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Chapter 7.
How Can We Get Meaning From the Bible?

"Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth, When thought is speech, and speech is truth."

To ask how to get meaning from the Bible is to ask how to get meaning from any book or any literature. In olden days much ink and paper, and in later days much technology and communication, have been dedicated to explaining how the meaning of any text, printed or electronic, gets into the mind and life of the receiver. This has created a huge, sometimes contradictory, accumulation of works on criticism.

A Bible reader doesn't have to know all about the many theories of literary criticism to reach the goals we propose in this book. We certainly do not intend to discuss all of these theories and the many complex aspects of the field of literary criticism. But to be faithful to the title we must introduce some theories that are particularly relevant to those who want to read and understand the meaning of the Bible. These basic concepts will further illuminate a practical literary approach to reading the Bible as a new, old book for the twenty-first century. They should also illustrate how the Bible can speak to our hearts and minds with vivid imagination "When thought is speech, and speech is truth."

Accordingly, in the first part of the chapter we investigate how meaning is construed from any text of literature in general and from the Bible in particular. In the second part we use specific literary theories to show that, in spite of what the modern deconstructionists say, the text (including the text of the Bible) does have meaning. In the third part we summarize what the Bible itself says about its meaning and how readers can derive that meaning. For simplicity's sake we shall generally use the term "text" when referring to words, sentences, and phrases on the printed page.

How Do We Get Meaning from Any Book?

The three basic sources of meaning are: the author, the text, and the reader. However, we must immediately qualify that statement by saying that some critics have done away with the author, or the text, or the reader, or all three. So we must begin by taking a logical look at each of these in order to develop our own conclusions. Let's begin with the author.

Does Meaning Come from the Author?

If the author writes the original book or message, whatever it is, reason suggests that he would know what he intended. But can we ever be sure of the author's intention? No, not really. We can not be certain of finding out exactly what the author intended. If he is a biblical author, he is not here any more. We can not ask him questions. He can not answer our questions and explain what he meant, and he can not answer our secondary questions about his explanations. You have often heard politicians, public speakers, preachers, and others, say something like: "That's what I said, but I did not mean what you thought I meant. What I meant was …" But an author who has been dead for centuries does not get such a second chance to explain what he meant.

It is probably safe to assume, though, that authors intend to make sense, and that generally they do make sense. They not only are explicit in writing what they intend to write in order to express that sense, but we now recognize that they unconsciously may include implicit ideas in their writing, whether they are aware of this or not. So we have not only the explicit sense of the author, but we may also find and consider some implicit sense of the author expressed in the writing.

Additionally, a reader must be alert to differentiate between the implied author, the real author, and the persona. This implied author may or may not be the same as the persona, or voice of the author, and is not to be identified with the real author himself. The persona or voice of the author of Paradise Lost, for example, is a poet who is instructed by his Muse during the night as to how the epic continues. The persona is visited nightly by his "Celestial Patroness," who inspires him to express his verse that flows effortlessly in "Heroic Song." This enables the persona to see, hear, feel, and experience directly what he narrates in his "higher Argument" that exceeds any other "Heroic Arguments."

His Celestial Patroness also gives him a unique wisdom and knowledge for the task so that he can interpret to the fallen reader the meaning of the events being narrated in the pre-Edenic and post-Edenic world. This clearly distinguishes the persona's situation in space and time from that of Milton personally or his readers. In like manner, many other authors have invented a persona who represents the one who tells the story.

The role of the implied author and implied reader is discussed by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction. He does not identify the implied author as the persona and certainly not as the real author. Sometimes the real author will create in his story an implied version of himself, that is "a picture of the official scribe who writes" the story (70-73). The real author, of course, provides clues in the text about the sort of person this implied author is, his values, feelings, etc. When the reader finds the implied author and understands what kind of fellow he is, then the reader can become more involved with the work and appreciate and understand it more clearly.

So, does meaning come from the (real) author? Well, yes and no. On the affirmative side, although some literary critics, deconstructionists and others, would deny it, authors may be nobly motivated and capable of expressing some elements of truth in a literary work that makes sense within the parameters of some conventions of meaning. To deny this basic axiom seems to define a universe where no one could find fulfillment.

However, the author alone is not the dominant source of meaning. As Scott alluded to in his narrative poem cited at the heading of this chapter, the author brings together three central elements, without which life would be meaningless—thought, speech, and truth. And, by the speech of the text, the author attempts to pass on his thoughts in verity to the reader or readers.

Does Meaning Come from the Text?

Most of us have seen, or read, or heard of how the sender of a message encodes the message and transmits it in some form to a receiver where it is decoded and passed on to a human receptor who reads it, and understands it. This action which occurs between the author, the text, and the reader is called the communication process. It can be represented as follows:

Sender Encoder Transmitter Decoder Receiver

Now change the terminology and you will find a representation of how the text of the Bible is transmitted to us as readers:

Authors Literary
Conventions Text Literary
Conventions Contemporary
& Later Readers

The text is central in its position. It stands between the author(s) and the reader(s). But that does not mean it is dominant. Words on pages do not make meaning. Readers, not words, make meaning. The text is merely an element of language, or of linguistics. The text of a great book comprises a great work of literature. And literature is a form of art. Art is highly symbolic. Words, too, are highly symbolic—symbolic of names of things, or of actions, or qualities, or relationships we give them in the development of language.

Because words are symbolic they are not sacrosanct. A natural object, say a tree, does not have to be represented by the same word in all languages. It is one word, one sound, in one language, and another word, and another sound, in another language. Similarly, the word for "God" is one word in Hebrew, another in New Testament Koine Greek, and another in modern English.

With this in mind, let's return to the diagram of the biblical communication process and consider the authors. The ancient Hebrew writers usually expressed their religious ideas in words from the Hebrew language (occasionally in Aramaic). They spoke and wrote according to the conventions, commonly-understood rules, customs, usages, stylistic and linguistic devices, and thought patterns of their day. Thus, the encoding of the diagram includes not only their writing in the Hebrew language, but also their encoding of all of the literary and cultural conventions of the day.

The first readers of the text had a relatively easy time understanding the meaning. But since that time the text has been preserved, copied, revised, edited, and copied many times again. Then it was rediscovered and studied by relatively modern biblical scholars. They had the task of decoding the text, which included not only translation into other languages, but also correctly understanding the cultural elements, the ancient thought patterns, and world-views of the authors and the religious and nationalistic communities in which the writers lived and wrote.

Now let's return to the above diagram and look at the final part. The term "later readers" refers to us. Only after all that has happened to the biblical text do we get to read it in our own language and try to c onstrue the meaning for ourselves.

Yes, the text is very important, but as Wolfgang Iser says, "The work is more than the text" (The Implied Reader 274-75). However, as noted in earlier chapters, for the past 150 years some evangelicals and fundamentalists have proclaimed the opposite. Some say that the Bible is the text and that the text is transparently clear. For example, in 1859 James S. Lamar, a spokesman for the early movement out of which grew the Disciples of Christ and the Christian Churches, wrote that "the Scriptures … speak to us in a voice as certain and unmistakable as the language of nature heard in the experiments and observations of science." In the same vein Tolbert Fanning, a leader in the same (Restorationist) movement, expressed the view that "the Scriptures fairly translated need no explanation."

After the Civil War, Charles Hodge, noted conservative theologian of his generation, wrote in his three volume Systematic Theology that "the Bible … is [God's] storehouse of facts" and that it is "the duty of the Christian theologian to ascertain, collect, and combine all the facts which God has revealed" (1:10-11). While some might classify this statement as a compliment to the Bible, it is in fact a reductionist statement, for the Bible is much more than a "store-house of facts." It is not even primarily "a store-house of facts." This view is typical of those who consider the text of the Bible to be the predominant, independent, and easily-ascertainable source of meaning. The critical literary term for this position is known as "a stable determinacy of meaning," that is, there is a fixed and determined meaning in the text, as opposed to changeable or multiple meanings.

Most mainline Christians would agree that the Bible is more than the text, and Christianity is more than the Bible. John Barton writes, "I have argued [that] Christianity cannot survive if it is simply reduced to the Bible" (People of the Book 59). It must be remembered that Christianity, or Christian believers, and the Christian faith, existed before there was a New Testament. In a very true sense the Bible grew out of the Church. The Church did not grow out of the Bible.

Many literary critics have demonstrated that a single specific interpretation of a literary work can never be "proven" as the sole correct and logical interpretation. But many respectable authorities, such as Morris Weitz, have shown that certain interpretations can be confirmed by better reasons than other explanations. M. H. Abrams sums up the position of Weitz in the following words: "An interpretation can be confirmed only by showing it to be 'adequate,' to the extent that it is clear, self-consistent, and serves to account for the data of a text without obvious omissions or distortions." This would be a good standard of hermeneutics for biblical interpreters to follow. Let's rephrase it as a series of questions they should ask about their interpretation:

  1. Is my proposed interpretation clear?
  2. Is it self-consistent?
  3. Does it account for all the data in the text without obvious omissions or distortions?

To summarize the answer to the question, "Does meaning come from the text?"; yes, some meaning does. But for the reasons discussed the text cannot be the only source, and not the dominant source, of meaning. No record exists of any textual literary message whose meaning every reader agreed upon down to the last dot, comma, or semicolon. The text is but one link in the chain that connects to meaning. It is inert until it finds a reader.

Does Meaning Come from the Reader (the Audience)?

The logic of Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish, and others who endorse what is known as reader-centered literary criticism (introduced in the previous chapter as reader-oriented analysis) seems very convincing. Again, the caveat has to be made to except deconstructionists and those postmodern critics who are convinced that there is no real meaning in the text, or in the author, or in the reader or anywhere else. But these do not include most general Bible readers to whom this book is primarily addressed. For most of them the text has meaning only when it is realized, or comprehended by an informed reader who is familiar with the literary and scriptural codes and conventions that are utilized in the text. The text unread is dead and meaningless in itself, and comes alive only when it is heard or read.

A special variety of reader-centered criticism is called hermeneutic criticism. This really might be called audience-centered criticism, because it holds that meaning is derived, not primarily from the author or the text, but from the audience to whom the work is addressed. Sometimes this audience is a single reader, and sometimes it is a larger group of persons. The word "hermeneutics" comes from the Greek word meaning "to interpret, translate, or explain."

Hermaneutics, as McKnight writes, "emphasizes that a text has meaning only in relation to its interpreter" (The Bible and the Reader 5). Another noted literary authority, Edgar Lohner, who contributed an excellent essay to a Yale publication on literary theory and interpretation a few years ago, agrees with our thesis that a great literary work "exists essentially within the triad of poet, work, and reader." But he clearly asserts that the literary work itself "forever remains … dependent upon its comprehension by a reader."

This brings us to a central element of the literary approach to the Bible as literature, which is the crux of this book: Reasonably informed readers can make good sense of the Bible when they read and study it as we suggest. We believe that this axiom is well-supported by sound literary theory and criticism. The author, the text, and the reader form three sides of a triangle. At any time one side may be longer or shorter than the others, but the meaning itself depends upon all three sides.

The Traditional Four Elements of Meaning

M. H. Abrams in his great critical work The Mirror and the Lamp expresses the view that there are four elements in a literary work of art:

Abrams writes that these four elements form a total system of criticism in which elements vary and differ in meaning and function "according to the critical theory in which it occurs, the method of reasoning which the theorist characteristically uses, and the explicit or implicit world-view of which these theories are an integral part (7). Many critics merge Abrams's third element, the universe imitated in the work, partly under the author, and partly under the text, thus counting three, instead of four, traditional elements of total meaning in a literary work.

He teaches that no one of the four elements is or should be dominant in determining meaning in literary criticism. All of the four elements (text, author, imitated universe, and audience) move in dynamic combinations under different circumstances. We might conceive of a similar situation as in hurricane tracking, where one meteorological instrument measures wind velocity, another direction, another barometric pressure, another locates the eye, another the extent of the outer bands of the surrounding storm, while others plot the projected movement of the total storm system. No one element alone is dominant or independent, because they must all be considered and studied in concurrent combinations.

Abrams, in Doing Things with Texts, sketches his understanding of the main features of the traditional features of the writing and reading process in literature.

Literature … is a transaction between a human author and his human reader. By his command of linguistic and literary possibilities, the author actualizes and records in words what he undertakes to signify of human beings, and actions and about matters of human concern, addressing himself to those who are competent to understand what he has written. The reader sets himself to make out what the author has designed and signified, through putting into play a linguistic and literary expertise that he shares with the author. By approximating what the author undertook to signify the reader understands what the language of the work means (269-70).

In our modern times many critics have tried to erase the importance and place of an intelligent and purposeful author. They have also been quite skeptical about our ability to arrive at a correct interpretation or understanding of the text. Abrams laments and strongly disagrees with both propositions (270, 272). He is convinced that language can be "determinately meaningful" (274-76). He gives a forceful illustration of his theory of the close relationship between the author and the reader in the following:

I persist in the assurance that a competent reader of Milton, for example, develops an expertise in reading his sentences in … accordance both with Milton's linguistic usage and with the strategy of reading that Milton Himself deployed, and assumed that his readers would deploy. This expertise is not an arbitrary strategy … for it has a sufficient warrant in evidence that we tacitly accumulate in a lifetime of speaking, writing, and reading English, of reading English literature, of reading Milton's contemporaries, and of reading Milton himself. Those who share this assurance set themselves to read Milton's text … in order to understand what it is that Milton meant, and meant us to understand (287).

It is easy to see how relevant these main features of Abrams's traditional theory of literary criticism are to reading and understanding another literary work—the Bible.

Validity in Interpretation

E. D. Hirsch is the author of two very significant books of literary interpretation: Validity in Interpretation (1967) and The Aims of Interpretation (1976). He reacts strongly to the claims of modern criticism that view the author and the text as relatively unimportant, and the reader as most important, in locating the source of meaning in a literary work. He would separate meaning from the reader and center it in a determinant authorial intention, thus defending what he calls "the stable determinacy of meaning" (The Aims of Interpretation 1). By "validity" in interpretation Hirsch does not mean "certainty," but that by examining authorial intention or will, it can be shown that a given interpretation is more likely to be correct than other interpretations. Hirsch's definition of meaning is "what the author meant by his use of a particular sign sequence" (Validity in Interpretation 8). By this Hirsch does not suggest that there are not also unconscious meanings and implicit meanings as well as explicit authorial meanings (51, 61).

In The Aims of Interpretation (1976) Hirsch admits that his earlier definition of meaning as published in the 1967 book Validity in Interpretation was too narrow (79). But he still contends that "meaning is the determinant representation of a text for an interpreter" (79). Elsewhere he further modifies his position by writing merely that "it is preferable to agree that the meaning of a text is the author's meaning" (24, 25). Again, Hirsch shifts farther toward the reader-oriented view, which he so strongly condemns in other places, when he admits that "the nature of a text is to mean whatever we construe it to mean… We, not our texts, are the makers of the meanings we understand, a text being only an occasion of meaning" (75-76).

Why such concern about the author's intention, text, and reader's interpretation? Because it strikes at the core of the debate between those who advocate verbal inspiration and those who support dynamic inspiration. Whether one begins with an assumption regarding the autonomy of the author's intention—or the authority of the verbal text—makes a great difference in the interpretation of any given passage in the Bible. Those who believe in verbal inspiration are inclined to give a strong weight of evidence to what they consider as the intention of the author and the authority of the text. They are much more likely to insist that there is one single determinant meaning in the text, and they are very disturbed with the possibility that different people might arrive at many different meanings from the same text.

More moderate believers, however, are inclined to recognize that the reader, any reader, comes to the text with certain presuppositions, values, and experiences that influence the reader's understanding or interpretation of the text. Such believers in a more dynamic view of inspiration—having much less concern with the inerrancy assumption—would more easily accept the likelihood that different readers will come to a variety of interpretations.

Interaction Between Biblical Text and Reader

The most helpful and pragmatic part of Wolfgang Iser's contribution to our analysis of the Bible reading process is his explanation of the experience whereby individual readers appropriate the literary work, or realize it, to use the term proposed by Roman Ingarden. Iser's essay in The Reader in the Text has significantly illuminated what takes place in the interaction between text and reader. He concentrates on both the author's text and techniques and on the reader's psychology and realization of the meaning. Iser states that "the reader … can never learn from the text how accurate or inaccurate are his views of it" (109). While denying the supreme autonomy of the text, Iser continues: "If communication between text and reader is to be successful, clearly the reader's activity must also be controlled in some way by the text" (110). This limited form of control is expressed through "the guiding devices operative in the reading process" and in the "interaction between the explicit and the implicit" (110-11).

Every narrative text, including those in the Bible, contains different perspectives. Iser identifies these perspectives as follows: those of the narrator, the characters, the plot, and the fictitious reader. The meaning of the narrative "is brought about by the constant intertwining of these perspectives through the reader in the reading process" (113). Through the interconnection between the text and the reader "the meaning of the text comes alive in the reader's imagination" (119). Susan Suleiman sums this up in the following words: "The act of reading is defined as essentially a sense-making activity, consisting of the complementary activities of selection and organization" of materials and expectations "in the course of the reading process" (The Reader in the Text, 22-23).

The Interpretative Community

One objection to the reader-oriented approach to meaning is, as we have noted, the reluctance to accept so many different interpretations that might occur if every reader were free to develop his or her own meaning. Professor Stanley Fish addresses these anxieties in two ways: (1) the concept of "the informed reader," and (2) the idea of "the interpretative community."

He explains in his perceptive essay "Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics" that the reader of any literature must not be content to meet minimum standards of mere literacy. It is necessary to be an informed reader, defined by Fish as:

someone who (1) is a competent speaker of the language out of which the text is built up, and (2) is in full possession of "semantic knowledge that a mature … listener brings to this task of comprehension," and … (3) has literary competence … a real reader who does everything within his power to make himself informed (Poetica 4, 1971: 145).

Such an informed reader's arbitrary interpretation is restrained by certain literary strategies that are usually shared by particular interpretative communities. Fish asserts that informed readers generally will agree with the strategies of their interpretative communities. This concept is relevant to religious communities that share the same hermeneutical strategies, as we noted earlier.

Many would agree in principle with what Professor Fish proposes here, but A. H. Abrams speaks for other literary critics as he counters with: "It's a question, however, of how extensive that [interpretative] community is and whether it included the writer, as well as the reader, of a text" (Doing Things with Texts 353).

Abrams has raised a good point. The interpretative community itself needs to understand the motivations, purposes, strategies, conventions, and philosophy of the author, if it hopes to arrive at a valid interpretation or meaning. If a modern interpretive community, religious or secular, is committed to a totally different world view from that of the author of the work and the universe imitated in the work, how can it expect to arrive at some sensible meaning? But, on the other hand, if the later or modern interpretive community is committed to the same sort of faith position, world-view, and philosophical stance, or if it at least demonstrates some understanding of the values of the author and of his interpretative community, that is another matter.

An intelligent, twenty-first century Bible reader seeking a working knowledge of criticism can certainly profit from Fish's proposals as modified by Abrams. Such a reader's motivation should aim at the fulfillment of Fish's first precept—to be an informed reader. The real key to success, though, lies in alignment with an interpretative community that accepts modern literary criticism of the types discussed in this chapter.

Narrative Criticism

A certain kind of literary criticism, in a sense unknown among secular literary critics and scholars, has developed in recent years specifically within the field of biblical studies, and more particularly in narrative biblical studies. As early as 1969 William A. Beardslee, professor of religion at Emory University in Atlanta, demonstrated the need for a more literary approach to the Gospels in his book Literary Criticism of the New Testament. He felt that this special need was not adequately covered by the approaches of that time to the criticism of secular literature. Other Christian literary scholars quickly followed Beardslee and built on his ideas.

Most of these scholars addressed, in some way, the questions, "Who is the Reader?" and "What is the Reader's Task?" These narrative critics, interested especially in criticism of the Gospels and Acts, located in the text the following three components: (1) The Implied Author, (2) the Narrative itself, and (3) The Implied Reader. They made a distinction between the real author and the implied author, and also between the real reader (who might be a modern reader) and the implied reader in the text.

For example, Mark Allan Powell, in What is Narrative Criticism? points out that "this concept of the implied reader, the reader in the text, moves narrative criticism away from being a purely reader-centered (pragmatic) type of criticism and makes it a more text-centered (objective) approach." Powell states that "the goal of narrative criticism is to read the text as the implied reader … To read in this way, it is necessary to know everything that the text assumes the reader knows, and to 'forget' everything that the text does not assume the reader knows." (20).

This theory of narrative criticism is interesting and particularly relevant to biblical narratives, but it has been met with objections from other reader-response critics. Wolfgang Iser and some other critics use the term "implied reader", but they define the term differently. Iser states, like the narrative criticism scholars, that "the reader's role is not identical to the fictitious [implied] reader portrayed in the text" (The Act of Reading, 36). It is unlikely that Iser would agree that "the goal of criticism is to read the text as the implied reader." He adds that his "concept of the implied reader … is in no way an abstraction derived from a real reader" (36).

Susan Suleiman's point that the real reader creates the notion of the implied reader can not be ignored: "the implied author and the implied reader are interpretive constructs, and, as such participate in the circularity of all interpretation. I construct the images of the implied author and implied reader gradually as I read a work, and then use the images I have constructed to validate my reading… Where specific readings are concerned, one can never escape the dilemmas and paradoxes of interpretation" (The Reader in the Text 11). Thus, the implied reader can never be more dominant than the actual reader in the interpretative process. This position tends to reemphasize the role of the actual reader in the process of deriving meaning from the book.

Each source cited in this section produces certain valuable input for intelligent readers seeking meaning from the Bible. The writers of this book subscribe completely to no single theory presented here. We advocate an eclectic approach of selecting and using some of the better principles of each of the various literary theories to enrich the reading and study of the Bible as literature. Such readers must be prepared to extract meaning from a magnificent book written by both known and pseudonymous authors—a book that has developed over a tremendous span of cultures and history. Serious readers will have a better chance to realize full meaning of this new, old book by including certain elements from a wide spectrum of literary theories as their critical tools.

What the Bible Says about Its Own Meaning

The Bible (NIV translation) clearly implies that its text contains meaning, allows for various interpretations, and guards against misinterpretations. The laws of the Lord have a meaning (Deuteronomy 6:20, "What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?"). The Bible is to be read and clarified with meaning that people can understand (Nehemiah 8:8, "They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was being read"). The parables of Jesus had specific meanings. Jesus assumed that there was meaning in the Old Testament scriptures, and that the apostles should know these meanings.

The Apostle Paul and the other early Christian leaders assumed that scripture or religious sayings had meanings, and that they could teach these texts and meanings, and that Christian laity could and should learn them. The Apostles paid attention to the meaning of language syntax and grammar, to the singular and plural of nouns. Religious ceremonies, ideas, proverbs, signs, and monuments in the Bible have definite meanings. Sometimes ordinary words have special spiritual meaning.

Sometimes these meanings were not understood. The Apostles did not always understand the meaning of what Jesus said, but this does not mean there was no meaning. It simply indicates their shortcoming in spiritual understanding. Something kept them from understanding, perhaps their prejudice, or pre-conceived notions, or materialistic political philosophy. Often they confessed, "We don't understand what he is saying." Sometimes the meaning is left to misinterpretation, and sometimes it is clarified and explained. But always there is the impression or implication that there is a meaning, even when it is not offered. Apparently, it was not considered necessary for the apostles or the people of God to have a clear revelation of the meaning of everything in the Bible.

These instances from the Bible provide a reasonable conclusion that the Bible itself, as demonstrated from its internal textual evidence, assumes that meaning can be derived from the text and language as we have it. A crucial idea in the Bible is that of Wisdom. We remember that a large part of the Old Testament is made up of Wisdom Literature. The New Testament, moreover, speaks highly of the value of wisdom and knowledge of the right kind.

All this evidently includes knowledge of how meaning is construed from the Bible, from all of its components. These components include the author's contribution, the text of the Bible, and the interpretation by a wise and knowledgeable reader who views the message from a sympathetic standpoint. The said "sympathetic standpoint" incorporates an understanding of the original religious community from whence the text came and also the present religious community (synagogue or church) which is in the line of a historic heritage that continues the same basic spiritual traditions and values of the author's and writer's community.

These safeguards should be adequate to avoid capricious, ridiculous, or irresponsible interpretations. Yet they allow the possibility of more than one interpretation. Additionally, they require the Bible reader to become seriously involved or engaged with the text in the reading, study, analysis,interpreting, and application process. Many Bible passages suggest that this is the normal and expected role of committed scripture readers.

When the Apostle Paul went to two cities of ancient Greece he received strikingly different receptions (Acts 17:1-13). At Thessalonica he presented reasoned arguments from the texts of scripture which he expounded and applied to show that Jesus was the Messiah who had to suffer and die and rise from the dead. The reaction of most of the Thessalonians was, not to refute his arguments, but to stir up a riot, recruit some ruffians from the dregs of society, gather a mob, put the city in an uproar and run Paul and Silas out of town (REB).

From there they went to Beroea (about fifty miles westward) where the people were "more fair-minded than those at Thessalonica: they received the message with great eagerness, studying the scriptures every day to see whether it was true" (Acts 17:11, REB). The Koine Greek word for "studying" in the phrase "studying the scriptures" is "anakrino," meaning "to question, examine, judge, evaluate." This is the same idea we have been using repeatedly in this book for "to analyze, evaluate, examine" the Bible as we do in analyzing, evaluating, criticizing, examining all literature in order to better understand its meaning for us.

This kind of Bible reading and analysis can have real meaning and be very helpful for many enlightened twenty-first-century readers. This remarkable book speaks relevantly today, whenever it is properly read, interpreted, and applied, just as it spoke to the first audiences of the original writers.

Many laity groups study the Bible as if there were no meaning in it beyond what it speaks to them individually, or how it makes them feel "in their heart." Others split their reactions to the Bible into categories of feeling (heart) and thinking (intellect). Still others rewrite the Bible passages into their own words, trying to use none of the words of the text, as if their own ideas are more important than the Bible text. They seem to read the Bible as though the text has no inherent meaning other than what they (the readers) feel (emotionally) that it means to them individually.

In this case, it would make no difference who wrote the biblical passages, or to whom, or under what circumstances, or what the occasion or purpose was, or what genre of literature it might be, or what literary qualities it may have, etc. Howard Clark Kee, speaking to a symposium convened by the American Bible Society in 1991, says "Whether individual learners will assume that there is or is not a single correct or true meaning will depend largely upon what kind of book they believe the Bible to be" (The Bible in the Twenty-first Century 139). Those readers who view the Bible as we have presented it in this book will understand that these questions of textual and literary analysis can not and must not be ignored.

Conclusion

The eclectic literary approach to the Bible that is proposed in this book offers the best way to understand the message of the Bible. It can provide meaning because:

Notes

  1. Horace Sams, Jr., Temptation in Imaginative Literature of Milton and Bunyan: Two Faces of the Puritan Persona, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, (Tampa, FL: University of South Florida, 1985), p. 103.
  2. See Roman Jakobson, "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics," in T. Sebeok, ed, Style in Language (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 353-59. We do not use the same terminology as Jakobson uses.
  3. C. Leonard Allen, Richard T. Hughes, Illusions of Innocence, pp. 156, 157,161.
  4. M. H. Abrams, Doing Things with Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory (New York: Norton, 1989), pp. 33-34. Morris Weitz, "The Philosophy of Criticism," Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Aesthetics (Venice, Sept. 3-5, 1956), p. 207; Hamlet and the Philosophy of Literary Criticism (Chicago, 1964), chap. 15.
  5. Edgar Lohner, "The Intrinsic Method: Some Reconsiderations," in The Disciplines of Criticism: Essays in Literary Theory, Interpretation, and History, ed. Peter Demetz, Thomas Greene, and Lowry Nelson, Jr. (New Haven, Conn: Yale UP, 1968), p. 170.
  6. Susan R. Suleiman, "Introduction: Varieties of Audience-Oriented Criticism," in Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, ed., The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1980), p. 22.
  7. Wolfgang Iser, "Interaction Between Text and Reader," Suleiman and Crosman, ed., Reader in the Text, pp. 106-119.