Studying Scripture:  Texts and Interpretation

The study of the Bible is, as it were, the soul of theology, as the Second Vatican Council says, borrowing a phrase from Pope Leo XIII (Dei Verbum, 24). This study is never finished; each age must in its own way newly seek to understand the sacred books.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, subsequently Pope Benedict XVI, in introduction to “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church” (Pontifical Biblical Commission)

Catholics believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. But how exactly did it get to us as we have it today? What we read or hear in church in modern English wasn’t dictated by God!

The Bible has two obvious characteristics – it’s old, and it’s not like anything else we normally read! However it does have a lot in common with other old documents, at least in terms of how we begin to answer some of the questions about how it got to us.

As far as the content is concerned, once we start to read the Bible seriously and with attention it’s hard to avoid noticing a range of issues: the Bible consists of very many different styles and speaks of many times very different from our own, different accounts (sometimes contradictory) are given for the same events, different instructions are given with regard to a range of topics, and some clearly contradict everything that we believe about ‘good’ behavior (child sacrifice being an obvious example). And anyway, what does it mean to say it is “the Word of God”? 

Many people chose to ignore these sorts of issues and just take what they can from scripture and frankly ignore the rest. For those for whom this approach is unsatisfactory there is a vast history and current analysis of the Bible – which is even more varied than its subject matter. Dipping into this ocean can be very satisfying but also challenging, with severe risks of getting lost and disoriented. The traditional reticence of the Church in promoting unconstrained exploration of the texts of the Bible is perhaps not surprising in these circumstances.

If we do chose to ask questions about the origins and meaning of the Bible as historical texts, and in that sense treat it like any other collection of ancient texts, we have to start by distinguishing between the text itself and the interpretation of the text. 

For any old writing the first question to address from a historic perspective is “what actually is the text?” – what are the source documents, and given there is not a single source how do we piece together the various sources to get as close as possible to what we think the original might have been.^[1] A related question is about language and translation. Given the sources are in languages that are not used today, how do we know what they actually say? Sometimes this is literally a matter of figuring out what a particular word (set of symbols) is. Given that ancient texts typically omit punctuation and even vowels, this is not easy! When a word is recognized can we be sure what was meant or intended by it?^[2]

These questions are challenging even when dealing with the “simple” issue of translating between modern languages, where you may often see notes saying something like “there is no direct equivalent for xyz in our language”. In cases where the only source documents we have may be from hundreds of years after the original and have gone though multiple copies and perhaps translations before we even start our analysis, those of us who are not linguists can only stand in awe of those who do this incredibly complex and detailed work.

However getting to an agreed text is only the first part of the challenge. Once we have a set of words we still have to agree what those words mean. Here again we should take note that even in simple cases of words in a modern language used by native speakers there can be major differences of interpretation. If this were not the case then constitutional lawyers would be out of a job! And that is with texts (laws) designed to be as unambiguous as possible. If we look at texts such as poetry the challenge of interpretation can be overwhelming.

At this point we may feel so daunted that we wonder if there is any sound basis for reading and using the Bible at all. The challenges outlined are very real, but we should also recognize that even poetry can be translated with great value for readers in many languages. Ancient texts may exist in inconsistent fragments but scholars can frequently reach consensus on a view of a complete original. Perhaps most important, God does intend to speak to His people and will do so despite the challenges of human frailty and inconsistency.

So we enter this topic with an appropriate spirit of humility and recognition that claiming that “my understanding” should outweigh all others is foolish.

The Content of the Bible

The Bible is clearly a collection of texts. So if we want to understand how it came to be as it is, we need to start by asking how the collection came about. This itself is an important question because agreement as to whether some text was to be included or not often took much time and argument. Although today there is substantial agreement between Christian traditions as to what is included (and between Christians and Jews with respect to the Hebrew Scriptures) there are still a few differences.

The early Church had a set of scriptures – they were the Jewish scriptures that had, by time of Jesus, been fairly well systematized. By the Second Century before Christ a major project to translate the original Hebrew versions of the Jewish scriptures into Greek had been completed and the resultant text, often known as the Septuagint, was widely available and is quoted by Paul and other early Christian writers. We will return later to the question of how this set of Jewish writings evolved, but for now we will continue forward because at this time “the scriptures” clearly did not include the Gospels and the rest of what we call the New Testament – because they hadn’t been written. 

The oldest manuscripts that we have which contain sections of the New Testament date from around the 4^th Century. We have no way to know exactly when the originals were written, or even in most cases by whom. Paul’s letters are the obvious exception, although even here there have been disagreements about whether some of the letters originally attributed to Paul were in fact by him. The Letter to the Hebrews which was attributed in the early church to Paul, was debated from the 3^rd Century and is now almost universally agreed not to have been written by Paul.

It is clear from the manuscripts we have that a wide range of material circulated in the early Church, some we now recognize as an authentic voice and others as so strange to us that we find it unbelievable that they could have been taken seriously^[3]. The process of agreeing what was authentic (“canonical” to use the technical term) occurred over  about the first 300 years of the church. The agreement on the specific books we call the Gospels was reached by 160.^[4] The compilation of rest of the New Testament, as we would recognize it, was happening by 200 and by the end of the 4^th Century these lists were confirmed by various church Councils. 

It is worth noting that one very significant debate occurred during this period – was the Hebrew Bible to be considered part of the scripture of the Christian church? From the perspective of the earliest church of the First Century that might seem an odd question, but it also shows how quickly the church had diverged from its initial Jewish roots. One of the church leaders in the second Century, Marcion, first started defining a canon (list) of Christian books. This was very limited – a single Gospel (a variant of what we recognize as the Gospel of Luke) and 10 of Paul’s letters. More significantly it explicitly excluded the Hebrew Scriptures. Although churches following Marcion’s teachings continued for some centuries, his views were not widely accepted. But they did ensure, by contradiction, that from the earliest formal definitions the Christian Scriptures included both writings related to Jesus and the understanding of his life and ministry, and the much larger collection of Jewish scriptures which predated Jesus.

The content of the Old Testament

As we noted earlier the Christian church adopted the Jewish scriptures as it found them. This however doesn’t mean we can’t ask the question as to how those scriptures evolved. They are much earlier than the Christian writings so we should not expect to arrive at definitive answers. However an understanding of the original dating and context of the Hebrew Scriptures may help when we come to our second task of interpretation – what are we to make of the ancient writings in our modern world?

We already noted that the Hebrew Scriptures were compiled into a Greek version about 200-300 years before of the time of Christ. The Hebrew sources for this translation probably date from between the 6^th and 3^rd Centuries before Christ. However many refer to traditions that are much older. Jewish scholars continued to work on their scriptures and came to favor Hebrew versions. St Jerome produced the first Latin translation^[5] largely from Hebrew sources rather than Greek translations.

We will consider Bible history, or the relationship of the Bible to history known from other sources, in Chapter 12. For now we will focus on the texts. Even this is a huge topic given the scope and range of the Hebrew Scriptures. We will distinguish the major parts of the Hebrew Scriptures and then further focus in on one part, regarded in both Christian and Jewish tradition as the heart of these writings – the first five books: the Pentateuch, or Torah.

The Torah, as it is known to Jews, is the “Law” as referred to by Jesus and early writers when they speak of “the Law and the Prophets”.^[6] So this is the first categorization. Beyond this there are the Historical books and the Wisdom books. There are a few additional books which may be referred to as the apocrypha, which may or may not be included in various Biblical compilations in different traditions.

Most of these books, although attributed in our Bible to single authors, are now considered to be compilations from multiple authors, which may have evolved over a considerable period of time. In some cases the historical context is clear from internal references, and we can identify the periods in which the original material was created; in other cases the style and language used is sufficiently varied that it is only reasonable to assume a mix of authorship. A good example is the Book of Isaiah. It is widely accepted that there was an individual prophet named Isaiah in Judea in about 8^th Century BC. Some of the material at the beginning of the book with his name dates from that time. Some towards the end clearly dates from a much later time since it talks about events after the Babylonian exile. It was generally agreed until the late 20^th century that there were thee main authors for this book, although now the consensus has moved more towards two major sections (which is indicative of how difficult it is to determine these issues). We have to realize that the idea of adding to a set of writings (or oral tradition) was considered perfectly normal and acceptable, even into Christian times. Ideas of copyright, sole authorship, and attribution of sources were far in the future.

While the Torah is traditionally ascribed to Moses, modern scholars (Christian and Jewish) agree that its origins are much more complex. By the 20^th Century there was a fairly widespread consensus that its sources could be traced to at least four distinct elements and that later consolidating and editing and occurred in the period after the exile in Babylon (the 6^th Century before Christ). These elements are described by five letters:

• the J, or Jahwist, source; (The name Yahweh begins with a J in German). 
• the E, or Elohist, source; 
• the D, or Deuteronomist, source; 
• the P, or Priestly, source. 

The editor who combined the sources into the final Pentateuch is known as R, for Redactor.

Figuring out which parts belongs to which source and how they might have been combined over time was always speculative, and although it is still accepted that there are a range of sources which fed the Pentateuch, there is now less consensus as to exactly how these are to be differentiated and how they merged. This provides a useful reminder that Biblical scholarship, like any other research, can never be regarded as completed or definitive.

Reading Scripture

Most of us are not Bible scholars or students of ancient texts. We read the Bible because our Christian tradition regards it as the central authority for understanding the God we believe in. As we read it carefully it becomes obvious it is a complex and multi-faceted book, perhaps better thought of as a collection of books. There is poetry and history, intimate detail and grand stories, laws, proverbs, and songs. There is also inconsistency and confusion.

Given that the Bible contains God’s communication with His people over a long period we should not be surprised at this. The question is what to do about it. The easy answer is to take the bits we understand and like and ignore the rest. The risk in this is that we don’t allow the Word of God to challenge us, and it seems pretty clear that, from Adam to Abraham to Jesus, God expects to challenge us. His prophets were clearly challenged, to the extent that some tried to run away (literally).

Perhaps the first thing to recognize is that we shouldn’t be afraid to look at the Bible as a set of writings created by humans at particular times and places and subject to the same principles of interpretation as other writings. We shouldn’t think that there are certain questions that are somehow off limits because it is the Bible. This point was made very clearly by one Cardinal Ratzinger, subsequently Pope Benedict, when he wrote the introduction to a major work by the Pontifical Biblical Commission called “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church”. He starts by noting the central role of scripture, but the continuous need to understand it in the current time: 

He then references the specific methods that specialists use when trying to interpret historical texts (of any type or period):

This sort of technical analysis can help to address questions such as

1. The relationship between the two creation narratives we find in Genesis
2. Very different accounts of settlement of Canaan after the Exodus, in Joshua and Judges
3. Different genealogies and inconsistent timescales
4. Similarities and differences between the four Gospels
5. Differences between Letters of Paul and Acts of the Apostles
6. Attribution of Epistles to Paul and others

This sort of analysis may be useful in clearing some confusion and helping us to appreciate more of the intent of the original authors and thus listen to God’s word with less “background noise”. We can also be sensitive to the differences in the way language is used, in poetry, metaphor, description, exhortation, and so on. But all this still doesn’t get us much closer to appreciating the Bible as the ‘Word of God’. If we spend all our energy ‘clearing the weeds’ we never get to benefit from the garden.

The key to this final level of interpretation – actually benefiting from the Bible as followers of Christ – is the recognition that we need to see the Bible not as a set of words but as a communication. 

A communication passes between two people (if we can put God on our level just for a moment). To understand a communication we need some context about the person who is communicating, what their relationship is to me, and what they might be trying to communicate about. And if we’re starting with none of that then we need to start with the most obvious and simplest, and get to know the person first, before moving on to more complex or difficult topics. And if the person is God then we know there will be stuff we will never (fully) understand!

Understanding a communication is also much easier if we know others who already are in communication with the other party. This may range from the person who actually speaks the languages of both parties and thus can act as a translator^[7], to a close mutual friend who can say things like “I’m not sure that’s what she really meant…” In the context of reading scripture this is where the community comes in. We don’t read the Bible alone, we read it with others, we read it with the church. This point is at a certain level obvious, but the Catholic view on the role of the Church in interpreting scripture has been a source of great controversy with Protestant Reformers who saw the Church as controlling and distorting the content of scripture. It is however also interesting to note that Bible studies was the first area in which Catholic and Protestant scholars started to work together in the 19^th Century. Starting with the texts, they have in more recent years moved to the issues of deeper interpretation, and have found much more common understanding than might have been expected from the polemics of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.

Cardinal Ratzinger put the Catholic position like this:

What this tells us is that we should always be looking to listen more carefully to what God says to us, and that we interpret what we hear not as isolated individuals locked in a relationship apart from everyone else, but as part of a community. That community goes back to the Apostles, to Jesus, and to the earliest times of God’s attempts to communicate with people who were often willful and sometimes plain dumb. In that path of communication Jesus is preeminent because he was “the Word of God” – his communication with God was so complete and perfect that the church recognized that Jesus and the Father were indeed one being. As St John put it in his gospel “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. … I am in the Father and the Father is in me”^[8]. 

And the process never finishes. We can always understand more, understand better, understand in a way that relates to the challenges of our own situations. If this were not so then the Bible would be just another set of ancient texts, interesting to those who like to know about ancient times, but of no relevance to us. But, as our church community has been telling us forever, that not true – this communication is for all people, for all time. We must listen.

Questions for Consideration

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Footnotes (Click footnote number to return to text.)

[1] This is not a problem unique to the Bible or other texts of similar antiquity. The same questions arise with regard to the works of Shakespeare and there are similar differences of opinion which can never be resolved conclusively.

[2] Even in modern English the meaning of words can have changed drastically. A good example for us is “awful” – which started meaning “full of awe” (more like awesome). So “the awful glory of God” would make perfect sense before the 19th Century.

[3] These other materials are known as the Apocrypha. Some were included in the earliest lists completing to be recognized as valid Christian scriptures, and some were always regarded as heretical by early church authorities. Some have been popularized in modern fiction, e.g. the DaVinci Code.

[4] That is to say that there were four Gospels and they were associated with the four evangelists as subsequently understood. The exact content of these books cannot be known and there are certainly variations between the texts that we do have from later times.

[5] Between 390-405

[6] For example in Matthew 22:40

[7] recognizing that translation is not easy and that the translator needs to have a strong sensitivity to both the speaker and listener to perform that role well

[8] John 14:9