435 - Popularizing the Bible

Popularizing the Bible
By Patrick D. Miller

Genesis is the book of the month-or rather of the autumn. Never in my lifetime has there been such widespread cultural focus on a book of the Bible. Books on Genesis are advertised all over the place-and few of them by biblical scholars. Time did a cover story on Genesis (October 28, 1996) heralding "a spirited new debate over the meaning of Genesis." I do not know whether Bill Moyers has a kind of instinctive sense of what popular culture might be interested in at a more intellectual level or has instilled such a cultural confidence in him that he can create a wide interest simply by his skill at setting up a television series focusing upon something he thinks matters. I expect it is the latter, but whatever the case, he has done it again, and on a rather unlikely topic-a biblical book. By the time this editorial appears, millions of people will have watched a series of weekly conversations on the Book of Genesis, extending from October through December. At the time of writing these words, I have seen only two of the episodes-conversations about Genesis 3 and Genesis 4. That small taste, however, evokes a number of responses, and not surprisingly. The Bible may be a holy book, but precisely because it is such an icon of our culture, any handling of it prompts varied reactions.

One of those reactions is gratitude for the possibility of sustained and intelligent conversation about a biblical book. Moyers has chosen well, even if his choice and format is in imitation of Burton Visotsky's livingroom conversations about the Book of Genesis over the past several years in New York City. Genesis is not only the beginning of the biblical story. It surely is as formative, foundational, and influential as any biblical book, including the Gospels. Anyone who has spent time in its study knows that there are always further depths to plumb, surprising discoveries, and sobering if not disturbing and abrasive resonances between its words, its stories, and our own life and faith. It speaks about who we are as man and woman, as individual and community, as chosen people and international community, and in our relation to God. It reminds us that the natural world is creation and so are we. Sin, sex, and social order are all to the fore in this book. Its scope is universal, but it also has a particularity that makes it the ultimate source of the story that Jews and Christians claim is the key to the meaning of our existence. Surely, no book of the Bible better invites Christians and Jews into a conversation together than does the Book of

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Genesis, and that conversation is one of the prime contributions of the television series.

It is also, of course, one of its problems. The universal scope of the book, which does not disappear when Abraham comes on the scene (see Gen. 12:3), can mask the particularity that is already indicated in the call of Abraham-the language of election is all through the Abrahamic traditions. Admittedly, the discussion so far has been confined to Genesis 1-11, where the focus is indeed universal, but already there one becomes conscious of the varieties of interpretations, for example, when the subject of death arises in discussion of Genesis 3. There is a particular angle on death in the story that Christians know. It begins in Genesis 3, but it includes the cross and the resurrection. Genesis 3 is part of why Christians believe that death is an enemy, but it is only part. Others, however, may view death simply as the natural conclusion to life. Indeed, there are parts of Genesis that fit such a natural reading of death. It is difficult to talk about such a ''topic under the best of circumstances. The conversations with diverse religious and nonreligious participants tend to let more controversial and divisive matters slide by.

The Bible is so much a part of our culture, religious and otherwise, that discussions of it need to be widely inclusive, and that is one of the virtues of the format Moyers adopted. That diversity of participants helps to create a lively conversation as very different voices and interests, for whom the Book of Genesis may be sacred, a classic, foundational, or important in a variety of ways, bring their various perspectives to bear on the subject. If one doubted the capacity of the Bible to shape thinking and affect life, these conversations have provided confirmation of its continuing capacity for doing just that.

There is a certain amount of irony, however, in the fact that the more confessional approach to Scripture, which, one could argue, is the context out of which the Bible arose and for which it was created, is the dimension that is most in danger of being lost in the kind of popularizing that goes on in the serious and vigorous encounter Moyers' groups create. It is not simply that evangelical voices will not be heard. I assume that Bill Moyers' own background in the Southern Baptist Convention will assure their inclusion. The wide diversity of participants almost guarantees that. But what it does not guarantee-and may preclude to some degree-is an uncovering of the power of the book as a testimony of faith, more specifically its revelatory character as the word of God. One comes away more aware of the rough manger in which the Word is cradled, if I may appropriate Luther's way of speaking about the Bible, and less in awe of the divinity it cradles.

At the same time, and at the risk of seeming contradictory, one of my impressions from the sessions on Genesis 3 and 4 was the often uncritical approach to these texts on the part of some of the participants. The problem was not a matter of inattention to sources, such as the Yahwist or the Priestly source. Those are secondary concerns. What sometimes seemed ignored was the text itself and any sense that there is indeed a text in the

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house that must be studied carefully before one can be sure what it says. The perspicuity of Scripture is an important claim, but it has to do with the clarity of Scripture for faith and salvation and does not ever preclude careful reading of the text. All too often, the speakers in the Genesis conversations seemed free to read anything and everything out of the text. This was done: at a very sophisticated level and so not subject to the criticisms of simplistic literalism. But the interpretive dangers are just as acute. Literalism, whose problems are real and insuperable, at least focuses upon the text. Preachers are constantly warned, and so constantly fearful, of springboarding from a text to saying whatever one wants. Such a criticism may be too strong for these conversations. But all too often I found myself saying, "Hey, where did that interpretation come from?" and unable to see any plausible connection to the text under discussion.

Contemporary theology and biblical studies have opened wide the door to a multivalent reading of Scripture. That is, in general, a good development. We have broken out of a modern concern for the meaning of a text-a concern that many of our interpretive forebears did not share-and have come to recognize that any text is rich and open toward a breadth of interpretive inferences as well as that readers and audiences have much to do with what is heard from the text. The Genesis conversations are a good example of that. But the openness of the text does not mean that there are no misreadings of the text or, more to the point, no possible misrepresentations and misunderstandings of the text. The aim of careful exegesis is as much to avoid misunderstanding as it is to elicit meaning from the text. The conversations on Genesis are helpful at the point of making us aware of the richness of the text. They are somewhat misleading as they lull us into a kind of anything-goes mentality. The pastor's work at interpreting texts in preparation for preaching is not the practice of an arcane discipline. It is careful meditation on a text to hear as much as one can and to avoid mishearing.

Other segments of the Genesis series may let the text itself exercise more control of the conversation than seemed to be the case in the treatments of Genesis 3 and 4. I am led to believe that some of the episodes will include a larger number of biblical scholars who will probably represent a more critical and canonical reading of the text. Meanwhile, the segments I have viewed, despite my unease and maybe through my unease, remind me of my tendency toward reductionistic reading of the biblical texts and my unwitting inclination, as theologian and exegete, to act in an imperialistic fashion with regard to the text, claiming in a careful and critical reading of it what really may be an effort at hegemony over the text and resistance toward the claims of others for an equal right to speak about its meaning. The authors, artists, and philosophers who do not speak as critical interpreters will uncover some dimensions of the text that my "discipline" misses.
In speaking about the Genesis series, Bill Moyers has stated that one of his intentions was to present "a different kind of religious discourse ... beyond the political rhetoric about God that's made it so difficult for us to hear one another." His model of that discourse is to be applauded, and the

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concerns expressed above are put forth in the context of applause. Whether it will address those whose "political rhetoric" bothers him is quite uncertain, but many of those ears may be too stopped up to hear a different kind of discourse. It is important, however, that the large number of people who, like Moyers, are bothered by such political rhetoric about God but care deeply about the Scriptures and see in them the rule of faith and practice be encouraged and led in helpful directions. The capacity of the mass media to contribute to that enterprise has never been indicated more markedly than in these conversations on Genesis. Their flaws do not diminish the significance of the effort.

Meanwhile, the same week as the Time cover on Genesis, the front page of the business section of The New York Times (October 28, 1996) confronted us with the headline "The Bible, .a Perennial, Runs into Sales Resistance," and we heard from the director of sales and marketing at Oxford University Press, for centuries a major publisher of Bibles, that the Bible is no longer recession-proof." A poll conducted by Tyndale House Publishers was quoted as discovering that nine out of ten Americans own a Bible but less than half of them read it and that the major reason the Bible is not read is that it is hard to understand. So it really is more an icon than a rule. And anything Moyers can do to open it up is needed and welcome.

-Patrick D. Miller