Sacred Scripture and its interpretation
Monday, February 4, 2013
*Sister Maria Pascuzzi, CSJ
In my September blog about Dei Verbum, the Vatican Council II document that contains the Church’s teaching on Divine Revelation, I left off noting that in this document, the Church underscores the fact that God’s revelation, His word, is mediated through the words of humans who lived in a distant time and place, spoke languages different from our own and expressed themselves in ways that were understood by people in their own day.
Today we consider the implications of God’s self-revelation through humans for how we understand Scripture. These implications are outlined in chapter 3 of Dei Verbum where the Church insists that since God has spoken through humans, we need to pay attention to the human authors and their contexts if we want to understand what God revealed about Himself through them.
First, we need to interpret the sacred texts. For a biblical fundamentalist, or literalist, the written text is absolute, clear and in no need of interpretation. You open the Bible to any page, read and the meaning is evident. It does not matter who wrote the text, when it was written, in what language or what message the writer intended. The Church teaches, instead, that when and where the text was written and by whom are all very important factors to consider if we hope to understand the meaning the sacred author intended.
Because these questions are important, then second, the scriptures must be studied historically and critically. That means we have to go back and consider the world of the sacred writers. What was going on when they wrote? What social and cultural influences impacted what and how they wrote? What meaning did they intend to communicate by the words they used? This is very important if we hope to avoid forcing on the text meaning which the sacred writers never intended.
Third, along with attention to the social and historical world of the sacred writers, the Church teaches that we must also pay attention to the literary forms and manner of speech used by the sacred writers. In both the Old and New Testaments, we come across an incredible variety of literary forms, e.g., gospels, letters, short stories, parables, proverbs, law collections, genealogies, myth, poetry, legends. Biblical poetry, for example, is not meant to be taken literally. God is not literally a rock, or a mighty warrior, even if described so in biblical poetry. The purpose of poetry, whether we read it in the Bible or elsewhere, is always to engage our imagination.
Especially confusing is the literary genre ‘myth’. In the Bible and throughout ancient literature, ‘myths’ were stories people told to explain what they believed about the deepest realities of life, and about the gods or, for Israel, the One God who, though transcendent, acted in human history. Myths answer basic questions: How did we get here? Where did the world come from? Why do we die? The stories told in Genesis 1-11 are myths. They are neither false stories nor literal accounts of what actually happened. They are the stories our ancestors in faith told to express what they believed about reality.
We know from Genesis 1, for example, that our ancestors in faith believed in the absolute goodness of God whose creation was absolutely good and harmonious. But this affirmation stood in tension with their lived reality which was characterized by disharmony and evil. So where did this evil come from? The story of “The Fall” in Genesis 3 provides an explanation. The actions of one male and one female prototype disclose what our ancestors in faith thought about the origin of sin and what it means to be truly human. To be truly human means to be free but limited. This is reflected in Gen 2:16-17: “You are free to eat from any of the trees in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. From that tree you shall not eat.” The two human prototypes illustrate how sin enters the world when humans reject their limitedness and humanness. This myth locates the origin of sin in the desire to go beyond what God intends. This results in alienation not only from God but from each other and from creation itself. This story contains a profound and enduring truth even though it is not a literal description of an actual historical event.
Finally, in chapter 3, the Church teaches that a proper understanding of Scripture is only possible when each part is interpreted in light of the whole of Scripture and the living tradition of the Church. You have probably heard people justify capital punishment by saying “the Bible says an ‘eye for eye’…” But the overall biblical message of God’s mercy and compassion, exemplified in Jesus’ renunciation of violence and offer of forgiveness, illustrates how shortsighted it is to isolate one verse and stake a position on it.
My final entry on Dei Verbum, will focus on ch. 6: Sacred Scripture in the life of the Church today.
