First, from Timothy Beal in The Chronicle Review:
For many potential Bible readers, the expectation that the Bible is univocal is paralyzing. You notice what seem to be contradictions or tensions between different voices in the text. You can't find an obvious way to reconcile them. You figure that it must be your problem. You don't know how to read it correctly, or you're missing something. If the Bible is God's perfect, infallible Word, then any misunderstanding or ambiguity must be the result of our own [failings]. So you either give up or let someone holier than thou tell you "what it really says." I think that's tragic. You're letting someone else impoverish it for you, when in fact you have just brushed up against the rich polyvocality of biblical literature.
The Bible is anything but univocal about anything. It is a cacophony of voices and perspectives, often in conflict with one another. In many ways, those dedicated to removing all potential biblical contradictions, to making the Bible entirely consistent with itself, are no different from irreligious debunkers of the Bible, Christianity, and religion in general. Many from both camps seem to believe that simply demonstrating that the Bible is full of inconsistencies and contradictions is enough to discredit any religious tradition that embraces it as Scripture.
Bible debunkers and Bible defenders are kindred spirits. They agree that the Bible is on trial. They agree on the terms of the debate, and what's at stake, namely the Bible's credibility as God's infallible book. They agree that Christianity stands or falls, triumphs or fails, depending on whether the Bible is found to be inconsistent, to contradict itself. The question for both sides is whether it fails to answer questions, from the most trivial to the ultimate, consistently and reliably.
But you can't fail at something you're not trying to do. To ask whether the Bible fails to give consistent answers or be of one voice with itself presumes that it was built to do so. That's a false presumption, rooted no doubt in thinking of it as the book that God wrote. On the contrary, biblical literature is constantly interpreting, interrogating, and disagreeing with itself. Virtually nothing is asserted someplace that is not called into question or undermined elsewhere. Ultimately it resists conclusion and explodes any desire we might have for univocality.
We don't know, and will never know, many details about the history of the development of biblical literature. No doubt there have been countless hands, scribal and editorial, involved in writing, editing, copying, and circulating the various versions of various texts that eventually were brought together into a canonical collection. Nor do we know very much for certain about the ancient life situations—ritual practices, oral traditions, legal systems—in which these texts had their beginnings. Nor do we know everything about the complex process by which the canons of Jewish and Christian Scriptures took form. What we do know for certain is that the literature now in our Bibles was thousands of years in the making.
Given how many hands have been involved in so many contexts over such a long time in the history of this literature, can we honestly imagine that no one noticed such glaring discrepancies? Can we believe, for example, that the seam between the first and second creation stories in Genesis, as well as the many other seams found throughout the Torah, were not obvious? That if agreement and univocality were the goal, such discrepancies would not have been fixed and such rough seams mended long ago? That creation stories would have been made to conform or be removed? That Job would've been allowed to stand against Moses? That Gospel mix-ups concerning who saw what after Jesus's resurrection would have been left to stand? That Judas would have died twice, once by suicide and once by divine disgorge? And so on. Could all those many, many people involved in the development of biblical literature and the canon of Scriptures have been so blind, so stupid? It's modern arrogance to imagine so.
The Bible canonizes contradiction. It holds together a tense diversity of perspectives and voices, difference and argument—even, and especially, when it comes to the profoundest questions of faith, questions that inevitably outlive all their answers. The Bible interprets itself, argues with itself, and perpetually frustrates any desire to reduce it to univocality.
I sent a link to the article excerpted above to several friends and acquaintences, including a few friends who have neither read the Bible nor have any desire to do so. One, a very able, good and selfless civic contributor, a person I like, allowed that she would read the article on my recommendation. This would not likely have been something she gravitated to unprodded.---"The Bible is Dead; Long Live the Bible," by Timothy Beal , professor of religion at Case Western Reserve University, The Chronicle Review (4.17.11)
It's just that so many good folks won't read the Bible because of the types of expectations and limitations impliedly placed on the experience by very "religious" people on the one hand, and very "athiestic" anti-Diests on the other. But there is a more intelligent middle ground for reading and understanding the history of the Bible and what it has to say, both for spiritual seekers and the merely interested or curious. It can be a fertile ground for open-minded exploration in faith, but also a wonderful experience in fascinating literature and cultural history. For some of us--a fair number of us, actually--it is both.
The article shares a refreshing understanding of the unencumbered, open-minded and challenging venture into the rich, but often ambiguous experience it can offer. Like all good educational processes, it raises as many questions as it answers, and the answers as often as not reveal different understandings when seen through different perspectives, contexts and times. Like the life experience it addresses, it is often complex and confounding, and defies simple answers or understandings. It is anything but what many people want it to be.
I sent the article to some who have no interest in reading the Bible, not to entice them to read it--although I think they could be enriched by the experience. (And it is a notoriously difficult book to make sense of by just picking it up and randomly reading.) Rather, it was my hope just to share this third perspective on reading and understanding the Bible, an open-minded, open-hearted exploration of either spirituality, faith, literature or cultural history. And as much, to make clear that some of us who claim some variation of a faith journey read it with the same accountability and intellectual honesty with which we pursue other experiences and aspects of our lives that challenge understanding.
But at the risk of wandering off the reservation, I also must share that I have always been a student of human behavior. And a walk in spiritual exploration or faith--an accountable walk--must also be taken with eyes and mind wide open for what existential life and scientific research tell us about who we are, what we do, and why. My studies in psychology, genetics, brain, neural and endocrine systems as an undergraduate (and through a graduate fellowship) have remained active areas of interest for me throughout my life-- and for some years, evolutionary science, as well. And I believe there is ample evidence to suggest that our personalities and temperaments have a lot to do with our orientation to spirituality and faith. We can see those personality types reflected in the range of both political and faith expressions.
And the likely level of determinism involved can be unsettling--more so to some than others, but to some extent to all. For our genetic prescriptions and predispositions appear to govern far more of who we are and what we do than we are comfortable acknowledging. And the deterministic power of our family, educational and cultural conditioning is also greatly at odds with our preferred understandings and sense of freedom, choice, and self-determination. Very uncomfortable, ambiguous stuff for most people--just as uncomfortable as Mr.Beal's shared understandings and approaches to experiencing the Bible are to most believers.
Such ambiguity and challenges to identity are so much of what life offers. I too think it a shame if the discomfort of wrestling with them keeps us from exploring and better understanding the determinants and possibilities of our identity. And to ignore the invitations and challenges may also be to fall short of our potential.
Copyright Gregory E. Hudson 2011
First written: May 20, 2011
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Bible-Is-Dead-Long-Live/127099/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
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