04 Chapter IV The Interpretation of the Bible The Modernizing Method

Chapter IV The Interpretation of the Bible The Modernizing Method THE selection and collection of books and the making of a careful translation from an accurate text all of this merely paves the way to the ultimate question, “What does the Bible mean?” All the minute and tedious studies of language and manuscripts that enter into the study of any ancient literature look ahead to the illumination of the content of that literature; their aim is to make it easier for the modern reader who does not possess technical knowledge to understand the message of these books written long ago in a strange world. The early Protestant ideal was often so expressed as to suggest that, if the Bible were placed in the hands of the layman in a vernacular translation, there would be no further difficulty. The reader would be his own interpreter. Several centuries of experience have indicated that the untrained layman is often helpless, or too ingenious, as an interpreter of Holy Writ. There was something dismaying about the zeal with which he found the Roman pope indicated by the number “666” in Revelation; and who that has seen it can ever forget the rapt expression of the interpreter who found the explanation of the Beast of Revelation in the N.R.A.?

These extravagances of interpretation common as they are no excuse for withholding the Bible from the people or for prescribing an “orthodox” interpretation with ecclesiastical sanctions. The solution lies in a clear grasp of what is involved in interpretation of the Bible. Such a grasp can be attained by those who are in no sense experts; all that it demands are (i) a study of the problems and methods I of interpretation and (2) a willingness to accept the results of the experts’ work in the light of that study. This volume on the study of the Bible finds its goal in the following discussion of the interpretation of the Scriptures. This chapter, with the two following chapters, is primarily concerned with the task of finding out the significance of the Bible’s content; not that any attempt is made to expound or define all that content but rather that methods of study are classified, criticized, explained, and exemplified.

Generally speaking, there are only two methods of interpreting the Bible. They are the “modernizing” method and the “historical” method. Each of these methods has numerous modifications and forms, but these two are separated from each other by a gulf that is so wide that it dwarfs all the minor divisions. The method which has been called the modernizing method has its feet firmly planted in the period in which the interpreter lives; it finds the Bible’s basic meaning with reference to the “modern” period in which the interpreter is, naturally, most interested. The historical method, on the other hand, finds the Bible’s basic meaning with reference to the situation in which the Bible was written. THE MODERNIZING METHOD DEFINED The interpreter who uses this method approaches the Bible with certain answers already in his possession. His basic assumption is that what was written by a Hebrew prophet in the eighth century B.C. or by a Christian missionary in A.D. 50 finds its significance in the interpreter’s day. The forces that lead to this emphasis upon the interpreter’s own group can be easily identified and understood. The basis upon which this type of interpretation rests is the canonization of the Scriptures. As soon as any scripture is recognized as authoritative in the cult, leaders of the religious group are forced to come to terms with it. In succeeding generations the appeal to this authority from the past becomes more difficult. The leaders with new programs must either repudiate the Bible and set up some substitute or they must forcefully interpret the Scriptures into agreement with the new program and the new needs. One can easily understand that, in spite of the number of laws canonized in the Pentateuch (613 according to one count), the changes that came with the centuries would inevitably produce problems. No matter how exactly these laws fitted the situations in which they were produced, there was bound to be some little strain in applying them to a later situation. Unfortunately, the doctrine that they were God’s law grew in rigor of definition as time passed. A modernizing interpretation is an almost inevitable result of the canonization of the Scriptures as the full and complete revelation of God’s will. The simple syllogisms employed by the modernizing interpreter are something like this. The will of God for his people is fully and adequately expressed in , Scripture. We are God’s people. Therefore, God’s will for us is expressed in the Scriptures. If the interpreter is a legalist, he reasons as follows: God’s word contains his divine law for his people; we are his people; therefore, we will find divine law for our guidance in the Bible. If he is primarily interested in the end of the world, he arrives at similar conclusions. God would not fail to tell his people (us) when the world was to end; therefore, we can find in the Bible the date of the end. This type of interpretation owes most of its worst features to dogmas about the Bible as the Word of God. ’Since all Scripture is the Word of God, there can be no contradictions in it. Since all Scripture is the Word of God, it can have nothing superfluous in it. Since Scripture is the Word of God, it can contain nothing unworthy of God. Each of these dogmas leads to the perversion and the modernizing of Scripture. To take up the last one first it plainly means that the Bible cannot say anything which the interpreter regards as unworthy of God. But this can be a sound rule for interpretation only if the interpreter’s ideas as to what is worthy of God coincide identically with all the biblical author’s ideas or with God’s own thoughts. Unless the student is willing to make these assumptions, he should avoid interpretations based on this dogma. In practice the appeal to this dogma gives the interpreter license to edit Scripture into conformity with his own ideas. The insistence that the Scripture can have nothing superfluous is another screen for modernizing interpretation. The perversion is justified by a questionbegging argument. Anything that does not apply to the interpreter’s own day is labeled superfluous; therefore, it must be made to apply to the interpreter’s times. To the Gentile Christians of the first few centuries the food laws of the Pentateuch were superfluous if taken in their natural meaning. This was enough to convince almost every one of the early Christian interpreters of the Old Testament that these laws were not to be taken in their literal meaning. They must have some Christian meaning, some modern meaning. Thus Barnabas found that the proscription of animals that do not chew the cud is an exhortation to meditation. Moreover, he felt sure that this was the primary and original intention of the law. In the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, the reader is informed that Abraham defeated the invading kings with an army composed of three hundred and eighteen men born in his own house. Later interpreters of this passage, both Jewish and Christian, found little religious inspiration in this statement of fact. They, therefore, searched for some deeper meaning. The number “318” suggested that a modern meaning might be found by the use of numerology. Among both Hebrews and Greeks, letters were used as numbers; that is, all letters had numerical value. From this fact it was easy to find significance in numbers. A Jewish interpreter of this passage, seeking diligently for some significance in it, noticed that Abraham had a servant born in his household named Eliezer (Genesis 15:2-3). The letters in the word Eliezer when added up as numbers total 318. This shows that Abraham’s army consisted of Eliezer. The Christian author of the Letter of Barnabas felt sure that the Old Testament was written for the sake of the Christians. But what did the Christians care about how many servants Abraham had who were born in his own household? They were not interested in the number of his servants. Yet this statement must mean something to them otherwise this line of Scripture would be superfluous, and the Word of God could not contain anything superfluous. By the ingenious application of a little numerology, Barnabas was able to find in this verse a prediction that Jesus was to be crucified. For it says, “And Abraham circumcised from his household eighteen men and three hundred.” What then was the knowledge that was given him? Observe that he first says the eighteen, and after a pause the three hundred. The eighteen is I, ten, and H, eight; you have Jesus [IHSOUS]. And because the cross was to have grace in the Tau [Tau, T, equals 300], he says also the three hundred. He indicates, then, Jesus in the two letters; and in the one, the cross. He who freely planted his teaching within us knows this. No one has learned a more excellent lesson from me, but I know that you are worthy [ix. 8-9]. An implication of this modernizing method of interpretation is that the first readers of the Scripture could not understand it. When the Scofield Reference Bible says that the mention of Rosh, Meshek, and Tubal in Ezekiel 38:23 means Russia, Moscow, and Tbolsk, “in the opinion of all interpreters [!],” it asks us to believe that the first readers of Ezekiel (and “their successors for a thousand years) could not possibly understand what Ezekiel was talking about. One wonders why God was so concerned about the generation which was to read the Scofield Bible and so little concerned with Ezekiel’s contemporaries. Early Christian interpreters did not shrink from the implications of this type of exegesis. Justin Martyr denied that the literal meaning of the Old Testament had any significance; Barnabas indignantly denies that the Old Testament is the joint possession of Jew and Christian. He insists that it belongs to the Christians alone. Since it was written for the Christians, the Jews naturally could not understand it.

TYPES OF MODERNIZING INTERPRETATION A rich vocabulary has grown up around the effort to read modern meanings into the Scriptures. Exponents of this school of interpretation speak of the use of allegory, typology, numerology, tropology, and the anagogical sense. The distinction between these various systems, or methods, or senses, is not always clear to the naked eye. As an example of the lack of definite meaning in these sonorous terms, consider the distinctions made between the allegorical meaning, the tropological meaning, and the anagogical meaning of Scripture, as a contemporary manual on the study of the Bible presents them. By way of preface, we should note that the author insists on the existence of a literal meaning in addition to these “spiritual” or “mystical” meanings. The allegorical meaning is the reference of the text to a doctrine of the faith, especially to Christ and the church. If the text “admits or requires” this reference, then it possesses an allegorical meaning; e.g, Matthew 12:39 shows that the experience of Jonah with the sea monster refers allegorically to the resurrection of Jesus. The tropological meaning of a passage is the application of a passage to moral life. In Genesis 15:6 we read that Abraham believed, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness. In Romans 4:23 Paul finds here the meaning that mankind should believe in Christ. The anagogical meaning of a passage is the application that it allows to the future life. The familiar story of Noah and the ark in Genesis may be applied also to the faithful who find salvation in the church (cf. Matthew 24:37; 1 Peter 3:20). The reader can easily see that there is no distinction of method here; these labels are used for one method with the results classified according to their subject matter. Even this classification does not seem very objective to judge from the author’s own examples; for the definition of the first class would include the examples of the second and third classes. Allegory, tropology, typology, anagoge, and their brood are basically one type of interpretation. On the assumption that there is a deeper meaning in Scripture than has been expressed by the inspired writer, these interpreters proceed in any devious way, on the basis of hints which first win their significance in the interpreters’ own eyes.

One of the few “methods” of modernizing the meaning of Scripture which can be recognized as a distinct pattern of interpretation is numerology. This rests on the numerical values of the Hebrew and Greek alphabets and makes much of the fact that it works on the original languages of the Bible. We have already noted a glowing example of its use in antiquity in Barnabas’ explanation of the number “318.” Not only does numerology make it possible to find a modern meaning in a dark passage but it also demonstrates that the Scripture is the Word of God.

Three and seven are good numbers. God made the natural world with its seven planets, seven tones in the scale, seven colors, etc.; the Bible is full of sevens; therefore, God wrote the Bible. The number of nouns in certain verses of Genesis, chapter i, is a multiple of seven. If nouns don’t work out, adjectives, adverbs, or prepositions will. It is here that the subjective element enters. The interpreter selects the units to be counted or the words to be translated into their numerical equivalents. The same methods will prove the inspiration of any document. I applied it some years ago to the letter of Ignatius to the Ephesians and unearthed an enormous mass of threes and sevens. A hurried count of the first paragraph of the popular novel Gone with the Wind showed that the first sentence had twenty-one words, three y’s; the second, twenty-eight words or four 7’s. Add these together and you get seven 7’s. The third sentence has three nouns. The first paragraph has twenty-eight (4X7) nouns, seven proper adjectives, and nine (3X3) adverbs. Will some numerologist claim inspiration for this book? No, he will not; for numerology proves the divine origin of the Bible only to those who knew it in advance.

It might be possible to separate typology, tropology, etc, from allegory if we were using these terms for the first time today. But they have a long history a history in which they are often confused with one another. At first, the interpreters spoke of only one meaning above the literal meaning. This was usually referred to as a “spiritual” meaning. When skilful exegetes like Origen found three meanings, they were driven to poetry for labels and definitions of the extra meanings. Augustine found four meanings in a passage, and the later ages produced as many as seven meanings from one passage, although the classification is stretched somewhat thin at spots. In Paul’s interpretation of Abraham’s family life we have a clear example of a confusion in terminology which began early and still persists. In Galatians 4:21-31 he presents Sarah and Hagar, Isaac and Ishmael, as types of Judaism and Christianity. The reader’s natural inclination is to classify this as typological interpretation; but in Galatians 4:24 Paul says that these Scripture texts are allegorical. Of all the titles used for these modernizing methods, allegorical is the most fitting. Its basic significance of saying one thing and meaning another is at home with these interpreters.

MODERNIZED BIBLES A sounder classification of the modernizing schools of interpretation can be based on the messages they read into the Scriptures. Each of these interpreters brings a certain message to the Bible and reads it into the sacred text by means of his system of interpretation. But not all of them bring the same message to the Book. The Jewish rabbis, for example, in the days after their national glory had departed, brought to the Torah a glorification of the scribe and his work which the sacred book had not known before. The extent to which this was done has often been illustrated, but no more forceful example can be found than the Targum on the Song of Deborah. This is not designed primarily as interpretation but rather as translation; however, we have seen in the chapter on translation that the two are not always as distinct as they should be. Judges 5:8-9 is a strong statement of the lack of soldiers in Israel; the Targum expands this into a wordy praise of the scribes who interpreted the Law accurately and patiently in the days of crisis. The Christians of the first few centuries brought to the Old Testament a belief that Jesus was the Messiah; this belief they read into almost every line of the Jewish Scriptures. Two of the great classics in this “interpretation” are The Letter of Barnabas and Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho.

We have’ already seen the nature of the interpretation in Barnabas, where “318” predicts the crucifixion of Jesus; Justin is no more restrained. For example, he quotes (from the Greek Old Testament) Exodus 20:22; Exodus 23:20-21, in which God tells Moses to announce to the people, “I send my angel before you to guard you on the way, and to bring you into the land which I have prepared for you. Hark unto him and obey him, do not resist him; for he will not withhold [punishment] from you, for my name is upon him.” Who is this guide? asked Justin. Who else but Jesus (the Greek form of Joshua!) Dialogue Ixxv. i.

Justin finds the cross (Dialogue Ixxxvi) in the “tree” of life planted in Paradise, in the “rod” with which Moses was sent to free Israel, in the “tree” cast into the bitter waters of Mara, in the “rods” used by Jacob to win his uncle’s sheep, in the “staff” with which, as Jacob “boasted,” he had crossed the Jordan, in the “ladder” of Jacob’s dream upon which he saw God not the Father “fixed,” in the “rod” of Aaron which blossomed, in the “shoot” from the root of Jesse which Isaiah predicted, in David’s portrayal of the righteous man as a “tree” planted by the water courses, in David’s claim that the righteous would flourish like a palm “tree,” in the “tree” from which God appeared to Abraham the oak of Mambre in the seventy willow “trees” which the people found when they crossed over Jordan, in the comforting “rod” and “staff” of the twenty-third Psalm, in the “tree” [ax handle] which Elisha threw into the Jordan to recover the lost ax head, in the “staff” which Judah gave Tamar as a pledge for the payment of her prostitution.

These are selections from only two, albeit a striking two, out of scores of Christian interpreters who modernized the Jewish Bible into a Christian book. With a few exceptions, early Christian interpreters ignored the great messages of the inspired prophets and poets of Israel except where they could be transformed into messianic texts. Their guiding principles were expressed by Augustine in a memorable couplet: “The New Testament in the Old is latent; the Old Testament in the New is patent.” One result of this is the impoverishment of the Christian tradition, which has slighted the prophets’ burning attacks on injustice, greed, and exploitation of the poor to concentrate its attention on fantastic “predictions” of the cross.

Other times, other Bibles. Once the Christianmessianic nature of the Old Testament was accepted by all but the Jews, the church brought different messages to be read into the Bible. For example, Clement of Alexandria was worried by the effeminacy of some of the Christians of his day. One of their perverted habits was that of shaving. Imagine his horror when he found large numbers of Christian men shaving off not merely part of the beard (he could have stood that) but every last whisker! Against this contemporary custom, Clement invoked the authority of the Scriptures. He couldn’t find a law saying, “Do not shave”; but in the one hundred and thirty-third Psalm brotherly unity is likened to “the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments.” David wrote this so that Clement’s contemporaries might not shave.

Each generation often each individual interpreter brought a new message to the Bible and found it there. In the days of the Reformation, it was Lutheranism, or Calvinism, or Arminianism. German interpreters wrote learned works showing that Adam was a Lutheran. Frenchmen proved that not only Paul but also Jesus and Abraham were faithful to Calvin’s Institutes. In this regard the Roman Catholic church differs from the others in the degree of explicitness with which it directs the interpreter to find in the Scriptures the teaching of the church. Its logic is simple. Since these books have a divine origin, written with the aid of the Holy Spirit, they can be understood only with the same divine assistance. But the Holy Spirit cannot be certainly found anywhere except in the church; therefore, the interpreter must first find out the opinion of the church and be guided by it. The extent of ecclesiastical control over interpretation is plainly stated in an encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, “Providentissimus Deus” (November 18, 1 893). After insisting that it is the place of the church to judge the true sense of Scripture, he reassures the interpreter as to the liberty with which he may work. The church in no way hinders the study of the Bible except as it prevents error, he says; for the individual scholar can exercise his liberty in two ways. First, his study of passages not yet officially interpreted by the church may help the church to decide what the correct interpretation is. Second, his work on passages whose meaning has been defined by the church may expound that meaning more clearly or defend it better from hostile attack. The primary object of the Catholic interpreter’s work in those areas where the judgment of the church has already been pronounced “is to interpret those passages in that identical sense, and to prove by all the resources of learning that sound laws of interpretation admit of no other meaning.” The reader might assume that the Catholic interpreter actually is free in those areas where judgment has not yet been pronounced, but the encyclical goes on to point out that legitimate interpretation is bound to produce meanings in harmony with Catholic doctrines. Any interpretation that finds contradictions in the Scriptures or finds the Scriptures contradicting the teaching of the Roman Catholic church is either “foolish or false.” The justification of ecclesiastical control of interpretation, which is practiced by Protestant churches as well as by the Roman Catholic, is that it prevents error. The wild luxuriance of interpretations made possible by the modernizing method have inevitably embarrassed all cults which rest upon the authority of Scripture. The presence of a large number of conflicting interpretations of the same passage always produces a strain in those areas where orthodoxy is prized. The judgment may be hazarded that uniformity was one of the desires of those who in various times and places have set up cult control of interpretation.

Examples of this painful extravagance in interpretation can be found in the meanings found by Christian scholars in Revelation 13:18 “... for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.” Irenaeus claimed that the number was Noah’s age at the time of the flood plus the height and breadth of the image set up by Nebuchadnezzar; he identified “the man” as Evanthus, or Lateinos, or Titan. For Hippolytus it meant “I deny (my crucified Savior).” To more modern interpreters, it has meant Mohammed, Pope Benedict IX, any pope, Martin Luther, Lenin, the N.R.A, etc. Such a rank growth of definition creates stress within the cult. This pressure was felt in Judaism in the days of the rabbis. Out of it arose the dictum that no interpretation could be accepted which went against the Tradition, the oral interpretation. This made the Tradition rather than the Scripture the norm. Quite analogous is the Roman Catholic position quoted above although it must be remembered that Judaism has no monarchical authoritative hierarchy. The Protestant churches have followed similar practices although to a less degree. The primitive freedom of the individual interpreter was soon curbed by the formulation of authoritative confessions of faith, or articles of religion. The doctrines championed in these confessions are defined as an accurate statement of the meaning of Scripture. This promulgation limited the freedom of the interpreter who desired to be orthodox, for it prescribed certain interpretations as the correct interpretations and anathematized others. Thus both British and Continental scholars of the Reformation period in their interpretation of the Apocalypse abstained from the millennial views of earlier scholars whose work they accepted, for the Augsburg and Helvetic confessions had branded Chiliasmas a heresy. The situation of the layman whose Scripture is modernized for him by the church lacks the confusion of freer believers. He often welcomes the increased surety even when it is purchased at the cost of freedom. The value to the institutionalists in the cult of admitting only those modernizations which they favor is unquestioned. But it is the belief of modern scholarship that there is a better way. The history of the Christian world has failed to convince most students of history that errors can be avoided in any field of study by the exercise of ecclesiastical authority. Progress in modern learning has followed not preceded the emancipation of scholarship from ecclesiastical shackles.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON INTERPRETATION

GENERAL

BETHUNE-BAKER, J. F. An Introduction to the Early History of Christian Doctrine to the Time of the Council of Chalcedon (2ded.). London: Methuen, 1916. Chapters i-viii are especially valuable for this area of our study.

CHARLES, R. H. Studies in the Apocalypse. Edinburgh: T. & T.

Clark, 1913. Chapters I and ii give a history of the interpretation of the Book of Revelation.

DANA, H. E. Searching the Scriptures: A Handbook of New Testament Hermeneutics. New Orleans: Bible Institute Memorial Press, 1936. This is written from a conservative viewpoint.

EAKIN, FRANK. Revaluing Scripture. New York: Macmillan, 1928. This work offers a revaluation of the scriptures of all religions as a basis for revaluing the Jewish-Christian Scriptures.

FULLERTON, K. Prophecy and Authority: A Study in the History of the Doctrine and Interpretation of Scripture. New York, Macmillan, 1919. A very readable and stimulating treatment of the problems of interpretation.

GILBERT, G. H. Interpretation of the Bible: A Short History.

New York: Macmillan, 1908. The best chronological treatment of interpretation in English today. Jesus and His Bible. New York: Macmillan, 1926. A careful investigation of the methods of interpretation employed by Jesus, with an Appendix on the use of the Old Testament in Paul and Hebrews.

PEAKE, A. S. The Nature of Scripture. London: Hodder &

Stoughton, 1922. This deals with modern criticism, its permanent results, the enduring value of Old Testament and New Testament, the evangelical faith, and the modern view of Scripture, etc. A sane and careful study.

ROBINSON, T. H. “The Methods of Higher Criticism,” in The People and the Book, ed. A. S. PEAKE. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925.

Exposition of these methods as applied to parts of the Old Testament.

SEISENBERGER, MICHAEL. Practical Handbook for the Study of the Bible (new rev. ed.). New York: Joseph F. Wagner, Inc, 1925. A Roman Catholic manual published with the imprimatur. It gives English translations of the important papal decrees relating to Scripture (pp. 159-86). Interpretation is discussed in pages 449 ff.

SMITH, H. P. Essays in Biblical Interpretation. Boston: Marshall Jones Co, 1921.

Stimulating and valuable discussion of interpretation of the Old Testament.

TRATTNER, E. R. Unravelling the Book of Books: being the Story of How the Puzzles of the Bible Were Solved and Its Documents Unravelled. New York: Scribner’s, 1929. An interesting and readable approach to the story of biblical criticism.

ADVANCED KITTEL, G. et al. Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1932.

Technical studies of important words.

LOOFS, F. Leitfaden zum Studien der Dogmengeschichte (4th ed.).

Halle a.S, Niemeyer, 1906.

REUSS, EDUARD. History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New Testament (trans, from the 5th German ed. by E. L. HOUGHTON). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1884.

SMITH, H. Ante-Nicene Exegesis of the Gospels. 6 vols. New York: Macmillan, 1925.

Quotes this material in order of the scriptural passages in English translation.