How We Interpret Evidence
Introduction
Before any further studies are posted, I felt it important to comment on the interpretation of evidence, and to explain the research and hermeneutical methods I’ve employed in our current biblical studies—as I will be using them in future studies as well. While the average church attendee might presume biblical interpretative methods are simplistic in nature and universally adhered to by pastors, preachers, teachers, and scholars alike, this, unfortunately, is not the case.
When it comes to interpreting the assortment of books known as the Bible, a large portion of what I will refer to as Church leadership (an unavoidably broad brush used reluctantly), tend to fall into what I call interpretive cultural isolationism. That is, they interpret the scriptures according to either Church or denominational tradition, modern presuppositions, personal and/or political predilections, or varied cocktails of all of the above. In short, their preferences determine their interpretations. Yet the reality is, as the late Dr. Michael Heiser put it, “the bible was written for us, not to us.”
While many boast of their adherence to the standard of interpreting the scriptures “in context”, very few actually mean it, while even fewer endeavor to do so. This inconsistency results in a wide array of assumptive definitions and classifications for what actually constitutes “in context”. That being the case, in what follows, I will draw on the work of a few notable biblical scholars to illustrate what “in context” actually means.
Information Theory: Lost in Transmission
The problem with any transmission, written or otherwise, is the inevitable loss of data and/or information. This occurs in every communication system. When information is conveyed from the point of origin (transmitter) to the destination (receiver), it is corrupted via the channel or delivery network. This obvious problem gave rise to a relatively new branch of mathematics called Information Theory. The ultimate aim of Information Theory is to mitigate loss of data/information as much as possible, while taking into account the inevitability of a certain level of loss—the initial level being determined by the efficiency or inefficiency of the communication system.
Let’s apply this to our discussion of interpretation. The Bible was not written in English. It was written in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic—the forms of which have not been in use for centuries. While the Greek and Aramaic that were used are much more recent (historically speaking), and fairly straightforward, the Hebrew language is a bit more complex.
Like any language, ancient Hebrew has changed over time. It has adapted and evolved. It did so noticeably during the Babylonian exile. Scholars have noted the change to the Hebrew alphabet during the exilic period. The letters of the alphabet take on a distinctly Babylonian flavor, so to speak. Because of this, older manuscripts had to be updated by the scribal class to reflect the linguistic changes. This would have potentially created a distinction in the Hebrew language of “Old Hebrew” versus “New Hebrew”—much like that of “Olde English” and “Modern English”.
What does that have to do with Information Theory and interpretation? Throughout history, the scriptures that would eventually compose what we know as the Bible, have been transmitted, retransmitted, updated, translated, and retranslated. Information Theory informs us that, statistically, over the course of time, some amount of information or data has been lost.
Now, what I am not saying is that the canon of scripture we possess today has been corrupted over time by successive retransmission. However, what I am saying is that there has been a loss of data and information by way of inferred meaning through shared contextual understanding, or in our case, the lack thereof. Because we do not live in the historical and cultural setting of both the biblical writers (transmitters) and their audience (receivers), there is a gap in the communication channel. A gap that can only be bridged by context. But how do we go about building that bridge?
Relevance Theory
It has been said that communication is the key to every successful relationship. In order for communications to be effective, a level of mutual contextual understanding (communications channel) must exist between the transmitter and the receiver—that is the bridge over the historical and cultural gap. One of the ways it is built (or at least, ought to be built) is through an interpretive tool called Relevance Theory. In his book Old Testament Cosmology and Divine Accommodation: A Relevance Theory Approach, Dr. John W. Hilber makes a case for the inclusion of Relevance Theory, at the very least, on the hermeneutical toolbelt. Here are a few of his thoughts:
“When we commit ourselves to the historical-grammatical method of exegesis, consideration of the original cultural context is explicitly embedded in the method. But, even though everyone endeavors to read contextually, the results can vary widely due to the manner with which different interpreters draw upon cultural background.”
“Relevance theory’s strength is its focus on how discourse relies on contextual assumptions for meaning.”
“Relevance theory is only one hermeneutical tool. It does not replace, contradict, or dismantle other theories, such as speech-act; rather it complements approaches that have already proven useful. However, relevance theory has been under-utilized in biblical studies.”
“Communication is a very complex affair, dependent on more than dictionary definitions and matters of grammatical syntax. Understanding a speaker or author necessitates more than linguistic competence; it also requires some knowledge of the cultural and often the situational context that clarifies and enriches the meaning of an utterance. Meaning is inferred by the hearer through a link between the semantics of the utterance and their shared context.”
—John W. Hilber Old Testament Cosmology and Divine Accommodation: A Relevance Theory Approach
In their commentary on the synoptic gospels, Dr. Bruce Malina and Dr. Richard L. Rohrbaugh emphasis this point even further:
“In thinking about the impact of the industrial revolution on our reading of the Bible, we must begin by taking account of what is sometimes called the “unwritten” part of any text. This “unwritten” part includes the things an author presumes the audience knows about how the world works, which he or she can leave between the lines of a text, so to speak, yet which are crucial to its understanding. Such an implied understanding of the world is always shared by conversation partners, just as it is by authors and readers. But how much is really implied? It should be self-evident that not everything necessary to a conversation can be written down because a text simply cannot say everything that needs to be known about the topic under discussion. To say everything would be tedious in the extreme. A text, spoken or written, would be cluttered to the point of unreadability, and conversation partners would probably cease to interact. Inevitably, then, there is much that a text can only sketch in outline, and even more that has to be left to the imagination of the reader. Because this is so, an author inescapably depends on the general cultural knowledge a reader can supply from his or her own resources to “complete” the text. Successful communication can be carried on in no other way.”
—Bruce Malina & Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels
From these excerpts, we begin to understand that, when interpreting the scriptures, it is important to bear in mind that the writers were transmitting messages that would have had relevance to their intended audience (which, by the way, was neither you, me, nor anyone contemporaneous to us). As obvious as it may sound, if we are to arrive at the contextual interpretation of a scriptural transmission, and then, if need be, apply its theological messaging (rather than literal meaning) to our modern culture, we cannot start with an interpretation that is relevant to us.
Actual Contextualization
What should be vital to our hermeneutics is the understanding that, as Dr. Michael Hieser stated, “the scriptures were written for us, not to us”. When we take a “to us” approach, we subconsciously read into the text the cultural, and therefore contextual world around us. In essence, we insert our context into the biblical narrative. The result is an interpretive meaning that is relevant to us, but foreign to the author and original audience. This is what is known in hermeneutics as eisegesis, which is an interpretive faux pas. With this in mind, I suspect it would surprise the average church attendee to know that most of the traditions they participate in once a week are actually the products of eisegetical interpretation.
Tradition, while it has its place, when overemphasized becomes a governor upon critical and rational thinking. It makes what is apparent seem preposterous, and what is logical out to be lunacy. In other words, it very easily, and often quite effectively, blinds us to any other contextual interpretation but our own—an interpretation that usually upholds or is upheld by the traditions we cherish. If a tradition can be supported biblically (that is, if there is clear, contextual interpretive evidence that substantiates it) then, by all means, keep to it. But if it is not backed in this manner (if all the support it has are a few scriptures taken out of context, paired with an appeal to its historical longevity), then its scrutiny is justified. And if said scrutiny proves to be eisegetical, it ought to be discarded, as there is no true biblical context for it. Though this method of analysis is logical, it is difficult to follow. Not because it is intellectually difficult, but emotionally so.
Tradition, depending upon how long-standing it has been upheld, creates emotional attachments—which is part of its function. As such, the resistance to a change in tradition, whatever the suggested change may be, is more often than not, emotionally charged. So much so, that even loose-fitting explanations for passages that are confusing or obscure (at least to us) are clutched as if irrefutable.
For example, consider the passage in 1 Corinthians 11:3-16 about hair length and head coverings. (I will be addressing the passage briefly here. For a full treatment of it, see Chapter 8 of Dr. Michael Heiser’s book Reversing Hermon.) Here Paul gives explicit instructions. For the Corinthians, who shared a cultural context with Paul, the instructions and reasons for them would have been clear enough. But for us, who are nearly two millennia removed from Paul, the Corinthians, and their shared context, the reasons aren’t as evident.
In the Greco-Roman culture, hair was considered a part of the reproductive/sexual system. According to Hippocrates, long hair attracted and retained semen. If a man had long hair, this prevented reproduction. If a woman had long hair, this assisted it. As reproductive ability was of serious societal importance, women were encouraged to have long hair, aiding their fertility, while men were encouraged to keep their hair relatively short. Long hair on a woman was a first century beauty standard, and both a sign of sexual fertility and availability. Thus, a woman wearing a head covering over her bound up, long hair was a symbol of modesty and sexual unavailability. (Again, see Reversing Hermon for the full treatment of this passage.)
Now that the implicit meaning of this passage has been elucidated via its historical context, two things become apparent:
1.) There is no need for modern believers to follow Paul’s explicit instructions given to the Corinthians. Modern science informs us that hair, no matter the length, has no bearing upon sexual reproduction nor is it culturally considered a sexual “organ”.
2.) This is a case in point of both the need for contextualization and Relevance Theory in biblical hermeneutics, as well as the importance of theological messaging as an interpretive option.
Since the modern believer does not need to adhere to either the head covering or hair length regulations delineated by Paul, what can (and should) be taken from this passage? Clearly the theological messaging is the importance of sexual modesty and propriety, for both men and women, especially during the gathering of believers. The Corinthian believers would have had no problem understanding Paul’s message and instructions, because the first century Greco-Roman culture in which they lived was a “high context” society. Malina and Rohrbaugh explain what a high context society is and entails below:
“The New Testament was written in what anthropologists call a “high-context” society. People who communicate with each other in high-context societies presume a broadly shared, well-understood knowledge of the context of anything referred to in conversation or in writing. For example, everyone in ancient Mediterranean villages would have had a clear and concrete knowledge of what sowing entailed, largely because the skills involved were shared by most (male) members of that society. No writer would need to explain. Thus, writers in such societies usually produce sketchy and impressionistic texts, leaving much to the reader’s or hearer’s imagination. They encode much information in widely known symbolic or stereotypical statements. In this way, they require the reader to fill in large gaps in the unwritten portion of the text. All readers are expected to know the context and therefore to understand the references in question.
In this way the Bible, like most texts written in the high-context Mediterranean world, presumes that readers have a broad and adequate knowledge of its social context. It offers little by way of extended explanation. When Luke writes that Elizabeth was “said to be barren” (1:36), for example, he feels no necessity to explain for the reader the critical imperatives of ancient kinship, or the position of barren women in the village life of agrarian societies, or the function of the gossip networks in an honor-shame context, even though little of this information is known to modern readers of his story. All of this, however, is critical to understanding his statement about Elizabeth being barren. Luke simply assumed his readers would understand.
By contrast, “low-context” societies are those that produce highly specific and detailed texts that leave little for the reader to fill in or supply. The United States and northern Europe are typical low-context societies. Accordingly, Americans and northern Europeans expect writers to give the necessary background ground if they refer to something unusual or atypical. A computer operator, for example, learns a certain jargon and certain types of logic (e.g., Boolean) that are not widely understood outside the circle of computer initiates. Within that circle these concepts can be used without explanation because they are easily supplied by any competent reader of technical computer manuals. They can remain a part of the “unwritten” text that the writer expects a reader to supply. But since they are not yet part of the experience of the general public, when writing for a nontechnical audience a writer must explain the computer jargon and the technical information at some length if it is to be understood.
A moment’s reflection will make clear why modern industrial societies are low context and ancient agrarian ones were high context. The computer reference alluded to immediately above is all too common an experience in modern life. Life today has been complexified into a thousand spheres of experience that the general public does not share in common. There are small worlds of experience in every corner of our society that the rest of us know nothing about. Granted, there is much in our writing that needs no explanation because it relates to experience all Americans can understand. But nowadays the worlds of the engineer, the plumber, the insurance broker, and the farmer are in large measure self-contained. Should any one of these people write for “the layperson” who is not an engineer, plumber, insurance broker, or farmer, he or she would have much to explain. It was very different in antiquity, however, where change was slow and where the vast majority of the population had the common experience of farming the land and dealing with landlords, traders, merchants, and tax collectors. People had more in common and experience was far less discrepant. Thus writers could more nearly count on readers to fill in the gaps from behaviors socialized in a common world.
The obvious problem this creates for reading the Bible today is that low-context context readers in the United States frequently mistake the Bible for a low-context context document and erroneously assume that the author has provided all of the contextual information needed to understand it. Consider how many U.S. and northern European people believe that the Bible is a perfectly adequate and thorough statement of Christian life and behavior! Such people assume that they are free to fill in the gaps from their own experience because if that were not the case, the New Testament writers, like any considerate low-context authors, would have provided the unfamiliar background a reader requires. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case because expectations of what an author will provide (or has provided) are markedly different in American and Mediterranean societies.”
—Bruce Malina & Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels
As alluded to above, if we are to ascertain the contextual meaning of the scriptures, the need for contextualization cannot be overemphasized. Otherwise, we run the risk of missing the meaning by reading our own culture back into the scriptures. It is important to remember that the biblical text is as alien to our modern society as our society is to it. To again quote Dr. Heiser, “the Bible was written for us but not to us.” This fact alone should not only solidify the pressing need in hermeneutics for historical-contextual interpretation and Relevance Theory, along with the findings of Information Theory, but also the reexamination of interpretive tradition with respect to these considerations.
An Appeal to Reason
One of the most difficult interpretive truths to grapple with is that “proof” is a misnomer. That is to say, there is no such thing as proof, only the interpretation of evidence. For instance, no one can prove that I personally wrote this. They can offer evidence that, when compared and contrasted, logically leads to that conclusion. However, in so doing, they did not “prove” that I wrote this—they simply interpreted evidence to justify a reasonable judgment.
If evidence is to be interpreted reasonably, bias must be governed. I say governed because a complete removal of human bias from the equation seems an untenable request to make. Biases can form in a myriad of ways, for any number of reasons, and can even be subconscious. As it pertains to the interpretation of scripture, emotional attachments to traditions are common factors in bias formation. Biases, while not inherently flawed, often create blindspots in our hermeneutics, as they bring something to the evidence prior to analysis that may not be as self-evident as assumed (or supported by the evidence at all). Many interpretive traditions have endured not because they are correct, but because the bias of the prevailing interpreters see no need to reexamine the coherence of them.
The problem with this assumption is that it becomes more about affirming the validity of the bias rather than the interpretative tradition. A bold assertion, I know. However, a quick skim over church history reveals that proposed alternative interpretations of texts with long standing interpretive traditions attached to them, no matter the evidence offered in defense, are met with hostility. Historically, the proposed alternative is rejected—at first—and the interpreter is slapped with some negative label (or burned at the stake). Conversely—and perhaps ironically—what this same quick skim reveals is that the biased defenders of interpretive tradition, who stood against its detractors, no matter the evidence presented, have been, on the whole, wrong and revealed as such.
(To clarify: I do not think undertakings, such as proposals of alternate interpretations of scripture, should be taken lightly. If one is to challenge doctrinal tradition, they should bolster their challenge with coherent evidence and legitimate hermeneutics.)
While I would not consider what I have presented thus far in our studies, nor what will follow, to be a radical divergence from biblical tradition (that may be due to my own bias), others might. That is why I felt it necessary to articulate, to the best of my ability, the methodological approach I have and will continue to take. To be frank, and so that the reader, whether open to my approach or not, may be fully aware, I am skeptical of everything. That is to say, I do not consider any interpretative tradition above fresh, genuine analysis. I am open to whatever conclusions the evidence suggests—provided it is supported by using legitimate interpretive methods. After all, only one of two outcomes will occur:
- The interpretive tradition will be validated by the evidence and verified by the analysis.
- The interpretive tradition will be invalidated by the evidence, and an alternative interpretation will be discovered and/or verified by the analysis.
As this is the case, it should not be a source of contention to seek to interpret the scriptures “in context”. However, if objection remains, it exposes more than just an emotional attachment or bias toward tradition. What it demonstrates is a greater affection for tradition than for Truth. And such affections have proven, throughout history, to be entirely unreasonable and visually impaired.