Prof: Last time I talked
about the Letter to the Hebrews
and I used it mainly as an
example of early Christian
interpretation of scripture.
 
If you recall I was talking
about Hebrews 7 where there's
the story, the interpretation of
the Melchizedek story from
Genesis.
 
To review briefly,
Abraham comes back from a raid,
he has a lot of booty,
he has his relatives from
defeating some kings,
he comes to Melchizedek who's
not of course a descendant of
Abraham,
therefore he's not a Jew,
he's not part of the people of
Israel but he is a priest,
a high priest of Yahweh,
according to the text.
 
Melchizedek gives him a tenth
of the spoils and then this
writer interprets that as being
that since Levi,
the head of the progenitor of
the priestly tribe among the
Jews,
is within the body of Abraham.
That means that Levi himself is
giving tithes to Melchizedek.
The entire priesthood of
Israel, of the Jews,
recognizes the superiority,
according to this
interpretation,
of the priesthood of
Melchizedek.
 
And then the writer takes
Melchizedek to be a type,
a sign of Jesus and his
priesthood.
This makes perfect sense of
course because,
as the text says,
Melchizedek had no father or
mother,
or it doesn't give a father or
mother,
and no genealogy,
no lineage, came out of nowhere
so the same way happens with
Christ as the priesthood.
 
Jesus of course was not of the
tribe of Levi according--Jesus
couldn't be a priest in the
normal sense of the Jewish
priesthood.
 
The writer takes Jesus to be a
priest not of the line of Levi
or Aaron, but of the line of
Melchizedek.
Now this obviously is not the
way any of us in the modern
world would read Genesis,
in its historical setting.
That's precisely the other way
this reader does it,
and it's all part of a
synkrisis,
a comparison of the
leitourgia,
the liturgy of Christ with the
inferior leitourgia or
liturgy of the Jews.
 
It's done sort of to convince
this congregation that you don't
need to go back to that,
you've got something superior.
Hebrews ends with this kind of
admonition in 13:8,
"Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday, and today,
and forever."
 
Now remember,
this writer believes that Jesus
Christ has existed all the way
back,
so that's why he can read the
Psalms,
which a historian would read as
addressed to a Davidic King,
as being addressed actually to
Jesus.
So Jesus Christ is back in
history too."
Do not be carried away by all
kinds of strange teachings,
for it is well for the heart to
be strengthened by grace,
not by regulations about food
[You don't need to keep kosher],
which have not benefitted those
who observe them.
We have an altar from which
those who officiate in the tent
[that's referring to that
tabernacle,
the tent of the tabernacle in
Exodus,
which he's been comparing all
the way through]
We have an altar from which
those who officiate in the tent
[that is the Levites]
have no right to eat.
For the bodies of those animals
whose blood is brought into the
sanctuary by the high priest as
a sacrifice for sin are burned
outside the camp.
 
When you sacrifice an animal,
according to the Exodus'
instructions,
you don't burn the materials of
the sacrifice inside the camp.
 
You do it outside the camp.
 
So he's going to do something
like that too.
"Therefore,
Jesus also suffered,"
where?
 
Outside the gates of Jerusalem.
 
So now Jerusalem has become
like the Israelite camp talked
about in Exodus,
and Jesus is the sacrifice who
was sacrificed on the cross
outside the walls of Jerusalem.
"Jesus suffered outside
the city gate in order to
sanctify the people by his own
blood.
Let us then…"
now this is a really big period
on this whole speech.
 
"Let us then go to him
outside the camp."
Basically he's symbolically
saying, let us follow Jesus out
of Jerusalem,
out of the camp of the
Israelites.
 
Now this is much more radically
supercessionist then we've seen
in Paul.
 
I've taught that Paul never saw
himself as a Christian;
he never saw himself as
starting something new.
In fact, he saw himself as
bringing the Gentiles into
Israel.
 
And so he never--although they
didn't have to keep the law,
they didn't have to keep Torah,
they didn't have to be
circumcised,
in fact they weren't supposed
to at all be circumcised,
Paul never thought--he never
talks in this way about the
supercession of a new kind of
liturgy from an old kind of
liturgy.
When you talk about Christian
supercessionist kind of
language--
and the term just means the
traditional Christian teachings
which you've seen throughout two
thousand years of Christianity,
that Christianity is superior
to Judaism--
when you see that kind of
supercessionist kind of language
in the New Testament,
it's not in Paul so much.
 
It is here in Hebrews because
that's the way it works.
What's interesting from our
point of view is that he
actually uses Jewish scripture
to teach this.
Now in order to use Jewish
scripture to teach the
supercession of Judaism by
Christianity you know that he's
going to have interpreted it in
what we would consider very
creative ways.
 
We can use that to contrast the
way I've been teaching you to
interpret these texts in this
course,
which is through historical
critical exegesis,
from the way that Christians
have interpreted this text for
all the way through history.
 
This is not just Christians.
 
Jewish interpretation of
scripture is just as creative as
Christian interpretation of
scripture before the modern
period.
 
What, then, is historical
criticism?
And I'm going to review some
things that you've been learning
all the way through the
semester,
but I'm going to line up some
things so they get them really
clear in your mind.
 
What is it you've been learning
in this class,
the method you've been
learning, and then we're going
to go back to the pre-modern
stuff today and look at the
examples that you read about and
the reading from The Pedagogy
of the Bible.
 
The meaning of a text,
according to historical
criticism, is what the ancient
human author intended it to
mean.
 
For example,
in Jeremiah 3:6 it says,
"The Lord said to me in
the days of King Josiah."
Now, if I wanted to be creative
in my interpretation I might say
that the Lord said to me,
Dale Basil Martin,
in the days of King Josiah,
but that would of course not be
a historical critical
interpretation.
It has to be "me"
meaning Jeremiah,
so the Lord says to Jeremiah.
 
That's who the author clearly
must be referring to,
and we have to take "the
King Josiah"
to be the king who actually sat
on the throne of David in
Jerusalem,
the ancient King Josiah,
not Josiah Bumbershoot,
who happens to own a liquor
store down the street from me.
 
The text is not referring to
that Josiah;
he's referring to the ancient
Josiah;
that's the basis of historical
criticism.
The expansion of this,
that it's the author's
intention,
comes to be in a lot of studies
even within historical criticism
that another way to think about
the meaning of the text is that
the meaning of the text is what
the original readers probably
would have thought it meant.
Because of course we can't get
to the intentions of the author;
that's lost to us completely.
 
We have no idea what's going on
inside the minds of these
ancient authors.
 
But by practicing
historiographical research we
can guess at what probably an
ancient reader would have taken
the text to mean,
and so that's been added on as
another meaning that historical
criticism looks for.
The third point about
historical criticism I want to
make here is that it assumes a
sort of modern historical
consciousness.
 
By this we mean modern people
just have the notion that really
pre-modern people didn't so
much,
that the world was radically
different in the ancient world.
The ancient world is just not
like our world.
They thought about the world as
being in levels like stories.
Well, we think about the cosmos
as being a bunch of different
spheres in an infinite space.
 
We read ancient texts and we
see not only were they different
kinds of people--
they had different ethics--but
their whole cosmos,
their whole universe that they
inhabited was different for
them.
What that means with historical
criticism in the twentieth
century: you have theological
students being taught a little
bit about ancient near-eastern
society and culture.
In fact, you have entire
departments of ancient
near-eastern studies arise in
modern universities,
and they don't arise just
because people are automatically
interested in near-eastern
cultures.
They arise as a support for
biblical studies.
That's where they come from.
 
The idea that if you want to
read the Old Testament or the
Hebrew Bible responsibly in the
modern world you must know
something about ancient Assyria
and ancient Egypt because that's
where it came from.
 
Also, then you learn something
about the Greek world,
why I gave an entire lecture at
the beginning of the semester on
the Greek world and the Roman
world,
and second temple Judaism.
 
We have the idea that Judaism
before the rabbis,
which is the time of Judaism
we're talking about,
was a different kind of Judaism
than Rabbinic Judaism that you
might see now in the modern
world or in the Middle Ages.
This reflects the idea that if
you want to get back into these
texts in their ancient period
you have to develop knowledge of
that period.
 
Why?
 
Because we've developed a
historical consciousness.
We see ourselves in a place,
in a timeline of history,
and the history is different in
those different times.
This also means that we teach
people: you need to read these
texts if possible in the
original languages.
How many times in this class
have I told you what the
original Greek word of some
particular word the English
translation was?
 
This is not a Greek class,
most of you haven't studied
Greek, but I'll often scribble
on the board some Greek term.
Why am I doing that?
 
The text that Christians read
all over the world today is not
in Greek; it's in English.
 
So why is it important for us?
 
Why do you accept that it's
important?
Why does it seem natural to you
that I write the Greek text up
here and explain what its Greek
meaning means in the ancient
world?
 
Because you have this
historical consciousness too,
you have the assumption that
this ancient meaning of the
original language is important
for the interpretation of this
text.
 
Fourth, historical criticism
teaches you we don't interpret
the Bible canonically.
 
That means a couple of
different things.
We don't take the whole Canon
of the Bible and interpret it
all by reference to other parts
of the Canon.
Remember, how many times have
we said,
well that thing you're talking
about may be in the Gospel of
John but it's not in the Gospel
of Matthew,
and right now we're talking
about the Gospel of Matthew.
You can't use the Gospel of
John to interpret the Gospel of
Matthew.
 
Well, why not?
 
Christians have been doing it
for two thousand years.
Historical criticism,
though, takes the Canon apart
and says each individual
document must be studied in its
own right and for its own
content.
So one thing that means is that
we don't study the whole Bible
as one book.
 
We study the Bible as a series,
as a library of books,
each one individually studied.
 
The other aspect of this is
that we in the modern period
don't limit ourselves to the
study of the Canon.
What did we talk about last
week?
The Acts of Paul and
Thecla.
That's not in the Bible.
 
Why did I, as a crazy mixed up
professor that I am,
think that it was worthwhile
for you to read a non-canonical
second century document in a
class called Introduction to New
Testament History and
Literature?
I'll tell you why.
 
I've been brainwashed by the
modern historical critical
method to believe that putting
the Pastoral Epistles and those
other canonical texts into a
historical context that included
non-canonical materials is a
good way to teach you how to
think about this New Testament
thing.
That's part of the historical
critical method also.
Fifth, in spite of the fact
that we don't study the Bible
canonically in modern historical
criticism, we actually do look
for source analysis.
 
For example,
we take the idea that these
ancient authors actually did use
sources.
For example,
we've taught you that Matthew
and Luke probably used Mark as
one of their sources.
That's actually doing an
intra-canonical comparison;
we compare the shape of this
parable in Mark to the shape of
the same parable in Matthew and
Luke.
Isn't that kind of an
intra-canonical comparison?
Yes it is, but the reason we're
doing it is we're trying to get
behind the text of the Canon
into the pre-history of the
text.
 
The form these texts assumed in
a pre-canonical shape.
Famously, historical criticism
in the nineteenth century,
when it was really invented,
came up with the idea that the
five books of Moses are not
written by Moses,
they're written by different
people,
and they were an edition of
originally four separate strains
of tradition and four separate
documents.
This was called the JEPD Theory.
 
The J stands for Jahwist and
it's those parts of the Hebrew
Bible that use the name of God
as Yahweh because this came from
Germany,
right, so they pronounce a J
like "ya",
so Jahwist.
The Elohist is a strain that
uses the term Elohim for
God, so scholars said these are
originally two different things.
The P stands for the priestly
documents written by some kind
of priestly class,
and the D stands for
Deuteronomy, so Deuteronomy and
some other things.
The idea was the Deuteronomist
was an editor who wrote some of
this stuff and then edited the
five books--
or at least a good bit of the
Pentateuch--
so that it resembled a certain
shape,
so scholars called--they set
out these four different
traditions--
and if you took a course in
Hebrew Bible,
an introduction to Hebrew
Bible, or even in a seminary
introduction to Old Testament,
you're going to get this theory
crammed down your throat because
this is one of the most dominant
theories of modern historical
criticism of the Hebrew Bible.
 
It's source analysis,
that's part of what we're
doing.
 
I taught also that 2 Peter,
the letter 2 Peter,
used Jude as one of his
sources, again,
that kind of source analysis is
part of the method.
The next one,
I think I'm up to six,
in spite of the fact of talking
about authorship of all these
documents,
part of modern historical
criticism questions the
authenticity of authorship all
the time.
 
How many times in this course
have I said, well the Gospels
say they're written by Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John,
but we doubt they were.
 
They're anonymous.
 
So I've taught you what it
means to call a document
"anonymous":
we don't know who the author
is.
 
I've taught you what it means
to call a document a
"pseudepigrapha"
or "pseudonymous,"
which means it gives the false
name of somebody for what it is.
These are basic aspects of
modern historical criticism.
Now if you went to a very
conservative seminary you might
not get as much emphasis on
this,
but even there they'll probably
tell you something like,
well those liberals at Yale or
Princeton Theological Seminary,
they'll tell you that Paul
didn't write I and II Timothy
and Titus,
but they're wrong and here's
why they're wrong.
 
You can tell you're in the
modern period because they feel
the need to explain the theory
to you anyway.
Even if they don't buy it,
they'll teach it to you because
it's part of this modern way of
approaching the Bible.
Next, the avoidance of
anachronism.
This is the big,
bad thing in modern historical
criticism.
 
Don't be anachronistic;
don't think back into the
ancient text something that
actually arose later.
For example,
most historical critics of the
Bible would say,
it's certainly wrong to read
the doctrine of the Trinity into
Genesis.
Now you already read in the
chapter I gave you that that's
exactly what Augustine does,
right?
Augustine reads the first
chapter of Genesis and when the
text says,
"In the beginning,"
he says that refers to Jesus,
the Son, the wisdom through
whom all things were made.
 
The spirit that hovers over the
chaos in Genesis 1,
that refers to the Holy Spirit.
 
So you've got the Trinity,
the God, Father,
Son and Holy Spirit right in
Genesis.
Modern historical criticism
rejects that and says that's
wildly anachronistic.
 
The doctrine of the Trinity was
only developed centuries after
the writing of Genesis;
you can't read it back in
there, its anachronism.
 
The last big,
big boogey man of historical
criticism is eisegesis.
 
If you go to any kind of
seminary, they'll warn you
against eisegesis.
 
Why?
 
Because this is reading into
the text something that's not in
the text, and they're playing
off the word,
of course I've used this
before, exegesis.
Exegesis means simply,
as you've already learned in
this course, interpreting a
text.
Some people think it only
refers to historical critical
interpretation,
and that's often what it's come
to mean in schools,
but originally it just means
interpreting a text.
 
Any kind of interpretation of a
text is exegesis.
It's come to mean historical
critical interpretation of the
text because this is what's
really in the text.
What is eisegesis is just some
modern pious person picking up
the Bible and seeing anything
they want to see in it.
It's "reading into"
because this means "out
of" and this Greek word
means "into."
So eisegesis,
you're taught to avoid that.
Then finally,
one of the last major
presuppositions that relates to
the historical consciousness I
talked about:
the idea that there's a gap
between the world of the Bible
and our world.
If you go into most churches in
the United States--
there are very,
very few that might do this--
but if you go into most
churches--I don't care how
liberal or how conservative they
are,
I don't care if they're a
radical leftist or
fundamentalists--
most of the women will not be
wearing veils.
 
If they're really conservative
they might have a hat on,
but not a full veil.
 
We say, well,
you want to be true to the
Bible and right there in I
Corinthians 11,
you've read it,
you know it's there,
Paul's telling women,
you have to wear veils in
church when you pray and
prophesy.
Why aren't your women veiled?
 
It doesn't matter whether these
Christians are liberal or
conservative,
they'll have some way of saying
something like,
well that was their culture and
it's not our culture.
 
It was important in the ancient
world for women to wear veils
because it expressed humility;
it expressed control.
If they didn't wear veils they
might be thought of as a loose
woman.
 
Well, veils don't mean that in
our culture, so we don't have to
obey that text like it's a rule.
 
They will talk about--and they
might not use the term
"gap"
but that's what I call it--
what they're doing is saying,
there is a gap between their
culture and their world and
ours.
That consciousness of that gap
is a major aspect of modern
historical criticism.
 
So those are several
principles, you're not going to
probably find those listed in a
textbook, Introduction to the
Bible.
 
I actually do list them in my
Pedagogy of the Bible in
the first chapter.
 
But those are list of things
that I just said these are basic
principles of historical
criticism that set it apart from
the centuries of interpretation
of the Bible that have existed
beforehand.
 
I'm going to stop for a minute
and just say,
is that clear,
do you have any questions?
This is all familiar to you
because you've been practicing
this now all year but it should
have struck some of you,
at least, a little odd in the
beginning of why we were asking
this text what we were doing,
why we were pushing you to do
the exegesis papers in a certain
way we're doing,
why is it wrong to read these
texts and just write a sermon on
them and turn it in as an
exegesis paper?
No, a sermon is different from
an exegesis paper.
We were teaching you this
method with all these principles
and presuppositions all semester
long.
Is there any question about
that?
Okay good.
 
This historical criticism
didn't just spring out of the
Bible itself.
 
Where did it come from?
 
Why do we have it and where did
it come from?
Well, as you know,
before the Reformation,
basically the Bible--scripture
was supposed to mean what the
Catholic Church said it meant,
what the Pope said it--what the
bishop said it meant.
 
The authority structure of the
church was taken to be the way
that you controlled wild
interpretations.
People in the ancient knew,
you can interpret a text any
way you want to.
 
So what keeps heretics from
interpreting this text in false
ways?
 
The institution of the church.
 
So we'll see later Ignatius,
when we're reading his letters,
he says, you can't just
interpret scripture any you want
to;
you must be in agreement with
your bishop.
 
The rule of the bishop and the
rule of the church was the way
to keep control over the
interpretation of the text.
Of course in the
pre-Reformation time,
you did have the rise of
humanism and the Renaissance,
which started questioning that
a bit,
and they started going back and
looking at the original Hebrew,
the original Greek,
insisting that you should read
these texts in their original
languages and not just in Latin.
That was before the Reformation.
 
You already had this move
toward history and reading the
text in historical context in
the humanist movement and the
Renaissance.
 
With the Reformation,
though, of course you really
get it in the sixteenth century
with Martin Luther,
John Calvin,
Melanchthon,
different writers saying,
well, we're going to throw out
this Catholic authority on the
text.
We're going to get back to the
text itself.
The only authority for the
radical reformers was scripture.
You know this as,
sola scriptura,
scripture only;
scripture only will be the
guide for authority for
Protestants.
Of course then they start
realizing that different people
can interpret scripture
differently.
They're very familiar with
medieval Christian ways of
interpreting scripture to have
several different meanings and
layers of meanings.
 
And so they say,
well the predominant guide of
scripture isn't going to be just
scripture;
it's going to be one particular
meaning of scripture.
And that's sensus
literalis.
The literal sense of scripture
is what will be now the guide
for the Reformation,
not the Pope,
not the bishops.
 
Even the bishop must submit to
the literal sense of scripture.
Now it's rather debatable what
they meant by "the literal
sense" because some of
these reformers said that the
literal sense of scripture could
even be a prophetic sense,
so they still said that the
literal sense of scripture could
be in a Psalm when the Psalm
says,
"The Lord said to my Lord,
'Sit at my right hand.'"
Well they knew that the text if
you're interested in an ancient
text would be referring to the
Davidic King,
but they also said that Psalm
also could refer to Jesus,
even in its literal sense.
 
The literal sense that they
were talking about in the
Reformation was not necessarily
what we would call the
historical critical sense.
 
It was what they took it to be
the most fundamental plain sense
meaning of the text.
 
So that was the literal sense.
 
Then again they realized the
more they did this that
Protestant churches started
splitting all over the place.
Presbyterians and Calvinists
split off from the Lutherans,
the Anabaptists split off from
the Reformation.
And then you have a rise of so
many Protestant movements that
the idea that scripture alone
could settle debates and give
you a foundation started
becoming questionable.
In the nineteenth century,
beginning somewhat in the
eighteenth century but mainly in
the nineteenth century,
and mainly in Germany,
German speaking lands,
scholars started pushing the
historical reading of the text.
They said, we've got to get
down to what the author meant.
What did the historical Paul
mean?
How did we discover that?
 
That's when you have the rise,
in the nineteenth century,
of the dominance of the
historical critical method with
all these presuppositions.
 
It was elaborated and invented
in the nineteenth century,
and in some places it was
precisely invented in order to
try to make the text of the New
Testament and the Bible a firm
foundation for doctrine and
ethics within Protestantism and
within the wide of varieties of
different kinds of
Protestantism.
 
Then the last part of this,
and this is a big sweep of
history I'm giving you in five
seconds,
what happens in the last part
of the twentieth century,
just in the last,
say, thirty years,
is that people like me come
along and say,
you know it hasn't worked.
 
This attempt to use historical
criticism, to settle disputes
about the meaning of the text,
doesn't work.
Because even the historical
critical method can render
wildly varying interpretations
of these texts.
So you've got some people
reading Romans 1 as a
condemnation of modern
homosexuality and thinking
they're doing a good historical
reading of this text.
You've got other people who
read the same text,
using the same methods of
historical criticism,
and say, are you crazy?
 
He's not talking about
homosexuality,
that's not his concern.
 
It's talking about idolatry or
something else.
Even scholars using the same
method of historical criticism,
trained in the same schools,
getting degrees from the same
places,
come up with different
interpretations of these texts
even using the historical
critical method.
 
And that's why you have right
now a lot of questioning of this
method as not supplying the firm
foundations that Protestants
originally thought it might.
 
You have new methods now being
brought back into seminary
education,
like feminist analysis,
or literary criticism,
or liberation theology,
or African American approaches,
or Latino approaches.
Or queer readings,
gay and lesbian readings and
queer readings,
you have all these different
kinds of ways of approaching the
text being brought back as ways
to if not displace then at least
to supplement historical
criticism that was dominant for
the twentieth century.
Now the question is,
why do all this stuff anyway?
Why have I first been teaching
you the historical critical
method?
 
Well I can answer that,
it's because that's the
dominant way that the Bible is
taught in modern American
universities.
 
It's sort of like,
how do you learn Shakespeare?
How do you learn these kinds of
things?
There are methods,
and it's not necessarily the
historical method in English
departments anymore,
but there are different
dominant methods that academics
use to construct their
disciplines.
The main way still that
biblical studies is constructed
as an academic discipline,
as opposed to a discipline of
faith in a church,
is through at least learning
about the historical critical
method.
So I make that the basic part
of this, when I'm introducing
you to this discipline,
because I'm not just
introducing you to the text;
I'm introducing you to a modern
scholarly discipline,
practices, and assumptions.
But I also believe that we
should study other ways of
studying the Bible also,
at least to be introduced to
them.
 
That's why later this week
you're supposed to go to the Art
Museum.
 
None of us are art critics who
work in this class.
None of us are historians of
art.
I know nothing about art
history.
The teaching fellows know very
little about art history also.
Some of you in this class will
be much better at going through
the Yale Art Gallery and
analyzing the artwork there
because you will have taken art
history classes like I never
did.
 
The purpose of this visit is
not to do a typical art
historical kind of move.
 
It's so that you can contrast
the stuff you've been learning
in this course with especially
early Christian and medieval
representations of the Bible.
 
Why did they portray in
painting and in artwork these
stories the way they portray it?
 
What does it tell us about
their mentality?
What does it tell us about
their world?
To get you to see this is what
interpretations of the Bible
look like without historical
criticism, before the dominance
of historical criticism.
 
It's to show you there are
other quite legitimate ways to
interpret this text.
 
We could have done the sort of
literary interpretation where we
take these texts and we talk
about things like character,
development of plot.
 
We could read the Gospel of
Mark--a lot of people read the
Gospel of Mark as almost like a
modern short story.
It's full of puzzles;
it's full of ways that it leads
the reader astray.
 
Remember how the Gospel of Mark
ends?
You don't even see the
resurrected Jesus.
The women are told to go
announce he's been raised to the
disciples, and they don't even
do it.
They run off,
and that's the end.
That doesn't end like a normal
ancient text would end,
but it does end like kind of
modernist sort of literature
which poses many questions to
the reader often as it does give
answers.
 
We could have read the Gospel
of Mark like we would read a
modern short story by Flannery
O'Connor.
You can do that and there's
nothing wrong with that.
Why is all that important?
 
I think it's important to
realize that because the vast
majority of Christians
throughout human history have
not read the Bible the way
you're learning to read it in
this class.
 
The vast majority of
Christians, even now throughout
the world, don't read the Bible
as you're learning to read it in
this class.
 
In spite of the fact that I'm
teaching you this method,
I still want to drum it into
your heads,
at least this week,
that this is just one way of
doing it and you need to be
aware of the other ways of doing
it because in some ways they are
culturally more important as far
as the impact of the Bible on
western civilization.
What I'm saying is that
historical criticism is
important to learn because it's
part of our environment too.
But I would say that even as an
important way to approach the
Bible it's not a sufficient way
to approach the Bible.
It's certainly not sufficient
when it comes to the importance
of scripture in the Bible for
western civilization and
culture.
 
It would be much better to keep
in mind how Milton read the
Bible for Paradise Lost.
 
How Dante read the Bible,
how Flannery O'Connor uses the
Bible in our literature,
and how artists use the Bible,
that's also very important.
 
It certainly,
historical criticism,
is not sufficient for the
Christian theological reading of
the Bible because the historical
meaning of the text,
I think, as people are
beginning to realize in
churches,
cannot provide you with enough
to use this text theologically
and ethically.
You've got to do something else
with the text besides just
history if you still want to use
it as scripture.
That's why today I'm mixing
these things up and trying to
get you to see things
differently.
Now let's look at what you were
reading for today,
the different medieval
interpretations,
ancient Christian and medieval
interpretations of text.
First you should know that
before the modern period there
were these different meanings of
the text and in fact they would
even talk about them as
different levels.
The two most important were the
ones that I've already talked
about basically as the literal
sense and the other one is the
allegorical sense.
 
You've seen this sort of thing.
 
Eventually textbooks would be
written that say medieval
interpretation of the Bible have
four different levels of
meaning.
 
But the most important,
throughout history,
has been basically a two part
division.
This literal sense,
which sometimes can be called
the body sense,
the bodily sense,
or the physical sense,
and then the spiritual sense or
the allegorical sense,
or the higher meaning,
or the elevated meaning.
 
Over and over again those two
levels of interpretation will be
stressed in pre-modern
interpretations of the Bible.
Then you will often see other
names and other terms attached
to other things.
 
For example,
sometimes you'll come across
the term "anagogical
sense" of the text,
and anagogical is not exactly
the literal but it's also not
exactly the allegorical because
the anagogic--
"anagogic"
means "leading up"
in Greek.
 
The idea was that this is a
reading of the text that will
help you be a better Christian;
it'll help you be a more
ethical person.
 
So an anagogical reading would
lead you to something else and
the varieties of different ways
of reading the text.
Medieval theologians will talk
about this: they'll use the term
literal,
they'll use the term
allegorical, they'll use the
term anagogical,
and they'll mean by that three
different meanings.
Notice they don't necessarily
just mean these are three
different ways to interpret the
text,
although that's the way I've
been talking about them because
that's the way I hear that.
 
They actually believe that
these are three different
meanings that are in the
text itself: the anagogical
meaning,
the allegorical meaning,
the literal meaning.
 
Sometimes you'll hear them
talking about maybe the ethical
meaning,
which sometimes looks a lot
like the anagogical meaning,
and then sometimes you'll even
hear them talk about the
historical meaning.
What's funny here is that when
they use that word
historia for the meaning
of a text--
and they sometimes bring--it's
a Greek word originally,
but they'll bring it into Latin
also--
don't get confused when you see
that,
especially if you're reading
something on medieval
interpretation of the Bible,
because it doesn't mean the
historical meaning of the text
in our understanding.
By historia in this
sense, they usually mean the
narrative reading:
f you were to read this text as
a story,
regardless of whether it ever
happened.
 
So they don't mean historical
in the sense of,
this is what really happened.
 
They mean the word
historia--this is a
narrative sort of shape,
it's reading the text as if
it's telling a story.
 
Sometimes they'll call that the
historical meaning of the text
and add that onto some of these
other ones.
The medieval notion that there
are four senses of the text,
literal is always one,
allegorical is always one,
and what counts as the other
two varies among different
authors.
 
That is definitely there in
medieval theorizing about
scriptural interpretation,
but it shouldn't be exaggerated
because you don't see it quite
that rigidly as always four and
the same four levels of meaning.
 
But you will come across that
if you do any literary study of
the Bible in English literature
and the European context and
that sort of thing.
 
The people I gave you to read
illustrate these things.
The first part about Origen,
if you brought your readings
turn to the part about Origin
like around page 56.
What Origen is doing is he's
giving an example of what he
takes to be the literal meaning
of this text.
The story is from I Samuel 28,
and in case you don't remember
the story,
Saul, who is the king,
is fighting a battle,
and he wants to know whether
he's going to win the battle the
next day,
whether he and Jonathan his son
are going to win,
or they'll lose.
 
He goes and he finds a witch,
and of course he's already
outlawed all the witches in the
country, so he's not supposed to
find one at all.
 
He goes and finds this woman,
she's actually called a belly
myther,
a person who speaks fabulous
stories from the belly because I
guess they would kind of do it
like this and it sounded like it
was coming out of their gut.
They would sort of sound like a
ventriloquist or something,
and they're speaking hidden
messages.
He goes and finds this woman.
 
It's translated often in
English as "the witch of
Endor."
 
That's the popular name for the
story.
And he says call up the spirit
of Samuel the dead prophet,
and he's going to ask the
spirit--of course in--
in these kinds of cultures the
idea is that dead people can see
the future because they're dead,
they live in the realm that
they're not limited by our kinds
of sight.
The idea is that the woman is
supposed to call up the dead
Samuel,
the spirit of Samuel,
so he comes out of the ground--
like all the dead are under the
ground in this kind of
cosmology--
and he asks,
are we going to win the battle?
Samuel is all angry because
he's being called up,
and he curses Saul and all this
kind stuff, so the story doesn't
end too well for Saul.
 
And sure enough the next day
Saul and Jonathan die,
they lose the battle.
 
Origen has a problem because
Christians all know that it's
wrong to use witches,
and here's the King Saul using
a witch.
 
And they also know,
but wait a minute Samuel
obeyed the woman,
she calls him to come out of
the ground and he obeyed her.
 
Why would a great prophet obey
a witch?
Early Christians reading this
text had a lot of problems,
and so sometimes they would
allegorize it,
and they would say,
well it doesn't mean that,
it means this,
and it doesn't say the woman
actually saw Samuel,
she thought she saw Samuel.
Then other people would say,
but a good prophet like Samuel
couldn't have been in hell,
how could he have been in hell?
Great prophets can't be in hell.
 
So they would say,
oh it's just--it's an allegory.
It doesn't really mean he was
in hell;
it meant he was in something
else.
Origen comes along and says,
no you can't allegorize this
text, and it means exactly what
it says.
So he says, you have to read it
literally.
He argues for a while.
 
And this is very funny because
Origen is famous throughout
history for being a great
allegorizing reader of
scripture.
 
In fact, a lot of historians
don't like him because he tends
to read scripture allegorically
in different places.
But in this case,
Origin this great allegorizer
,is insisting on the literal
reading.
But now notice what he means by
literal.
First he says the woman really
did see Samuel.
Samuel really was in hell,
and if you can't accept that
it's your problem.
 
Then he explains it,
and he gives some answers for
it.
 
But then he says,
the literal meaning of the text
is not just the story.
 
But this is what he says is the
literal sense:
it's on page 56 in the chapter
I gave you.
"Even the literal sense of
the story is to teach that
Christians will enjoy an
afterlife existence."
Now I ask you,
is there anything about
Christians in this story?
 
No, we would not call that the
literal historical sense of this
story.
 
It shows that Origen,
when he uses this term literal
meaning of this story,
he's not still referring to
what we call the historical
critical meaning.
For him, the literal meaning of
the story is to teach Christians
about their own after life
existence.
And then he has an elevated or
higher sense of the story,
which he takes to be that
righteous Christians,
unlike even righteous prophets
before the coming of Jesus,
won't have to spend any time in
Hades or hell,
or purgatory.
 
If you're a good Christian when
you die you'll go straight to
heaven,
and that's something that even
the Old Testament prophets
didn't do because they had to go
hell first,
according to Origen,
to wait until Christ came,
so Christ could open up
paradise and heaven for
everybody.
Origen has an elevated
spiritual meaning of this text,
but it's not a particularly
allegorical meaning,
Ut's just that if you are a
righteous Christian,
the story teaches that you will
get to go straight to heaven
without passing through hell
when you die.
Notice how Origen is still
playing with these notions of a
literal reading and a higher
elevated spiritual reading.
The literal reading doesn't
particularly look like what we
would call the literal reading
of the text,
and the higher elevated
spiritual reading doesn't look
all that allegorical,
it looks almost like a moral
lesson to us.
 
That's one example,
though, about how Origen thinks
it's perfectly fine to get at
least two readings out of this
same text.
 
Then you move to Augustine,
Now Augustine's a great
example.
 
He's an example I use because
of a pre-modern practice of not
just reading scripture for the
answers that it gives you about
ethics or doctrine.
 
Remember that section in the
readings where Augustine prays
with scripture,
he prays the Psalms so he says
things like,
Then I read,
"Let your anger deter me
from sin"
[which is a quotation from
Psalm 4:4].
How these words moved me,
my God.
I had already learned to feel
for my past sins an anger with
myself that would hold me back
from sinning again.
This is from Confessions
9.10 and it's on page 57 of my
chapter.
 
Notice what Augustine's doing:
he feels like it's okay for him
to get into the Psalm and put
himself in the role of the
speaker.
 
What God is saying to the
psalmist,
Augustine says he was saying to
me,
personally, Augustine,
and then Augustine answers back
with the words of the Psalm.
 
This is actually a reading of
scripture that's becoming
popular more in certain modern
Christian contexts,
especially monastic communities
and churches.
And it's called sometimes
lectio divina.
This just means divine reading
in Latin.
It refers to a practice that
some modern Christians are
trying to resurrect from a
pre-modern Christian practices
of praying reading scripture,
memorizing scripture,
and than using the words of
scripture as your own prayer to
God so that God talks to you and
you talk to God.
People are getting this stuff
straight from pre-modern
practices.
 
Augustine is also a wonderful
example of the multiplicity of
meanings that are contained in
the text all at the same time.
For example,
on page 58, this is where he
sees the Trinity in Genesis 1,
"In the beginning,"
because of John 1:3-10,
you've read the Gospel of John
the first part of John 1 cites
this "in the
beginning"
but then goes on to say,
"That God created
everything through Jesus,
the logos,"
so Augustine looks at that in
the beginning and says,
oh that's a reference to John,
the Gospel of John,
which means that he's talking
about Jesus here as also being
there.
Then the spirit that moves over
the waters is the Holy Spirit.
Then one of the most
fascinating things is the way he
reads the six days of creation
in Genesis allegorically.
On page 59 and around there,
he says on the first day,
the vault--God created the
heavens and the earth,
right?
 
The word heaven there
translated doesn't mean what we
think as space in the sky.
 
It referred to an actual firm
kind of vault,
like a dome,
a ceiling, and that's why in
older translations it's called
the firmament,
because it is firm.
 
It's not air; it's firm.
 
Augustine says,
the sky, when you look up at
the sky you see that blue thing,
that big blue dome that's above
you.
 
We think of that as seeing
space, but ancient people
didn't.
 
They thought they were actually
seeing like a big canvas spread
over the sky.
 
The reason it's blue is because
water is behind it.
It's holding back the water
that's in the sky,
and the word "heaven"
refers to that thing.
And so Augustine says,
it's like vellum,
it's like the skin,
the leather that you make texts
out of.
 
And so he interprets
allegorically to say scripture.
The making of the firmament in
Genesis refers to God's giving
us scripture.
 
And that's why angels--where do
angels live?
They live on the other side of
scripture.
Why?
 
Because they don't have to see
what's written because they know
everything already.
 
But we humans we live on this
side of scripture,
and we look up and we read the
writings of God,
and so we need scripture to
read things.
He goes through this elaborate
allegorical reading.
Day two, the waters that
preside over the vault,
they represent angelic peoples,
he says the angels.
On day three,
the gathered-together sea--
this is when Genesis says,
God separated the sea from the
dry land and separated the water
from the dry land,
the water he called sea,
the dry land he called earth.
Augustine says,
okay the sea represents the
bitter part of humanity;
the dry land represents those
who thirst after righteousness
and God.
And so God separates out,
on day three,
good humanity from bad
humanity, by Augustine's
allegorical interpretation.
 
All of these just are
illustrations of how Augustine
knew how to read this text
literally, but he shows you how
he also reads it allegorically.
 
He thinks that the text is full
of all these meanings,
and it is perfectly legitimate
to get all of these meanings of
the text.
 
Then one of the most
fascinating is the one I gave
you from Bernard of Clairvaux.
 
This I think is so interesting
because Bernard is preaching on
the Song of Songs,
that erotic part of the Hebrew
Bible,
which is actually--to us
moderns it just looks like a
love poem.
But it was read allegorically
throughout the church,
and even Rabbinic Judaism read
the Song of Songs as being about
God and people Israel.
 
The bridegroom is God;
the bride is the people of
Israel.
 
Christian Fathers read that it
be about Jesus and the church,
so Bernard is doing that,
but now notice this is a sermon
being delivered to monks in a
monastery.
These are men--they're all men
there--and if you realize that's
the social setting of this text
it makes it read very
differently.
 
Like this one big paragraph I
quoted, and I quote it again
now, this is the young woman in
the Song of Songs speaking in
his sermon.
 
I cannot rest until he kisses
me with the kiss of his mouth.
I thank him for the kiss of the
feet.
I thank him,
too, for the kiss of the hand,
but if he has genuine regard
for me, let him kiss me with the
kiss of his mouth.
 
There is no question of
ingratitude on my part;
it's simply that I am in love.
 
It is desire that drives me on,
not reason.
Please do not accuse me of
presumption if I yield to this
impulse of love.
 
My shame indeed rebukes me,
but love is stronger than all.
I ask, I crave,
I implore, let him kiss me with
the kiss of his mouth.
 
Don't you see that by his grace
I have been for many years now
careful to lead a chaste and
sober life?
I concentrate on spiritual
studies, resist vices,
and pray often.
 
I am watchful against
temptations.
I recount all my years in the
bitterness of my soul.
As far as I can judge I have
lived among the brethren without
quarrel.
 
Lived among the brethren?
 
Wait, who are we talking about
now?
Are we still talking about the
young girl?
"I have been submissive to
authority, responding to the
beck and call of my superior in
the monastery."
Is this the girl?
 
"I do not covet goods not
mine.
Rather I put myself and my
goods at the service of others.
With sweat on my brow I ate my
bread, yet in all these
practices there is evidence only
of my fidelity,
nothing of enjoyment.
 
I obey the commandments to the
best of my ability I hope,
but in doing so my soul thirsts
like a parched land.
If therefore he is to find my
holocaust acceptable,
let him kiss me I entreat with
a kiss of his mouth."
Halfway through this remarkable
quotation the girl morphs into
the monk.
 
The last part is a monk
talking, not a virgin girl.
And yet this is a male monk
yearning for this male figure,
and he's doing this in a
monastery.
Isn't this kind of odd?
 
He uses the eroticism of the
Song of Songs,
not to get rid of eroticism--I
don't think he's telling the
monk you're going to have sex
with Jesus,
but he certainly doesn't get
rid of the erotic at all.
He doesn't explain it away or
try to get rid of it like Origen
would have done previously,
or some of the early Christian
writers.
 
In fact, he capitalizes on the
erotic and even turns it into
the homoerotic because he's
asking the monk to identify with
the body of the girl and to
yearn for this male bridegroom.
Bernard reads this text not
only in an allegorical way so
that the girl represents the
monk in a monastery who's trying
to do the office:
he prays every night,
he does all the right things,
and he doesn't feel anything
about it.
 
He feels dry,
and barren, and so Bernard's
using the erotic of the Song of
Songs to enliven the daily
office of the monastery for the
monks.
Then this other quotation,
this is where Bernard says,
oh, everybody whose lived a
monastic life knows that there's
time when you go to the church
and you pray in the altar and
you don't feel anything,
you just feel depressed,
you feel alone.
 
He says,
Men with an urge to frequent
prayer will have experience of
what I say.
Often enough when we approach
the altar to pray [you might not
initially feel all excited about
it]
our hearts are dry and
lukewarm.
But if we persevere there comes
an unexpected infusion of grace,
our breast expands [the breasts
of the monks?],
as it were, our interior is
filled with an overflowing of
love,
and if somebody should press on
them then this milk of sweet
fecundity would gush forth in
streaming richness.
 
He's talking about orgasm,
folks.
He's describing orgasm,
the orgasm of a woman,
the breast filling up,
swelling, and then experiencing
this explosion.
 
Bernard is using orgasmic
language taken from the Song of
Songs to talk to a bunch of
monks in the middle of the night
to get them to continue praying,
and to get them more excited
about giving themselves to
Jesus, the bridegroom.
This is part of the remarkable
reading of the text of the Bible
that you get in a pre-modern
world where they seem to feel
remarkably free to read these
texts as containing a lot more
meanings than a historian like
me would see them containing.
Now I could go on and talk
about the Thomas Aquinas stuff,
but it's just there as
examples.
Aquinas is a wonderful example
of how he quotes one
interpretation of John
Chrysostom and then quotes
another interpretation of
Augustine,
and he doesn't decide.
 
He just says,
okay they're both there,
they're both valid.
 
He doesn't have any desire to
narrow down the meaning of the
text to one meaning.
 
I want you to think about this,
also,
these are legitimate ways to
interpret this text,
and at least they have been for
much of the history of
Christianity.
 
The modern world tended to
reject them, but if you look
anywhere before the modern
period, you'll find them all
over the place.
 
Experience some of this stuff
too when you go then to the Yale
Art Gallery later this week.
 
