiality of the church’s reading of Mark Twain, or one is inventing one’s own lens that will be on a par with the standards of the church, yet separate from it. At the very least, it could be said to be bordering on arrogance to think that one’s own lens has the same kind of authority as what the church has said.
First, I agree that everyone interprets Mark Twain through lenses. We read him in the context of our own experiences with all the prejudices, the presuppositions and knowledge gaps that that initials. For example, I have to resist reading him as a late twentieth/early twenty-first century author rather than the late nineteenth/early twentieth century author that he was. Some of his stuff seems so directly relevant to our time that it appears to need no interpretation.
But are our only choices when interpreting Mark Twain some confessional lens or "inventing" our "own lens"? I really doubt it. If interpreting Mark Twain is important to you, then immersing yourself in his cultural context while consciously attempting to understand his corpus within that context will begin to provide a new, better, lens. This new lens will become, over time and with considerable effort, increasingly appropriate for the interpretation of Mark Twain. If I'm too lazy or too otherwise occupied to steep myself in the appropriate late nineteenth century American and European cultural contexts, then I can look to scholars who are experts in all those things and Mark Twain's place among them. There may be other things I can do to tune my lens appropriately. I can work to identify and not violate differing genres. I can maintain, to the best of my ability, a deep skepticism towards my own interpretations. But if I want to translate Twain's wise words over the gap of time and events that separates us, and I sometimes do, the larger context in which he wrote, with its similarities and its differences with mine, and the varying literary genres he employed must be part of that translation process. Only appropriate, properly knowledgeable, and skeptical, authorities can help in this quest and I shouldn't take any them too seriously either.
Why doesn't the same apply to what Lane calls "Scripture?" Well, I think it does. But there are important differences. Mark Twain's corpus is relatively consistent (but not completely so) and we can know a lot about the various evolving contexts out of which he wrote. One cannot say the same of "Scripture." It is, on important points and not so important points, inconsistent and its cultural settings are hard, at times impossible, to ferret out. While the difficulty of interpreting the ancient corpus over the millennia is far greater than in the case of Mark Twain, the urgency felt by many to do so is also far greater. I admit I no longer understand this urgency. Rather than living with the many uncertainties and inconsistencies of interpretation that are unavoidable, but I think wonderful in their own way, those who look to "Scripture," any scripture, all too often present interpreters of their chosen corpus of authoritative texts with a false dichotomy - a choice between interpretation based on some confessional standard and unbounded relativism. I doubt they really think this with regard to any other corpus except the one that their confessional community holds most dear.
Via יהוה מלך where Richard has his own concerns.
PS. If anyone knows of a Mark Twain confessional community, please let me know, Except for Twain himself, I really don't have much of an abnormal interest in nineteenth century America.
Posted by Duane Smith at August 15, 2009 1:11 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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Comments
Great post.
I think you really hit it on the head. The dead giveaway, of course, is use of the word "scripture" itself. Bibles are certainly not "scripture" to every reader (academic or otherwise), and the use of the term imparts a the sense that these collections are somehow special and need special tools to unlock a valid meaning.
I would love to write a big book called "An Introduction to the Myths of Baal as Scripture".
Posted by: Jim Linville at August 16, 2009 8:20 AM
Nice. Of course, it will go unheeded. But you've still hit it right on the head.
Posted by: Alan Lenzi at August 17, 2009 10:51 PM
Canaanical Criticism. It could be be the new post-something trend!
Posted by: Jim Linville at August 20, 2009 7:20 PM
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