552 - Standing Toward the Text

Standing Toward the Text

By Sharon H. Ringe

Issues of biblical authority impinge on the work of the Inclusive Language Lectionary Committee. The title of this article implies the perspective on biblical authority which informs my own work, namely that the relationship between text and interpreter, and the posture assumed by the interpreter in the face of the text, affect the process and outcome of the interpretive task, even at the level of translation.

Issues of authority are implicit in the multiple functions of the Bible and, consequently, in the various criteria by which one can assess a particular translation. While it is true, for example, that the Bible is a collection of historical documents with relatively clear historical and cultural origins about which it might inform us, the Bible also speaks within communities of faith to issues of faith and ethics beyond the situations of its origin, including in the contemporary community. In an obvious way, those two attitudes or stances toward the Bible imply different questions posed to it and different views of what is important to know about it.

The task of the Inclusive Language Lectionary Committee accented the latter canonical role of the Bible over that of its giving information and insight into the life of particular historical communities and events. These two roles are not, of course, mutually exclusive. At issue is the relationship between accuracy of representation of the historical situation and wording of the text, and the concern that the very vocabulary and syntax of the English translation take into account the way the text functions in contemporary North American society. For example, "darkness" and "light" as metaphors for evil and good or ignorance and wisdom might be an accurate representation of the original Greek or Hebrew wording of a text. They are, however, inadequate as a modern rendering because of their reinforcement of the underlying racism of North American society.

Each of us on the Inclusive Language Lectionary Committee would no doubt speak differently about how this particular project has called upon us to integrate our lives as scholars and as church people. As we have carried out our task, our commitment to its completion and to the meeting of the pastoral need which prompted it has allowed us to move ahead pragmatically, without requiring prior agreement on all underlying philosophical, theological, or methodological assumptions. Thus, I claim to speak for no one else on the Committee in articulating the issue

Sharon H. Ringe is Professor of New Testament at Methodist Theological School in Delaware, Ohio. She is author of Jesus, Liberation, and the Biblical Jubilee (1985) and a contributor to Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (1985) and The Liberating Word (1976), both edited by Letty Russell. Dr. Ringe was vice-chairperson of the Inclusive Language Lectionary Committee.

553 - Standing Toward the Text

of biblical authority as I do. Nevertheless, the points which I will make seem to me to flow from an observation of what we have in fact done with the texts, of the human value system we have embodied in our work, and of the product, the revised edition of An Inclusive Language Lectionary: Years A, B, and C.

I

The work on this translation proceeded on the assumption that the authority of Scripture is not simply "extrinsic," that is, deriving from doctrinal positions concerning its divine origin or from formal conciliar or other decisions about its official canonical status. Were its authority simply extrinsic, the same conclusion about the source of that authority would be sufficient to guarantee its ongoing ability to inform the faith and the faithful. The work of the Committee would have been seen as at least unnecessary and even illegitimate. Instead, this project is predicated upon the assumption that the authority of Scripture is "intrinsic" to the Bible itself. The intrinsic authority of Scripture is due to its "performative" character. This is related to the fact that Scripture becomes authoritative in the dialogical process in which a succession of "worlds" (social and imagistic constructions of reality) intersect: the "world" in which a portion of Scripture originated and was adapted, the literary "world" created by the text itself, and the "world" of the contemporary interpreter.

The language of Scripture is primarily language that "performs." It does not simply provide information, but rather proclaims, bears witness, evokes a response, and leads to engagement in the same experience or pattern of relationship with God as that which engaged the original authors. It is social speech, growing out of the language of one community's experience and being heard into new speech/action in the communities that receive it. The language of Scripture continues to have authority as it continues to do this-to perform, not simply to inform. This ongoing authority of Scripture can be discerned in the dialogic relation between the ancient text and subsequent communities of faith, where Scripture continues to perform in such a way that it provides for those communities a glimpse of the transcendent reality of God, and of the pattern of their underlying system of convictions.

One constitutive feature of the performative nature of this language is that it is concrete and culturally particular. It is neither placeless nor timeless. Jesus' parables, for example, assume the hearers' familiarity with the agricultural practices, social customs, and political and economic organization of Palestine during the first century of the Common Era. If one ignores that context or imports assumptions proper to another place or time, the parable may either make no sense or have a different (or even the opposite) effect of that originally intended. Such a shift in meaning appears to have begun already in the process of formation of the synoptic Gospels. The parable of the Samaritan (Luke 10:25ff.), heard in our own day or in the cosmopolitan context of a city in

554 - Standing Toward the Text

the Diaspora, can clarify the meaning of being a neighbor. If indeed the parable can be traced to Jesus or to the early Palestinian church, however, the historically rooted tension between Jews and Samaritans would have made it more clearly a parable of reversal, clarifying how present standards of "in-group" and "out-group," or of good and bad, would be transformed in the economy of the realm of God.

From this brief illustration, it is clear that the ancient language and image structures are crucial. They cannot be dismissed lightly in the process of translation and interpretation in favor of a neutral or general paraphrase. Rather, it is essential that we work at comprehending the social circumstances that gave rise to the language, precisely in order to appreciate how it actually did perform-to find out what pattern of conviction informed the original text and to what sort of God it pointed. Translation and authority are thus closely linked. The highly specific and even idiosyncratic vocabulary, syntax, and metaphors of Scripture which enabled its performance in its own community of origin require interpretation and translation into equally concrete and culturally particular language if its performance is to be consistent in subsequent settings. The authority of Scripture becomes available in that process of translation which allows appropriate points of correspondence and parallel speech to be discerned in the hearing or reading community. ¹Biblical translation thus involves a full-scale project of interpretation and re-expression. We cannot, in faithfulness to the meaning and intent of the original text, mechanically repeat the ancient words and forms, for in so doing we might well completely reverse what is mediated to a modern audience.

A parenthetical note is in order at this point. The combination of performative and dialogic aspects of biblical authority, with the attendant qualities of concreteness, vividness, and cultural particularity of biblical language, points to one weakness in our translation, or at least one point at which I wish we could have done better. Our assignment, which was to stay as close as possible to the language of the Revised Standard Version because of the familiarity of those speech patterns to hearers in the churches, prevented our pushing to really fresh renderings of the text that might have enhanced its performative power for modern hearers. In that sense, the task of translation in An Inclusive Language Lectionary remains incomplete.

Another dimension of the dialogic quality of biblical authority impinges on the process of translation. We are confronted not merely with a literary task of rendering the ancient language into modern

¹Many examples could be cited of English words whose meanings have changed drastically over the years or which mean the opposite in different settings, but one will suffice. When, as a child, I heard Matt. 19:14 read from the KJV--"Suffer the little children to come unto me"-I could never figure out what I had done that was so bad that it made Jesus "suffer"!

555 - Standing Toward the Text

speech that continues in some way to perform in our context as the ancient language did in its. We also have a task that faces us with problems in historical theology and church history, and problems in social history and contemporary contextualization.

Between the language of the text and us lie millennia in which other communities have appropriated the same text and experienced it as shaping not only their confession and theological reflection, but also their lives and actions. As a result, we can no longer come to the original text simply, as if that history never happened. We can hear John's language about hoi Ioudaioi only through the memory of the Holocaust, and our translation of that phrase must take that horror into account. Similarly, we can deal with Paul's appropriation of the Stoic Haustarfeln only through the history of slavery, and through the history and current experience of battered women and children whose suffering is understood by many to receive divine sanction in those texts.

A translation that proceeds from an appreciation of the dialogic component of biblical authority can no more ignore the contemporary than the ancient partners in the dialogue. Although it is clear that "the world" did not have the same referent for the biblical writers that it does for us, we cannot carry out our reading of these texts except in our modern global context, and out of what we know to be our peculiar (and peculiarly limited) standpoint.

My reading of the Bible, as a white, North American, middle class, female and feminist academic theologian (most of which categories would already be foreign to the biblical authors) cannot take place in isolation from the reading or the experience of the text by a church person from the two-thirds world, even though it would be absurd to attribute any of our questions or experiences to those in the original community from which a particular text came. Thus, I might well supplement my reading of traditional commentaries and journal articles by joining Phyllis Trible in examining what she calls "texts of terror," ² or Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in studying the church of women in the early years of Christian history, ³ in order to arrive at an understanding of these texts and periods of biblical history that restores a portion of my own history as a woman. Such a process would be significant in my own discernment of the continuing authority and voice of a particular text, and in its continuing power to "perform." Such a reading, however, needs to be complemented by attention to the reading of these traditions by scholars and those who encounter the same traditions within the faith community in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and in the black and other ethnic churches in North America. ⁴

² Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984).

³Elisabeth Schüsser Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983).

⁴ Ernesto Cardenal's work in Nicaragua (published in several volumes as The Gospel in Solentiname [Maryknoll: Orbis Press]) and Elsa Tamez's on-going study of Hagar are indispensable resources. Other resources are beginning to become available through the Center for Mexican American Culture (San Antonio, Texas) and other regional and local organizations, as well as from academic theologians.

556 - Standing Toward the Text

Though it is true that the biblical writers were not addressing the same issues of nuclear threat, liberation struggles from the consequences of colonialism, or technological crises in the definition of life and humanness, we must do our translation holding precisely such urgent contextual realities in the same hands which hold our pen and our lexicon. We cannot abandon our twentieth-century identification as we come to the text if whatever authority it bears is to continue to be meaningful.

III

The view of biblical authority with which we have been working, one stemming both from its performative quality and from its dialogic appropriation rather than from extrinsic attributions of its worth, requires that we pose a further question to each text we consider: to what does it refer? As a consequence either of the human authors' mistaking their own reflection for the face of God and hearing in the hollow gongs of their own idolatry the divine-human dialogue, or because of the social consequences of what was actually "performed" and evoked in the lives and behavior of the immediate and subsequent hearers, it is possible that what is mediated to us is neither God nor a pattern of convictions evoked by a covenant rooted in God's grace. And it is, of course, at least equally possible that we might be deluded in our hearing. In any case, the question of criteria becomes paramount.

To highlight the negative side of the issue, on what grounds might we say of a text that it is not revelatory of "the divine or an authentic relation to the divine" (to use the terms in which Rosemary Ruether has posed the issue)? ⁵ Ruether's criterion-"whatever denies, diminishes, or distorts the full humanity of women is appraised as not redemptive"-is one to which I could readily agree. But I am reluctant to rest content with that. Since it is clearly a criterion extrinsic to the text, acceptance of it would leave us open to the importation of other extrinsic criteria of authority.

But there are images in Scripture itself that suggest a criterion intrinsic to the text-and, indeed, one consonant with the one of Ruether's to which I am drawn. One such set of images is found in the prophet's vision of a transformed and redeemed creation in Isa. 11: 6-9. The cast of characters includes the wolf and the lamb, little children and poisonous snakes, herbivore and carnivore, but the direction in which the text calls us is clearly an argument from the lesser to the greater. According to this argument, if the natural world would be so ordered and transformed under the sovereignty of God, so much the more would such transformation mark human institutions and communities, since we of all the creatures find ourselves blessed by a covenant relationship with the God whose intent this vision expresses. In this vision, our usual human categories of strong and weak and our ready labels of natural

⁵ Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), p. 19.

557 - Standing Toward the Text

enemies are transcended in a peaceable realm. The whole vision is summarized in v. 9: "They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea."

What is suggested is clearly a minimalist criterion: no hurt or destruction. But because that criterion is explicitly linked to the knowledge of God (which implies relationship or covenant), that simple absence of harm participates in the holy. What that would mean in a constructive or applied sense, when one is confronted with destructive and devouring patterns of oppression, would of course need to be discerned in particular, concrete circumstances. The image from Isaiah, however, provides a question for us to ask not only of institutions or behavior, but also of a text itself. Does this text function to hurt or destroy any in "God's holy mountain"? If it does, then what it " performs" is clearly not of God, and its authority is broken. Similarly, that image might suggest a canon against which to test the language into which we would translate the ancient speech and images of the Bible. In its performance, does that language hurt or destroy? If so, it is inadequate to the expression of what is appropriate to God, or to the human vocation to live toward the image of God in which we are made. "They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea."