Edgework

Once we have been exposed to multivocality in the New Testament you might say we have lost our innocence. We can never go back to that safe place where we assume that there is only one voice in this second volume of our Bible.

And furthermore, in his book, The Bible Tells Me So, Peter Enns insists that if we are looking for 100% historical accuracy in the stories of Jesus in order to get “straight history” we are missing the point. “Stories of the past differ because storytellers are human beings… To do their thing, storytellers ‘shape’ the past. They decide what to include, what order to put things in, how to compress or combine scenes to save time and get to the money shot, and so on. Biblical story tellers wove narratives of the past to give meaning to their present – to persuade, motivate and inspire… To make that happen, like all story tellers, biblical storytellers invented and augmented dialogue, characters, and scenes to turn past moments into a flowing story – not because they were lazy or sneaky, but because that’s what all storytellers need to do to create a narrative. They shifted and arranged the past, or wove together discrete moments, all for the purpose of telling ‘their’ story for ‘their’ audience” (75-76).

So when we look for the historical account of Jesus’ birth, for example, Mark and John don’t mention it.  Matthew and Luke tell the story, but very differently.

In Matthew Jesus’ genealogy begins with Abraham and ends with Joseph, the angel appears to Joseph, Jesus’ birth gets one line of text, the Magi come to visit from the East following a guiding star and Joseph and Mary flee with Jesus to Egypt.

In Luke, Jesus’ genealogy is traced backward from Joseph to Adam, the angel appears to Mary, Elizabeth and Zachariah play important roles, Jesus’ birth is much expanded with the inclusion of shepherds and angels, Jesus is presented in the temple and there is no mention of the Magi or a flight into Egypt.

The question modern readers face is whether we must try to “blend” these stories into one historical account or are we free to let them stand on their own merit.

To further illustrate the dynamics of storytelling, one can compare, for example, a “typical day in the life of Jesus” in the various gospels. No matter how hard we try to extract a historically true narrative, the days don’t correspond with each other and some days are in fact impossibly long. In Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount appears to have been given in one sitting near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and in Luke various components of the Sermon are scattered throughout the book and given on various days.

Once we acknowledge such differences we are forced to concede that the point of these stories is not to provide us with a precise historical narrative of the life and teachings of Jesus. Rather the various story tellers took significant liberties with the information they had in hand to weave together unique accounts for their unique audiences. And, 2000 years later, we are invited to look in on the results and find relevance for our lives.

But multivocality is also present in the rest of the New Testament. Like the four gospels, all the other books and letters of the New Testament were written in the context of a church removed from Jesus’ life by at least a generation. Each writing also had a specific audience in mind and contains information and advice on issues pertinent to that audience. So if we try to squeeze immediate and universal applicability out of every New Testament text we soon find ourselves bogged down in what Christopher Smith refers to in his book, The Bible Made Impossible, as “pervasive interpretive pluralism” (17). He suggests that a healthier and more helpful approach is to view ourselves as modern readers looking in on a dialogue about faith and life going on in the first century faith community.

Smith notes that multivocality in the New Testament text becomes obvious by taking note of the dozens of books on the market that outline three, four or five views on any given subject. For example: Three Views of the Rapture, The Nature of Atonement: Four Views, and Church, State and Public Justice: Five Views (22-23). Of course one could say that everyone who doesn’t agree with my view is willfully blind to the truth or unintentionally biased. But most of us have lived long enough to know that all these various views are held by people of integrity who have studied the biblical text carefully and prayerfully.

To further illustrate the extent of pervasive interpretive pluralism, Smith lists some specific and significant topics about which different contemporary readers have come to different conclusions when reading the New Testament. For example: Church Polity; Free Will and Predestination; The Sabbath; The Morality of Slavery; Gender Difference and Equality; Wealth, Prosperity, Poverty and Blessing; War, Peace and Nonviolence, Charismatic Gifts; Atonement and Justification; and General Christian Relation to Culture (27-36).

All of this variability of interpretation forces us to ask some serious questions about how this ancient text can speak decisively into our modern world. It will not do to simply say that each sub-group in the church should take from the text what it wants or what it sees when looking at it through its particular lens. Modern readers of the New Testament do well to step back from their intense scrutiny of specific texts and cast about for alternative ways of reading the text that can lead us to greater clarity and unity with respect to what it means for modern Christians.

So, in this series of essays, we will keep asking whether the way Jesus and Paul read their Bible can teach us something about how we should read ours.