Reading biblical narratives

Big percentage of the Biblical materials is narrative. Narrative is a literary form characterized by sequential action involving plot, setting and characters. The meaning of the narrative derives primarily from the actions of its characters. Rather than telling us how to live or how not live, stories teach us the same through the actions of the characters.

The purpose of these stories is theological. God uses them to teach us theology. The Bible gives us examples how to teach profound truth through stories and I believe we can use it to teach our people too.

Why did God choose narrative literature to communicate theological truth to us? Why didn't he communicate everything through essays or law? Think for a moment about these questions. Here Duvall and Hays list some of the advantages and disadvantages of using narrative to communicate theological truth.

Advantages of Using Narrative to Communicate Theological Truth

1. Narratives are interesting, both to children and to adults.
2. Narratives pull us out into the action of the story.
3. Narratives usually depicts real life and are thus easy to relate to. We find ourselves asking what we would have done in that situation.
4. Narratives are easy to remember.
5. Narratives portray the ambiguities and complexities of life.
6. God can include himself as one of the characters in the narrative. Thus he can teach us about himself by what he says and does in specific contexts.
7. Narratives are holistic; we see characters struggle, but we also often see resolution of their struggles. We see the entire character.
8. Narratives relates short incidents and events to a bigger overall story.

Disadvantages of Using Narrative to Communicate Theological Truth

1. The meaning of the narrative can be subtle or ambiguous and not clearly stated; the casual reader may miss it altogether.
2. The reader may get enthralled with the narrative as a story and miss its meaning.
3. The reader may assume that since literature is narrative, it deals only with history and not theology.
4. The reader may read too much theology in the narrative (allegorizing).

Here the pros outweigh the cons. The authors of the Bible thought the same. I agree with Duvall and Hays that God chose to use the literary device known as narrative as major way to communicate his big story precisely because the biblical narratives engage us in such a powerful way. They challenge us, interest us, rebuke, puzzle us, and entertain us. They stick in our memory. They make us think and reflect. They involve us emotionally as well as intellectually. They teach us about God and his plan for his people. They teach us about all kinds of people--good ones and bad ones, faithful, obedient ones and mule-headed, disobedient ones. They teach us about life in all its complexities and ambiguities.

Duvall & Hays, Grasping the God’s Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading and Interpreting, and Applying the Bible, pp. 288-294

Interpreting Revelation

Reading Duvall & Hays' Grasping God's Word has been a fascinating experience for me. The book provides me with the latest method in biblical studies. They are reinforcing the traditional methods that scholars find to be still valid. They also present some of the more effective approach to studying the different literary genres of the books of the Bible.

Here Duvall and Hays suggest specific principles in interpreting Revelation. The following are mostly direct quotes from their book:

Read Revelation with humility. We should resist "Revelation-made easy" approaches. Revelation is not easy. People who must satisfy their curiosity or people who are unwilling to live with any uncertainty are those most likely to read into Revelation things that are not there. Beware of interpreters who appear to have all the answers to even the smallest questions. "Experts who claim absolute knowledge about every minute detail of Revelation should be held in suspicion. Reading with a humble mind means that we are willing to admit that our interpretation could be wrong and to change our view when biblical evidence points in a different direction.

Try to discover the message to the original readers. Discovering the message to the original audience is top priority with any book of the Bible, but especially with this one. When it comes to reading Revelation, the tendency is to ignore the first Christians and jump directly to God's message to us. Some people use today's newspapers as the key to interpreting Revelation. But as Keener notes, this approach does not fit well with a high view of Scripture.

The best place to begin is with the question: What was John trying to communicate to his audience?" If our interpretation makes no sense for original readers, we have probably missed the meaning of the passage. Fee and Stuart remind us of how important it is to discover the message to the original audience: As with the Epistles, the primary meaning of the Revelation is what John intended it to mean, which in turn must also have been something his readers could have understood it to mean.

Don't try to discover a strict chronological map of the future events. Don't look for Revelation to progress in a neat linear fashion. The book is filled prophetic-apocalyptic visions that serve to make a dramatic impact on the reader than to present a precise chronological sequence of future events.

Take Revelation seriously, but don't always take it literally. Some who say we should interpret Scripture symbolically do so in order to deny the reality of scriptural truth or a historical event. When they say that something is figurative or symbolic, they mean that it is not real or that it never happened. That is not the intention of this book. We insist that picture language with its symbols, images, and figures is capable of conveying literal truth and describing literal events. Picture language is just another language vehicle, another way of communicating reality. In our way of thinking, Revelation uses picture language to emphasize historical reality rather than to deny or diminish it.

Pay attention when John identifies an image. When John himself provides a clue to the interpretation of an image, we should take notice. In other words, we should pay close attention when John identifies or defines the images for his readers. We can not assume that images like lampstands would always refer to the churches. John may use the same image to refer to different things.

Look to the Old Testament and historical context when interpreting images and symbols. Revelation uses language at several different levels:

Text level: words written on the page
Vision level: the picture that the words paint
Referent level: what the vision refers to in real life

One of the most difficult aspects of reading Revelation is knowing what the images and symbols refer to. Even when we understand what is happening at the text and vision levels, we may not know what Revelation is saying, but we are often not sure what it is talking about.

The two places to go for answers are to the first-century historical context. Revelation uses much of Old Testament imagery. The book is filled with echoes and allusions to the Old Testament. In fact, Revelation contains more Old Testament references than any other New Testament book, with the Old Testament appearing in almost 70 percent of Revelation's verses. Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel make the most important contribution to Revelation.

Above all, focus on the main idea and don't press all the details. This last interpretive guideline is perhaps the most important of all. With most literary genres in the Bible, we begin with the details and build our way toward an understanding of the whole. With revelation, however, we should start with the big picture and work toward an understanding of the details. As we seek to identify the theological principles, we should focus on the main ideas.

The details of any particular section will heighten the impact on the reader but will not change the main idea. Resist the temptation to focus on the details so that you miss the main idea. Don't let the main point of each section or vision fade from view. As has been said, when reading Revelation, the main thing is to make the main thing the main thing.

*The image is from Meta-Logic Cafe'.

Duvall & Hays, Grasping the God’s Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading and Interpreting, and Applying the Bible, pp. 288-294

Presupposition

Every people group of different cultures brings their preunderstanding to the biblical text they are reading. But we could not help it, it just the way we are. However, we should never allow our culture to dictate the meaning of the Word of God. But if we talk to Christians from different cultures it is evident that their understanding of the scripture varies from one another. We judge the correctness (or the wrongness) of their interpretation from our own culture (more often western which more often than not is also based in our preunderstanding).

Presunderstanding like culture is not inherently bad. But it is a baggage that we bring to the text that causes us to color our interpretation and leads us to the path of misinterpretation. We could not abandon our preunderstanding and throw it into the trash when we encounter biblical passages that contradict it.

Duvall and Hays say that what we do want to do is to submit our preunderstanding, throwing all of our previous encounters with the text, placing it under the text rather than over the text. We must be able to identify our preunderstanding and then be open to changing it in accordance with a true serious study of the text. That is, after we have studied the text thoroughly, we must then evaluate our preunderstanding and modify it appropriately in the light of our current study.

However, nobody can approach bible study in a neutral manner. Total objectivity is impossible when we study the Bible. I remember being taught at the Seminary that we could only have unbiased and truthful interpretation if we approach the text with total objectivity. As Christians we serve the living God and we have the Hoy Spirit living with us. Our relationship with God is the most important aspect when we read the Bible and this relationship is what greatly impacts our interpretation of the text.

Duvall and Hays call this inherent quality among Christians as presuppositions. Presupposition is not something we want to renegotiate as we read the text. It is different from preunderstanding that need to be changed. Presuppositions should not change at all. We have several presuppositions about the Bible itself that develop out of our relationship with Christ.

Several presuppositions about Scriptures that evangelical Christians generally hold are as follows:

First, the Bible is the Word of God. Although God worked through people to produce it, it is nonetheless inspired by the Holy Spirit and is God’s Word to us.

Second, the Bible is trustworthy and true.

Third, God has entered into human history; thus the supernatural does occur.

Finally, the Bible is not contradictory; it is unified, yet diverse. Nevertheless, God is bigger that we are, and he is not always easy to comprehend. Thus the Bible has tension and mystery to it.

Though there are other presuppositions about the Bible that we Christians have. These are the most central ones. And I agree with Duvall and Hays that “these presuppositions have to do with how we view the entire Bible and serve as foundations on which to build our method of study.”

Duvall and Hays, Grasping God's Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible, pp. 94-95.

Which translation is best?

Duvall and Hays suggest guidelines for choosing a translation. This is a direct quote from their book, Grasping God’s Word, which I find to be readable and practical and at the same time scholarly.

First, choose a translation that uses modern English. The whole point of making a translation is to move the message to the original to a language you can understand. History teaches us that languages change over time, and English is no exception. The English of John Wycliffe’s day or of 1611 is simply not the same as the English of the twenty-first century. There is little to be gained by translating a Greek or Hebrew text into a kind of English that you no longer use and can no longer comprehend. For that reason, we recommend that you choose among the many good translations that have appeared within 50 years.

Second, choose a translation that is based on the standard Hebrew and Greek text. The standard for the Old Testament is the Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS). For the New Testament the standard text is reflected in the latest edition of the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (GNT) or the Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece. Along with the majority of scholars, we much prefer an ecletic original text rather than the Textus Receptus used by KJV and the NKJV.

Third, give preference to a translation by a committee over against a translation by individual. Translating requires an enormous amount of knowledge and skill. A group of qualified translators will certainly possess more expertise than any one translator possibly could. In addition, a group of scholars will usually guard against the tendency of individual scholars to read their own personal biases into their translation.

Lastly, choose a translation that is appropriate for your own particular purpose at the time. When you want to read devotionally or read to children, consider a simplified, functional translation such as the New Living Translation or the New Century Version. If you are reading to nontraditional or unchurched people, consider the Contemporary English Version or The Message. If you are reading to people with English as a second language, consider the Good News Bible. If you are reading to a “King –James-only” church, consider the New King James. But for your own personal study, we suggest the New American Standard Bible, the New International Version, Today’s International Version, the New Revised Standard Version, the English Standard Version, the Holman Christian Standard Bible, or the NET Bible.

English-speaking people have rich resources before them to compare different translations and have better opportunity to look at the best possible meaning of a particular passage according to its context. Bible translations in other languages remain limited to one or two translations. Only those who know English could point out the nuances and the discrepancies of the Bible’s translations in their own language. This makes it necessary to teach the students to learn at least English if not Hebrew or Greek. This is one of the many struggles of a Bible teacher trying to teach the local people to interpret the Bible.

Preunderstanding

Preunderstanding referes to all of our preconceived notions and understandings that we bring to the text, which have been formulated, both consciously and subconsciously, before we actuall study the text in detail.

Preunderstanding is formed by both good and bad influences, some accurate and some inaccurate. It includes all that we have heard in Sunday School, at church, in Bible Studies, and in our private reading of the Bible. However, preunderstanding of biblical texts are also formed by hymns and other Christian music,pop songs, jokes, art, and nonbiblical literature, both Christian and secular. Likewise, culture constantly creeps in.

It may also comes from our own theological bias. For example, there was a time when theology for me meant Dispensationalism. So it was natural for me to approach the text with Dispensational leanings. Anything that did not fit with the meaning I was looking for, I will just simply skip or ignore. If we want to find out the realy meaning of the Biblical text, we should free ourselves of those preconceived theological views.

The authors go on to say that "preunderstanding including culture (or theological views) is not inherently bad, but it can often skew our understanding of the Bible, leading us down the trail of misinterpretation. We do not want to abandon our preunderstanding, throwing all of our previous encounters with the text in the trash. What we do want to do is to submit our preunderstanding to the text, placing it under the text rather than over the text. We must be able to indentify our preunderstanding and then be open to changing it in accordance with a true serious study of the text."