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Art of Hebrew Bible Commentary
Consultation John F.A. Sawyer, Lancaster University, U.K. I'm in the very fortunate position of having been working for over two years, both as editor, along with Chris Rowland in Oxford and Judith Kovacs in the University of Virginia, and as author, on a new type of Bible commentary series. What I want to do this afternoon is to share something of that experience with you and consider some of the general methodological questions raised by the series. It's a short paper and a very practical one in three parts: 1. What are we doing? 2.Why are we doing it? 3. How? (1) Our aim is to encourage and enable readers to get beyond exclusive focus on questions of date and authorship, original meanings and how things actually were when the texts were supposed to have been written, to consider how the texts have been read and interpreted and used in the long and fascinating history of their reception by Jews, Christians and others down to the present day - a shift of emphasis from the prehistory of the texts to their afterlives….from the Babylonian laws, the Ugaritic poetry and the Hellenistic aretalogies, to the readings of the rabbis and church fathers, hymn writers and preachers, theologians and philosophers….from the excavations at Jericho and Megiddo to the mosaics and frescoes of early Christianity and Judaism, mediaeval and renaissance art and architecture, and the literary, artistic and musical products of centuries of reading, discussing and teaching the Bible. Whereas most modern commentaries are in effect synchronic reflecting differences of opinion among modern scholars, ours is diachronic drawing on examples of differences of interpretation from the whole of reception of history. The term reception history or Rezeptionsaesthetik goes back to the Sixties and to the Konstanz School of literary studies, and is more or less the German equivalent of the preferred American term "Reader-Response Criticism". It is particularly associated with the name of Hans Robert Jauss, a student of Gadamer at Heidelberg. It was from Gadamer that Jauss learned the importance of history, as well as his appreciation of the relationship between their private and public aspects, between self-enclosed literary structures and their effect (Wirkung) on society. In many ways I prefer the term Wirkungsgeschichte " impact history", coined by Gadamer, because it places the focus on the text rather than the reader, and on its power to influence people and events, rather than on the more passive process of reception. Wirkungsgeschichte was the theme of a conference on "The Sociology of Sacred Texts" held at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1991, focusing on the notion that what texts do is often more important than what they say or mean. The term Reception-history, however, is much commoner and more transparent than Wirkungsgeschichte, in English at any rate. It did not make it into either of the two Dictionaries of Biblical Interpretation, the SCM one by Richard Coggins and Lesley Houlden published at the beginning of the Nineties, or the two-volume one of John Hayes published by Abingdon at the end of the Nineties. Nor did it make it into the Post-Modern Bible (1995) or The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (1998), but I suggest that it is now perhaps gaining ground and has become the most accurate and convenient way to describe an approach to the text which takes account of its impact on society and its many AFTERLIVES and CONTEXTUALIZATIONS - two other usefully transparent terms incidentally that are now widely used. In the preface to their pioneering Dictionary Coggins and Houlden argue, in the typically restrained language of two anglican clergymen, that interpretation is "not something reserved for the few who specialize in it, or for church authorities who pronounce on it, nor yet is it something sinister, the attempt to 'put something over' on readers who would do better without it. No, interpretation is inherent in the very act of reading, an act which sets up a conversation between text and reader or perhaps…a multiplicity of conversations stretching back maybe for centuries." In the event, partly because of the stubborn ways of many of their authors, their dictionary does not entirely live up to its preface. There are excellent articles on Black Christian interpretation, the Bible in Art, the Bible in Music, Feminist interpretation, Liberation Theology, New Religious Movements, Reader-Response Criticism and the like, but the authors of many of the studies of individual texts, if not most of them, show a very limited understanding of "interpretation": for them it IS something reserved for the few specialists, and they consequently ignore most if not all of the other conversations between text and reader that "stretch back maybe for centuries". John Hayes' more recent Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation is much bigger and wider in scope, but it too focuses mainly on scholars and specialists, every one of whom from Felix Marie Abel to Walther Zimmerli have an article devoted to them. There are articles on Dante and Jonathan Edwards, on the Bible in Music and Art, and on Gay/Lesbian, post-modern, psychoanalytic and womanist interpretation and ideological criticism. But like Coggins and Houlden, the articles on individual biblical books, with some notable exceptions like the article on Judges by Tim Beal and David Gunn, are studies of the history of scholarship, with scant regard for other types of conversation between text and reader. What Hayes does is to focus with a new sharpness on readers and interpreters, whom he lumps together in a new format: Auerbach with Augustine, James Barr with Johann Sebastian Bach., Childs with Chaucer, Jeremias with Jerome, Milgrom with Milton, Origen with Orlinsky. The editorial bias is still very much in favour of modern scholars who vastly outnumber poets, artists, preachers and the like, but the very fact that a Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation goes beyond the ivory towers of specialist scholarship at all, shows how far we have moved beyond the exclusivism and dogmatism of much modern scholarship. I think one reason why the majority of authors represented in these two Dictionaries of Biblical Interpretation stayed within the history of biblical scholarship, was a terminological one. In common parlance the term "history of interpretation" means the history of scholarship, rabbinic, patristic, mediaeval and modern scholarship as contained in commentaries and specialist studies of the text. This is how the term is understood in the magisterial article on the subject by John Rogerson in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, for example, and in many other contexts. In my own article on the history of interpretation for Coggins and Houlden's Dictionary, I enthusiastically took the editors' advice literally, and wrote my article in such a way as to shift the emphasis away from the interpretations of biblical scholars and specialists, to literature, music, art, hymns and sermons, and to the political, ecclesiastical and theological uses of scripture that have influenced the course of history down to the present day. But that was in 1990 and since then I have come to the conclusion that it is better to go with the flow and accept that for most people there is a distinction between the history of interpretation and reception history. Reception history implies wider terms of reference than the history of interpretation. Also, as Jauss argued, it keeps the historical dimension in focus in a way that Reader-Response criticism does not, and provided it is associated wherever possible with Wirkungsgeschichte, contextualization and the afterlife of the text, it is certainly the most appropriate term for our purposes. (2) Why are we including more reception history than anything else in our commentaries? Two quick flippant answers first, then two more serious points. The first answer is that Everybody's doing it! Everyone's suddenly become interested in reception-history. Since 1990 there has been a veritable deluge of studies of the afterlives of biblical texts: from single passages like the Garden of Eden and the Flood story, to whole books like my own study of Isaiah, Yvonne Sherwood's new book on the afterlives of the book of Jonah (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and Margarita's Stocker's study of Judith, Sexual Warrior. Women and Power in Western Culture (Yale University Press, 1998). There are also several reference works: as well as the Dictionaries of Biblical Interpretation mentioned above, there is David Jeffrey's Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (Eerdmans, 1992). There are two major new series dedicated to publishing patristic interpretations of the Bible. Bill Farmer's recently published one volume International Catholic Bible Commentary (Collegeville, Minn.: St. Johns Abbey Press, 1998) states as one of its aims to include examples of the reception history of every text. So our new series is very much in tune with current developments. The second short answer is that, like the North Pole and Mount Everest, it's there. It's something that has not been done before. Amid all the reception-histories published in recent years, there are as yet no commentaries, aiming to give it such prominence and treat it so comprehensively. It's a challenge, to authors and editors and publishers alike, with all the excitement and enthusiasm that challenges create. But there are two more substantial reasons why we think it right to place the reception history of the Bible in the foreground of our commentaries. The first is that the afterlife of the Bible has been infinitely more influential, in every way - theologically, politically, culturally and aesthetically - than its ancient near-eastern prehistory. In my college days, I worked in one part of the library, along side one group of students, while anyone with an interest in theology or church history or homiletics or liturgy or contemporary British society or the rest of the world, worked in another. There was really very little communication between Biblical scholarship and the rest of the curriculum. Rabbinic and patristic interpretations were considered "late" and therefore inferior and not taken seriously. We were not encouraged to quote Luther or Milton or Brahms or Karl Barth. Indeed we were encouraged to criticize theologians and preachers for their erroneous understanding of the Bible. We who were experts in Hebrew and Ugaritic and biblical archaeology always knew better. Mercifully that situation has changed, as we have seen, and an increasing number of biblical experts now take seriously the impact of the Bible on its readers down to the present day. What we want to do is to ensure that that change of emphasis is reflected in the commentaries, the basic tools by means of which readers of the Bible first study the text. Our second reason concerns the meaning of the text. When confronted with a difficult text, I was trained to go first to the 19th and 20th century commentaries: What do the big German scholars say? I later discovered that it is also possible, and indeed very productive, to start (like every Jewish schoolboy) by asking What does Rashi say? And going on to see how the Reformers explained it, how Milton used it, what role it plays in hymns and sermons. Often, indeed usually, I found in those alternative sources, subtle insights into the dynamic of the text, its associations and overtones, entirely missed in the majority of standard commentaries and reference works. The reasons for this are obvious. They were to do with the impact of modernity on how we approach ancient texts, and the two assumptions on which modern approaches to the Bible were based: (a) that the object of the exercise is to find one single correct or true meaning, and (b) that, with all our modern discoveries and techniques, we in the modern world are more likely to achieve that than anyone else in the past. But we have now moved beyond that stage, into a postmodern era where life is more complicated, where the objectivity of modern scholarship is questioned, where texts have to be approached as having more than one meaning, and where the differences between one meaning and another cannot be adequately explained without reference to the reader or interpreter. So these are our two reasons why we want to shift the focus of the commentary genre away from ancient originals to the reception-history of the text: (1) to put the Bible back into the hands of the people and (2) to raise awareness of what these texts mean and can mean. (3) How do our authors do it? How do we get authors to do what we want? We have three practical principles. It must be a commentary, it must be comprehensive and it must be coherent. These are the three practical principles on which we try to design the volumes. (a) They must be commentaries. There are serious problems involved in getting authors to write in a commentary mode. Most of us have written at least one commentary, usually because some one asked us to, but not every one sees much virtue or pleasure in commentary-writing. Some have written books on particular texts in which the material is arranged thematically or historically. My own study of Isaiah in the History of Christianity is arranged partly thematically, partly historically. It is possible to do that because major themes reflected in how the text was interpreted and used, like the cult of the Virgin Mary, passion iconography and peace and justice, often correspond quite closely to periods of church history. But I am now engaged in writing the volume on Isaiah for the series, using much of the same material but structured as commentary, verse by verse or passage by passage, always keeping the text central to the discussion. (b) It must be comprehensive. Some of our authors are past masters at analyzing text, employing modern and postmodern literary techniques to great effect, stressing the importance of readers and the multiplicity of meanings a text can have, but finding it hard to engage in the hard slog of researching earlier periods in the text's reception history. Others are experienced experts in one or two periods in the reception-history of the Bible. This is particularly true of those who have written on the interpretation of the Bible in the patristic period or the rabbinic literature, who find it difficult to take the story on into mediaeval and modern history. Others, a very large number of others, I might add, are generally enthusiastic about the series aims, having immersed themselves in contemporary developments, in postcolonial interpretations for example, but who are reluctant to cover earlier, more traditional periods of history. Others are experts in the history of interpretation as defined above, the history of scholarship rather than reception history, and have little experience of studying the use of the Bible in art, literature, music, church history, politics, etc. But we consider a comprehensive view of whole history of the text's reception to be absolutely crucial. The practical question of how to cope with the sheer volume of material has often been raised. The late Robert Carroll's memorable answer was " Of course it's impossible, but that's no reason for not having a go!" The other short answer is, if you will excuse my Latin, solvitur ambulando. Our experience is that it is not such a problem as at first sight appears. It has two sides to it, location and selection. First the location of the material: our website provides a large bibliography - it is surprising just how much material there is, both reference works like the Biblia Patristica and Jeffrey's Dictionary mentioned above and numerous other studies which have a full indices of biblical references like Schiller's Iconography of Christian Art (Eng.transl: Lund Humphries, London 1972), Tod Linafelt's Strange Fire. Reading the Bible after the Holocaust (Sheffield Academic Press, 2000) and most recently Gerald West and Musa Dube Shomanah's The Bible in Africa (E.J.Brill, Leiden, 2000). In practice authors soon find where to look and how to handle the material. Indeed many are already familiar with much of the relevant material: one of the most common reactions from biblical scholars is that they have actually been using material from art and literature in their teaching all their professional lives, but have not until now thought it appropriate or permissible to publish any of it, or refer to it in their publications - not even in footnotes! In other words students have been getting the benefit of such material, although not encouraged to take it seriously or able to follow it up in recommended literature. The other reservation many people have about the series concerns Selection. How on earth can you decide, confronted by 2000 years of theology, literature, art, music, film, sermons in which the Bible has played a unique and often decisive role, what to put in and what to leave out? The longest part of our Guidelines for Authors deals with this question. What criteria for selection can we use? Till now the main criterion for most modern scholars searching for the original meaning of the text was chronological priority - "late" meant "inferior". Other criteria hinge on theological or ecclesiastical or ethical or political correctness. There is also the widespread hierarchical assumption that "valid" or " correct" interpretations are normally those of the experts, while those of the uneducated, marginalized, anarchic or eccentric are not to be taken seriously. If our aim is to be comprehensive, to let the texts and their interpretations speak for themselves, then important and influential examples of imperialistic, oppressive, racist, sexist uses of scripture have to be included as well as beautiful, uplifting, liberating interpretations, ancient as well as contemporary, popular as well as academic. The overriding criterion will usually be a quantitative one: a glance at any index of biblical references shows which texts have had a particularly prominent role to play in a given context: e.g. Isaiah 53.8 in early christological controversy, 11.1 in mediaeval cathedral architecture, 6:9-11 in antisemitic polemic, 40.8 in the Reformation period, 27:12-13 in contemporary millenarianism, 45:15 in post-Holocaust theology, 42.14 in Christian feminism and 61.1 in liberation theology (Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel 1996). (c) This brings me finally to our third principle: Coherence. The discussion of each verse or passage is chronological: to adapt the subtitle of Jeremy Cohen's little study of Gen.1:28, it traces, in more or less detail, the career of each biblical text from ancient times down to the present. Gunkel, Duhm, Mowinckel, and co. take their place near the end of each section, for example, followed where appropriate by contemporary readings, literary, postmodern, ideological, postcolonial and the like. This already gives the commentary some coherence. But in order to keep the focus on the text, rather than on church history or mediaeval iconography, authors are urged to make some attempt to draw together at the end of each section, some of the salient points of the discussion in a brief analysis of the effective power of the text on its readers and users. What is it in the language of Genesis 22 or Isaiah 6:3 or John 3:16 that initiated such a long and significant Wirkungsgeschichte? This may often include aesthetic, theological, ethical or ideological comment reflecting the author's own hermeneutical stance. It may also coincide with the latest stage in the reception history of the text: a stage at which the many meanings of each text and the crucial role of the reader are for the first time systematically highlighted and discussed. |