Reading the Bible Wisely

An Introduction to Taking Scripture Seriously. Revised Edition.

Richard S. Briggs

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781610972888
  9781498213691
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621891956
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

What does it mean to take the Bible seriously? This introductory book explores how Scripture itself gives us the resources to read it wisely. First, it looks at the basic questions of reading in context--historical, literary, and theological--and understanding the significance of the two-testament structure of the Christian Bible. Then it looks at how the Bible can itself contribute to shaping a wise doctrine of Scripture. Finally, it considers some of the many hermeneutical perspectives that contribute to reading the Bible wisely. New to this revised edition are chapters addressing the significance of the Old Testament, the performative function of Scripture, and how reading Scripture actually helps form the reader. The aim throughout is to explore key questions critical to the task of reading the Bible generously, constructively, and in a comprehensible way, without oversimplifying core theological issues.

Part One

Reading the Bible

1

Christian Scripture

The Road to Emmaus

Luke 24:13–35

The Emmaus story is something of a classic for allowing us to focus on issues of biblical interpretation. The reasons will become clear as we follow the two disciples along the road. The journey takes us out from Jerusalem in a northwesterly direction towards Emmaus, although the “sixty stadia” given as the distance, roughly seven miles, appears to put us some considerable way beyond the probable site of Emmaus, an early indication that the road to biblical interpretation is rarely straightforward.

The passage starts “on that same day”: the day that the women and the apostles have arrived at the empty tomb, puzzled and amazed. Two of them are walking along, one of whom is named in verse 18 as Cleopas. The other is unnamed, perhaps Luke himself, modestly hiding his identity rather as John does in the Fourth Gospel. Or perhaps it is Cleopas’ wife, and thus they are a couple about to have their eyes opened rather as the first couple, Adam and Eve, did, only with a very different result. Perhaps we just do not know who Cleopas’ companion is, which seems most likely, and is a gentle reminder that the pursuit of detail is not always fruitful.

They are joined on the road by a third companion, “but their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (v. 16). This surely does not mean that they could not spot the likeness, as if they were haunted by a vague feeling that they had seen him somewhere before, but just could not quite remember where. Luke does not elaborate, or say who it is that keeps them from recognizing. However, perhaps the text invites us to assume that this is God’s work, for reasons obviously still veiled in obscurity at this point, since our eyes have not yet become accustomed to picking out the details of this kind of story.

Jesus leads them into a discussion of “the things” that have occurred recently, managing to get Cleopas to say to him, of all people, that he must be the only stranger who does not know what has happened in these last few days in Jerusalem. What is the point here? If nothing else, Cleopas demonstrates that the knowledge of the death and crucifixion of Jesus is very much public knowledge. More than this: in verses 22–24 he reports the astonishing turn of events by which they have all come to see that the tomb is empty, the body is gone, and now the only sure thing is that nobody really knows what is going on. Cleopas does not use these exact words, or at least Luke polishes them up if he did, but the point is established as clearly as we could wish. It turns out to be an important point, not just for this story, but for our thinking about interpretation. The facts are all in, as it were, and they do not add up. The tomb is empty; the angels have been seen (by women, which may be why Cleopas is particularly unsure what to make of it, since women’s testimony on its own was a much-debated issue at the time); there were all these hopes riding on Jesus; and now nobody knows what to make of it. It is good to read slowly enough to pick up all these details. Sometimes we read biblical stories so fast, and with a kind of vague familiarity, that we can miss the way that the story develops and aims to surprise us.

What happens next? Jesus responds to Cleopas, explaining that on the contrary, all is not lost, but that “it was necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory” (v.26). He then interprets Moses and all the prophets for them, they walk on to the village, he stays and breaks bread with them, and in verse 31 their eyes are opened, and at last they recognize him. He vanishes, but they, inspired and now fully energized, return to the apostles and proclaim that “the Lord has risen indeed!” Now it all makes sense. Now they have not just the facts, but a picture that puts the facts in context and adds up. It adds up, let us note, in ways they had not anticipated. Luke first showed us a scene of information with confusion: the necessary prelude to understanding and insight. By the end of the story, the two who set out on the road from Jerusalem are back where they started, but their world has changed. The journey along the road to Emmaus, as captured in this story, invites us to a similar sort of journey in our own understanding: a pilgrimage into insight and wisdom. It is worth picking out in more detail some of the ways in which Luke 24 leads us into our own journey of biblical interpretation.

In his commentary on Luke’s gospel, Joel Green suggests the following structure for the Emmaus story:

The Journey from Jerusalem (verses 14–15) Appearance, “Obstructed Eyes,” Lack of Recognition (16) Interaction (17–18) Summary of “the Things” (19–21) Empty Tomb and Vision (22–23a) Jesus Is Alive (23b) Empty Tomb, but No Vision (24) Interpretation of “the things” (25–27) Interaction (28–30) “Opened Eyes,” Recognition, and Disappearance (31–32) The Journey to Jerusalem (33–35)1

Figure 1. Luke 24 as a Chiasm1

It is set out in this way to highlight the “there and back” structure of the story. It starts and ends in Jerusalem, it includes eyes being obstructed and opened, it includes two “interactions” or dialogues on the road, and “the things” which happened in Jerusalem are both summarized and interpreted. At the centre of the story, on this view, is the declaration that Jesus is alive (v.23). This kind of structure of a biblical story is known as a chiasm, so-called after the shape of the Greek letter c (chi), which looks like our “X.” It is a way of showing that a story has a symmetric structure in itself.

Why would we notice this? It is important to realize at this point that the layout of the original Greek copy of the Gospel of Luke, as of any New Testament manuscript, would be one continuous written text: one letter after another with no breaks between words or sentences or paragraphs. In fact it was also written in capitals. We can get an idea of the overall effect by imagining reading a Bible that was printed like this:

nowonthatsamedaytwoofthemweregoingtoavillage . . .

There were also no such conventions as bold or italic or underlining for emphasis or subtitles or section headings. (One reason that is given for why they wrote this way is that writing materials were expensive and scribes needed to take as little space as possible in copying out texts.) The obvious feature of this way of writing that strikes us, then, is how a New Testament author could particularly emphasize a point. How could they make sure a reader noted that here was a major turning point, or a key moment in the story? We might use a subtitle, or a larger font, or put it in bold text. One equivalent in the first century was to build literary structures into the text.

For instance, you could write with a certain rhythm, so that as one read along they would notice that the author was highlighting something. A non-biblical example of this is the way that Shakespeare’s plays often have rhyming couplets at the end of a scene, almost as a coded way of pointing out that the scene is about to change. Or you could repeat a key point twice in similar words: a device known as parallelism. This is very common in, for example, the Old Testament book of Proverbs. When you read, “My child, be attentive to my wisdom; incline your ear to my understanding” (Prov 5:1), both halves of the verse are saying the same thing, as a way of emphasizing the point being made.

The chiasm was a slightly more complex structure along the same lines: a short section of text that hinged or pivoted around a central moment, and that paired off elements of the story before and after that central moment. The key point of the chiasm was often to show just what a difference the central moment made. Of course there is a certain creative act of judgment in seeing a chiasm in the text: not all interpreters of the New Testament will agree on whether it is “really” there, but perhaps this is not as significant as one might think at first. A more modest claim would simply be that such an observation could be a helpful way of looking at a text even if it is not necessarily the “right” way of describing that text.

In this particular case, Green’s suggested chiasm for Luke 24 seems to fit well enough, and it pivots around the central affirmation that Jesus is alive. In other words: the claim that Jesus is alive (and note that it is presented in verse 23 as a report to be considered rather than as an emphatic conclusion) is the key to seeing how the passage pulls together all ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface to the Revised Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part 1: Reading the Bible
• Part 2: Thinking Theologically about Scripture
• Part 3: Hermeneutical Perspectives
• Bibliography