The Bible in Transmission – Spring 2021 by Bible Society

Spring 2021

The Bible in Transmission A forum for change in church and culture

What is the Bible?

Contents The Bible in Transmission is published by Bible Society and is fully protected by copyright. Nothing may be reproduced either wholly or in part without prior permission. The views expressed are those of individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the position of Bible Society. The Bible in Transmission is now featured on our web site. All previous and current articles can be found at: biblesociety.org.uk Photos: ©Kevin Carden-88940014/ Dreamstime.com; ©Tima Miroshnichenko5199816/pexels.com; ©iStockphoto.com/ Pleio; ©iStockphoto. com/GeorgeKurgin; ©iStockphoto.com/ thomas-bethge; ©iStockphoto. com/fstop123; ©Didgeman-898330/ pixabay.com

3 Editorial Rhiannon McAleer 5

The Bible as literature Leland Ryken

Sacred text or Hebraic romance?: Literary devices and biblical intents in the book of Tobit Fleur Dorrell

The unfolding story of Scripture Andrew Ollerton

Continuity and discontinuity: The relationship between the two testaments David Allen

Textuality and orality in the Bible Jerry Hwang

On the authority and credibility of Scripture Walter Moberly

Celebrating, living and sharing God’s Word Peter Brignall

Editorial

Rhiannon McAleer Dr Rhiannon McAleer is Head of Research at Bible Society.

One of the unexpected but wonderful things I have learnt in my time as a researcher for Bible Society is people, whether active Christian, spiritually curious, or ardent atheist, generally enjoy the opportunity to talk about faith, God and, yes, even the Bible. The kind of questions we ask in surveys and focus groups – ‘describe your spiritual journey so far’, ‘what is your relationship with the Bible’, and even ‘what do you think the Bible is’ – are the kind of questions we rarely give time to in the daily hubbub of life. Yet making space for reflection and conversation on these deceptively simple questions is often deeply affirming, fruitful and even, as a non-Christian researcher described to me recently when reporting back to us, ‘life giving’. It is in this ‘back to basics’ spirit that this edition of The Bible in Transmission focusses on the important issue, ‘What is the Bible?’. As we shall see through the contributions to this journal, this is a fundamental question for Christians, with significant consequences for how we practice and understand our faith. Before delving into these, however, I wish to share with you some data that suggests how this question is approached by the population at large. In Autumn 2018, Bible Society commissioned what we believe to be the largest survey of attitudes to Christianity and the Bible undertaken in England and Wales. Working with respected research agency YouGov, we interviewed 19,875 adults, asking them over 100 questions on their spiritual

practices, thoughts about Christianity and beliefs about the Bible.1 The results were simultaneously affirming and, as we have to come to expect from faith-focused surveys, significantly challenging. It will probably come as little surprise to you that over the population, comparatively few read (or listen to) the Bible regularly – just 6% of those surveyed say they read the Bible weekly or more outside of church services, while 84% say they ‘hardly ever’ or ‘never’ read it. Significantly, the vast majority have no interest in changing this – 71% say they are not interested in discovering more about the Bible, although an encouraging 23% – far more than the number of regular churchgoers – say they are interested. We think this lack of Bible interest and engagement is driven by a number of factors: accessibility, poor experience in the past and, most significantly, perception of what they think the Bible is and its place in the world. Relevancy is a key perception issue. For many, the Bible does have some value culturally and in education – 61% of those surveyed agree ‘it’s good for children to know at least some Bible stories’. Far fewer, however, see the Bible as something for their own lives – 18% agree with the statement ‘the Bible is relevant to me personally’, while 59% actively disagreed. The respondents were split on whether the Bible has something meaningful to say about life today (35% agree, 27% neither agree nor disagree and 30% disagree).

Transmission

NOTES 1. For context, a typical poll reported in the media will have about 1000– 3000 respondents.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given these responses, the word most frequently picked to describe the Bible in our survey was ‘outdated’ – approximately a third (36%) of respondents selected this. This was followed by ‘contradictory’ (32%), ‘judgemental’ (25%), ‘guidance’ (22%) and ‘complex’ (19%). There is no reason to think these perspectives will change in the future. Ask the 5671 18–34 year olds in our study what words they would use to describe the Bible and the results are more sobering again. Just under half (47%) describe the Bible as ‘outdated’, while 39% describe it as ‘contradictory’. A quarter (24%) describe it as homophobic. In contrast, the most frequently selected word by those aged over 65 is ‘guidance’ (29%). An invitation for a new way of seeing the Bible lies at the heart of much of our work in England and Wales. Our hope is that through high quality missional work we will provoke and inspire those at a distance from the Bible to encounter it anew, experiencing and coming to understand it in a way they perhaps had not before. Fresh encounter is, of course, not limited to those at a distance from the Bible and, indeed, new perspective is a theme which runs throughout this edition of Transmission, as well as warnings against dichotomy, and fractured and narrow approaches to Scripture. One perspective on what the Bible is is offered by Leland Ryken, who challenges us to take seriously the Bible as a work of literature. It is not uncommon to hear the Bible described as literature in the general population, particularly from those who are interested in cultural and historical value of the Bible, although this is typically as far as their interest goes. Leland, however, leads us to see that approaching the Bible as literature need not confine us to the profane or fictional, realms. Rather, it is methodologically appropriate and deeply experientially enriching. In dialogue with this, a close read of the relationship between literature and sacred text is given by Fleur Dorrell in her contribution on Tobit as a sacred text. Drawing out the literary qualities of Tobit, Fleur argues that the text is both romance and a sacred text, with continuing power to speak to readers today. The themes of literature and experience similarly run through Andrew Ollerton’s article on the unfolding story of Scripture. Tasked with the not inconsiderable challenge of defining ‘what is the Bible’ in a way that reflects Bible Society’s commitment to generous orthodoxy across Christian traditions, Andrew summaries for us his three fold model of the Bible (literature, story and Revelation), with focus on the second dimension, story. ‘Stories’ are one of the most common words associated with the Bible in our research. Andrew, however, demonstrates that the Bible is not just a collection of stories or indeed sayings and moral lessons. Rather, it is an anthology of literature forming one coherent and all-encompassing story.

Compellingly, Andrew outlines that while its end is foretold, the story is not yet finished. It is our task to immerse ourselves in the story of the Bible, becoming part of this great unfolding drama. Connection and integration through the Scriptures is also addressed by David Allen in his article on the continuity and discontinuity between the testaments. As we have seen above ‘contradiction’ is a common perception of the Bible, as indeed is the view that the Old and New Testaments present quite different portraits of God. David deftly demonstrates that we need not choose between a reading of the Bible as entirely continuous or full of discontinuity, or indeed fear this tension. Both are present in the Scriptures, and both must be acknowledged for a truly holistic, and enriching, reading of the Bible. Another powerful argument against dichotomy is given by Jerry Hwang in his paper on textuality and orality in the Bible. Addressing the question of whether the Bible is in character oral or textual, Jerry argues that it is necessarily both. To focus on one dimension to the detriment of the other not only neglects a significant dimension of the gift of Scripture and the human experience it speaks to, but risks addressing ‘limits’ the Bible does not actually have. Walter Moberely addresses the theme of this edition with a nuanced paper of the authority and credibility of the Bible. Outlining that ‘the Bible is our privileged guide for making sense of the world in which we live’, Walter calls us to reflect that we can trust the Bible, not through intellectual argument (or at least just alone), but because it resonates with our deepest intuitions, the lived actions of others, and through our own lived experience. Finally, Peter Brignall shares with us the background to the hugely ambitious celebration campaign The God Who Speaks, a campaign designed to inspire the Catholic community in use of the Scriptures. Using art, music, prayer and liturgy resources in schools, nationwide tours, and innovative grassroots networks, the scale of the campaign is truly incredible and is sure touch thousands of lives through 2021 and beyond. My hope for this edition is that it will inspire you to reflect on what you think the Bible is. Perhaps you will be able to do this with a friend or family member and share with each other also your journey in the Scriptures so far. I hope also that, in some small way it will equip you. The tragedy wreaked by Covid-19 only continues to grow. While we cannot know the full impact the pandemic will have on faith and spirituality, we do know bereavement, illness and major life change such as job loss are significant triggers for spiritually open people to explore faith more deeply. If, in this time, they turn to the Church, we need to be able to answer and, in turn, invite an answer back, to the question, ‘What is the Bible?’.

The Bible as literature Every book needs to be read and assimilated in keeping with the kind of book it is. This is a principle that is regrettably missing from many people’s experience of the Bible.

Leland Ryken Leland Ryken is Emeritus Professor of English at Wheaton College, Illinois, where he has taught for more than fifty years. He has published some sixty books on a range of topics, with the Bible as literature constituting a third of his corpus.

The Bible is a predominantly literary book. This is not something of interest only to a handful of people with literary interests. It is something that applies to every reader and teacher of the Bible. Not applying literary criteria to the Bible is a missed opportunity of massive proportions. It leaves us with an emaciated Bible, not the fullness that the Bible actually possesses. For purposes of this article, I will ask and answer three questions, as follows: Why is it important to read and interpret the Bible as literature? What does the concept of the Bible as literature not mean? What does it mean that the Bible is literature?

A literary approach to the Bible I will begin with a defence of the literary approach to the Bible because unless we are convinced of the legitimacy and importance of such an approach, we have no incentive to practice it or even explore it as a possibility in our Bible reading. I have already stated the most foundational reason we need to read and interpret the Bible as literature, namely, that any book needs to be read in keeping with the kind of book that it is. This is a principle that applies to all of life. We need to accomplish any task using the right equipment, which in turn is determined by the nature of the task.

The first reason to read and interpret the Bible as literature is thus that the Bible requires it by virtue of being a literary book. A story is a story and needs to be assimilated as such. The goal of Bible reading is to experience a passage as fully as possible. If we do not apply literary analysis to a literary passage, we are not reliving the text in its fullness. To take this one step further, handling the Bible in keeping with its literary nature spares us from a type of reductionism that is widespread among Bible readers and teachers. A literary approach accepts that everything that biblical authors put into their writing is important and worthy of our attention. In fact, God inspired the authors to compose as they did, including the literary qualities of the Bible. The most common way of handling Bible passages is to view them as a delivery system for an idea. But only a small proportion of the Bible fits that criterion. A literary text invites us to enter a whole world in which we take up residence. If we accept the invitation, we will relive a text as fully as possible and then look out from the world of the text to our own lives. Additionally, a literary approach is attentive to the genres of the Bible – the types of writing such as narrative, poetry and vision. This is important for two reasons. One is that paying attention to the genres of the Bible alerts us to the variety of material that we find in the Bible, thereby sparing us from a common tendency to reduce the Bible to all one kind of writing. Every genre has its rules of operation. Knowing these rules can guide our experience with a text. It informs us what to look 5

Transmission

NOTES 1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Confessions of an inquiring mind. 2. See L Ryken, A Complete Handbook of Literary Forms in the Bible (Wheaton, ILL: Crossway, 2014).

for and enables us to see the details of the text as they really are. This, in turn, opens the way for us to read and teach the whole Bible. A pastor once confided that although he would often read a psalm to people in the hospital, until he embraced the literary approach to the Bible he would never consider choosing a psalm for a sermon because he ‘didn’t know what to do with it’. If we master the literary genres of the Bible, we will know what to do with any passage in the Bible. Much more can be said about the advantages that come when we approach the Bible in keeping with the literary book that it is, but enough has been said that you should be open to the possibility that this is something that deserves exploration. A summary statement is that when we approach the Bible as literature, we can be confident that we are doing the right things with Bible passages. We are prepared to do something with everything that biblical authors put into their writings. We do not need to escape from a biblical text to its context or to a realm of theological ideas extracted from the text.

Four fallacies Before we can fully embrace a literary approach to the Bible, we need to be relieved of legitimate anxieties that might attach to the idea. As an evangelical spokesman for the literary approach to the Bible, I have regularly sought to allay the misgivings that my audiences might feel about my topic. I will follow that procedure here as well. Before speaking of what the concept of the Bible means, I will delineate what it does not mean, phrasing the potential objections as fallacies. Fallacy #1: to speak of the Bible as literature seems like a liberal idea and a product of modern unbelief. Several misconceptions converge here. First, the idea of the Bible as literature is not a modern idea. It began with the writers of the Bible. They are the ones who gave us a literary Bible. They were not only masters of literary craft; they also sometimes spoke with technical precision about the genres in which they wrote or spoke – chronicle, song, epistle, vision, saying, parable and others. Furthermore, such towering figures from the past as Augustine, Luther, and Calvin did not doubt that the Bible possesses literary qualities. Today the literary approach to the Bible is widely practiced in colleges and seminaries. As we survey the field, we find the same range of attitudes, from conservative to liberal, which we find with other approaches to the Bible. The literary approach is no more subject to aberration than other approaches. When I teach my college course in the Bible as literature, I begin by sharing a dozen Bible verses in which the authors make claims about Scripture – its inspiration, reliability, truthfulness and status as being the Word of God. Then I assert that a literary approach needs to begin where every other approach begins – by affirming as true all of the Bible’s claims about itself. 6

Fallacy #2: to say that the Bible is literary is to imply that it is fictional rather than factual. The fear is that the characters and events that appear in the Bible might seem to have the same made-up mode of existence as those that appear in a novel or fantasy story. The fear is unwarranted. Although fictionality is common in literature, the qualities that make a text literary are unaffected by whether the material is historically accurate or fictional. A text is literary whenever it displays ordinary literary qualities. Fallacy #3: to approach the Bible as literature means approaching it only as literature, without attention to the Bible’s unique spiritual qualities. This fear is greatly exaggerated. We do not urge people to avoid reading the Bible as history for fear that they will read it only as a history book. The very nature of the Bible makes it impossible to read it only as literature or only as history. Three types of writing converge in the Bible – the literary, the historical and the religious or theological. Most passages combine them. To neglect any one of them is to short-change the Bible. Most often, the history and theology are packaged in literary form, with the result that there is no history and theology without the literary form in which they are expressed. Fallacy #4: to speak of the Bible as literature is to reduce it to the level of ordinary literature. To say that the Bible is literature is simply an objective description of the form in which the Bible comes to us. There is no intention either to elevate or demote the Bible. The experience of British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge is instructive on this point. Regarding his methodology for reading the Bible, Coleridge claimed that it was his practice to read the Bible ‘as I should read any other work’. But the effect of his encounter with the Bible was that ‘in the Bible there is more that finds me than I have experienced in all other books put together … the words of the Bible find me at greater depths of my being.’1 In other words, if we read the Bible as literature, it elevates itself and reveals its unique spiritual quality and power. As with the other fallacies I have noted, it would be tragic if we allowed ourselves to be deterred from reading the Bible as literature by fears that turn out to be fallacies.

Four literary traits of the Bible The traits that make a written work literature, whether in the Bible or beyond it, is of course a very large topic. For my purposes here, I will divide the material into four topics. They provide a good starting point for answering the question of what it means that the Bible is a literary book. 1. Literary genres in the Bible The issue of literary genres is the most obvious and incontrovertible feature of literature. A literary

Winter 2020-21

genre is a kind or type of writing. Throughout human history, there has been general agreement that some genres are literary and others are expository or informational. At least 80 per cent of the Bible is packaged in the form of literary genres. The four major ones are narrative or story, poem, vision and epistle. However, the actual number of literary forms in the Bible exceeds 200.2 Is an awareness of genre important? Yes, we cannot relive a Bible passage fully without interacting with it according to the rules of its genre. A story, for example, consists of plot, setting and character. A poem is comprised of images and figures of speech. These are what we immediately encounter as we begin to read. If we do not analyse and assimilate a text in these terms, we are not reliving the text. That is why a noted preacher observed to me that ‘all genuine Bible exposition is literary analysis’. 2. Human experience: the subject of every literary passage The subject matter or content of literature is human experience, concretely portrayed. A story or poem or vision, and even an epistle, is not made up of ideas. It consists of recognisable human experiences that we vicariously share as we read. For literary scholars, this is simply a familiar fact and tool of classroom teaching. If it seems unfamiliar to you, I would encourage you to operate on the premise that it is true, and then see what doors open up to you as you apply the principle. The list of recognisable human experiences embodied in the story of Cain (Genesis 4.1–16) keeps expanding as we start to name them – unchecked sin, lack of self-control, hatred, domestic violence, attempted cover-up, harbouring a grudge, giving in to an evil impulse, etc. American novelist John Steinbeck famously said that the story of Cain is the signature story of the human race because it is everyone’s story. The truth that literature, including the literature of the Bible, conveys to us is truthfulness to human experience. A major part of the edification that a literary text imparts to us comes as we relive an experience from the viewpoint that the author has planted in the text. The author of the story of Cain does not hand us an idea but instead gets us to share events from life of Cain. Literature is the voice of authentic human experience. It is the human race’s testimony to its own experience. A literary approach to the Bible makes this available to us. The Bible is more than a book of ideas, and we need to experience it as such. 3.Showing rather than telling My next point is an expansion of what I have said about the subject of literature being recognisable human experience. It is a cliché in literature courses and imaginative writing courses that the literary author’s task is to show rather than tell. To ‘tell’ here means to state a truth abstractly and propositionally

and as a generalisation. To ‘show’ means to embody or incarnate human experience concretely. For example, the sixth commandment of the decalogue tells us in the form of a proposition, ‘You shall not murder’ (Genesis 29.13). The story of Cain (Genesis 4.1–16) shows us that same truth in by means of characters and events occurring in specific settings. When asked to define neighbour, Jesus avoided telling us in the form of a dictionary definition and instead showed us in the form of a story about a good Samaritan (Luke 10.25–37). What are the implications of the impulse of literature to embody and enact rather than summarise in the form of abstractions? It requires that we read with what contemporary brain research has taught us to call the right side of the brain. Whereas the left side of the human brain processes ideas and abstract concepts, the right hemisphere is active with sensory stimuli and concrete images. All of us possess both capacities, and we need to exercise both when reading the Bible. My appeal as a literary scholar is that we need to activate our image-making capacity as we interact with the Bible. 4. Literary artistry and beauty Literature is an art form. It is the product of human creativity and a display of craftsmanship. The medium of this art form is words carefully arranged into larger units. The authors of the Bible, writing under the inspiration of God, met these criteria. They were wordsmiths and creators of verbal beauty. The storytellers in the Bible knew how to construct well-made plots and mold real-life materials into memorable characters. The poets of the Bible, including Jesus, spoke naturally in the verse form of parallelism, in which what is stated in one line is expressed in different words but the same grammatical form in the next line. It is no wonder that the writer of Ecclesiastes spoke of himself as assembling his book ‘with great care’ and as seeking ‘to find words of delight’ (Ecclesiastes 12.9–10). The beauty of literary form that we find in the Bible is ready to be enjoyed and admired. All we need to do is awaken our capacity for it.

Summary The literary parts of the Bible adhere to the usual traits that we find in literature universally. If we attune ourselves to the genres of the Bible, to the universal human experiences concretely presented and to the beauty of literary form that we find in the Bible, we will not only possess a Bible that we have perhaps not fully known. We will also find the rewards of experiencing that Bible that God gave us.

Sacred text or Hebraic romance? Literary devices and biblical intents in the book of Tobit

Fleur Dorrell Fleur Dorrell is Catholic Scripture Engagement Manager for Bible Society and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.

The image for this article is taken from a painting by Davide Ghirlandaio (1452–1525), ‘Tobias and the Angel’; tempera and gold on wood, circa. 1479; Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York. Photo by FLL Fund, 1913.

Is the book of Tobit a sacred text as the Roman Catholic Church upholds by its inclusion within her official canon, or an Hebraic romance as defined by its exclusion from the Protestant and Jewish canons? Using Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative to explore some of the literary devices and biblical intents in Tobit, I argue that Tobit is primarily concerned with divine revelation and holy living, and defend it as a sacred text.

Hidden or revealed? The word ‘apocrypha’ in Greek means ‘hidden, secret or mysterious’ and is found in the Septuagint.1 The Early Church Fathers used the term to denote that which is spurious or heretical. The Apocrypha became the name of those books or parts of books that were included in the Septuagint and Vulgate translations of the Old Testament but not in the main Jewish canon of the Hebrew Scriptures or the Protestant Bible. Scripture was classified according to at least two levels of decreasing authority and doctrinal use. Tobit was accepted by the Council of Trent (1545–63) as Jerome had supposedly translated it from Aramaic into the Latin Vulgate in one day. If this were the only reason, it could have been removed at a later date.2 Yet what if radical adaptations of texts operated in the literature of ancient Israel prior to the closure of the canon? Given that the coming together of the elements of the Bible must have been extremely slow, it is hard to rule out canonical manipulation, or differences between some Jewish and Christian approaches to biblical interpretation. The search for the literal sense is common to both traditions but is more

pronounced in Jewish circles where language rather than theology has dominated Jewish exegesis. Tobit challenges us since its date, place, original language of composition and content are not conclusively agreed.3 There are manuscripts of Tobit written in nine different languages with at least three Greek rescensions.4 The current consensus is that it was probably written in Aramaic during the second or third centuries BCE, was handed down in Greek translation by the early Christians, and appears among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Tobit’s significance relating to theodicy, mercy, retribution, prayer, almsgiving, marriage, burial, exile, eschatology and revelation cannot be ignored. The appearance of an angel and a demon in Tobit also marks a transition between their scant references in the Old Testament and their more prominent role in the New Testament. However, many scholars describe Tobit as a Hebraic romance because of the central purpose of quest, its historical and geographical inaccuracies, and literary manipulation of time and character. Yet if this is true of Tobit then it is certainly true of other parts of the Bible, which leads us to consider: What was Tobit‘s intended purpose? Are sacred texts and literary art incompatible? Alter questions whether we can truly understand a Hebrew writer with twenty-first century analysis.5 He recognises the freedom of the storyteller to shape his/her story to suit its message. The writer, author or editor assumes a literary omniscience in order to identify what God speaks through leaders, priests, judges, kings, prophets and angels while the characters only know their own words

Winter 2020-21

and actions.6 The reader is given knowledge that is not given to the story’s characters and this device creates suspense between what is hidden and what is revealed. From the ancient Israelite perspective, revelation is not prior to, or external to the text; revelation is in and of the text.

Parallel lives, parallel lines The message of Tobit is theological – it is a didactic text of two families united by marriage after several misfortunes, but who through fidelity to God, prove that God is just. Suffering is not a punishment but a test. The believer is called to be merciful and to trust in God. Dialogue is paramount here because unlike fiction, biblical dialogue always points to God or comes from God. The writers’ choice of dialogue and narrative pace, repetitions and parallels; lexical nuances; comedy and tragedy, irony and metaphor are just some of the literary devices biblical writers employed to convey their desired truths. The difficulty today lies in our dependence on translations to make sense of any of these literary devices. Set in Nineveh and Ecbatana during the exile of the Northern Israelites, the book of Tobit recounts two descendants of Naphtali, the ageing Tobit and his young kinswoman, Sarah, and how they endure parallel misfortunes but are ultimately vindicated. The story is both deeply humourous and religious. Tobit is made blind despite his kindness while Sarah is denied marital fulfilment. Their prayers are answered by the archangel, Raphael, who appears disguised as Azarias and guides Tobit’s son, Tobias, on a quest to retrieve his father’s money in Rages, Media. The readers are let in on the disguise, but the human characters remain unaware until the end. The story is told from two different viewpoints, the first part by Tobit and the rest by a third person, an omniscient narrator.7 The plot is enriched by holding the characters’ actions and divine judgement in creative tension. Alter observes that repetitive patterns, especially of symmetrical double plots and a recurring use of irony lend dramatic force and psychological depth. We see this between chapters 2–6 with Tobit as a victim of blindness and poverty and Sarah as a victim of a possessive demon; Tobit falsely accuses his wife while Sarah’s maid falsely accuses her; Tobit and Sarah both pray on the same day for death and ‘release’ from suffering; Raphael is concurrently sent to heal them both; the subsequent shift to Tobias alerts us that Tobias and Sarah are without siblings and both are concerned for their parents’ welfare should they die first. This culminates in the significance of Tobit’s burial of dead Jews and Raguel’s (Sarah’s father) grave for Tobias.9 Alter tells us, ‘The intersection of characters through their own words matters before all else in this narrative definition of the human predicament, but such intersection does not take place in a trackless void.’10

In the Bible, man and woman must live before God and in relation to others. This relational imperative in the book of Tobit is the crux of the plot; the journey of Tobias, the healing acts and retrieval of money are vehicles for obeying God in a life-long relationship.

Text as unity or patchwork quilt Hebrew writers, unlike our contemporaries, seek unity and coherence in their organising of the oral traditions into narratives of theology and faith.11 Much modern theology imposes limits within systematic frameworks. Whereas the ancient Hebrew writers open up possibilities through their use of language and literary devices, we see a delicate balance between the sublime and the ridiculous. There are historical and geographical problems with the text. The writers confuse the Assyrian kings, are hazy about Mesopotamian topography (the main setting) and write Tobit’s own account of whom he worshipped within Jerusalem inaccurately. As Tobit’s world was turned upside down by despair so also was Israel’s fate. We notice three textual inversions: (1) the role of men and women is reversed as Tobit’s wife Anna becomes the breadwinner (2.11); (2) Sarah cannot become a wife/mother; and (3) Deborah was Tobit’s grandmother and she instructed him as a boy.12 Later we see the animal kingdom dominating humanity: Tobit is blinded by sparrow droppings and he is also attacked by a leaping fish; bad things happen to good people. These key elements signify a greater inversion: the subjection of God’s people to the Gentile powers and Israel’s national humiliation. Yet the reader is comforted to know that just as justice is finally given to Tobit and Raguel’s families, thanks to Raphael’s fish-paste, Israel will be delivered after the destruction of Nineveh and the Jerusalem Temple will be restored. In this respect, Tobit the book and Tobit the character look towards the apocalyptic prophecy of Daniel. Therefore, theological understanding and literary mastery walk hand in hand. As Alter writes, ‘I would prefer to insist on a complete interfusion of literary art with theological, moral, or historiosophical vision, the fullest perception of the latter dependent on the fullest grasp of the former.’13

Symbolism and comedy Tobit combines symbolic humour and religious erudition with ease. From the outset, the names of the key characters are imbued with symbolism. The use of the comic narrative device of suspended faith and literary fusion provides a heady cocktail of the sacred and profane.14 This dimension to Tobit is only fully appreciated by the reader. We cannot be devastated at Tobias’ arrival into Sarah’s life because unlike Tobias we know that Raphael will heal her. The fact that this cure comprises entrails of a fish that had leapt out of a river and bitten Tobias’ foot is not the point. What is important for

NOTES 1. The term apocrypha is found in Deuteronomy 27.15; Isaiah 4.6; Psalms 17.12; 27.5; Maccabees 1, 1.23, in Ben Sirah; in Mark 4.22, Luke 8.17 and Colossians 2.3. 2. Along with Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, additions to Daniel and Esther. 3. I quote from the Authorised King James Version with Apocrypha (KJV) and the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB). 4. Arabic, Aramaic, Armenian, Ethiopian, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Syriac and Sahedic. JD Thomas, ‘The Greek Text of Tobit’, Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 91, No. 4 (1972), pp. 463–71. 5. Cf. R Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), p. 20. 6. Except for the prophets, biblical writers never spoke in their own voice. 7. This narrative device is not unique to Tobit; compare similar narrative shifts in Hosea, Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel. 8. Alter, Art, p. 91. 9. Tobit 2.10—3.17 and 6.12–15. 10. Alter, Art, p. 87. 11. Alter, Art, p. 12. 12. Although Sarah is a major character – ‘Amen’ is her only word spoken in the presence of another person (Tobit 8.8). 13. Alter, Art, p. 19.

Transmission

14. Tobit in Hebrew means ‘my good’; Raphael in Hebrew: means ‘God heals’; Azariah in Hebrew: means ‘God helps’. 15. Cf. Deuteronomy 28–29. 16. ‘The Lord orders Raphael: “bind Azazel by his hands and feet, and throw him into darkness”.’ 17. Isaiah 54.11–12; 60.1–4; 66.10–14; Micah 4.2; Zechariah 8.22; Jeremiah 3.13–16; 3.22—4.2. 18. Cf. Judith’s hymn in Judith 16 with Exodus 15; Judges 5, and Hannah’s hymn in 1 Samuel 2 with the Magnificat in Luke 1.46–55. 19. ‘ “I am about to return to him who sent me from above. Write down all that has happened.” And he rose in the air. When they stood up again, he was no longer visible’ (Tobit 12.20–21; NJB). 20. Alter, Art, p. 189.

Tobias is that Sarah ‘was destined for you from the beginning, and you are the one to save her’ (6.18; NJB). While the reader is relieved by this, we cannot but empathise with Raguel’s, Edna’s, Sarah’s and Tobit’s tears (7.7–8,16). The story unites a twofold revelation: to Tobias, that he will marry before his journey’s end, and to the future revelation of the mysterious guide – Raphael, who just happens to appear at the right time fooling Tobit and Tobias with his ancestry. Even his impatience with Tobias is comically endearing: ‘All right, I will wait, but do not take too long’ (5.8 NJB). Angels only wait for God. Thus, the journey symbolises two things: (1) Tobias’ journey of faithful duty towards his father through revelation; and (2) the giving to Tobias the thing he wants but does not as yet know he wants – Sarah. Next comes Raguel’s grave digging that is hilariously tragic despite the fact that seven husbands are already buried! He dare not check his daughter but having discovered that Tobias is alive, he then has to fill Tobias’ grave before he awakes. This device dissociates the actual event from the expected outcome. Strangely, there is no description of how Sarah’s husbands died. Is the fish-paste of liver, heart and gall magic or madness? Can odours defeat demons? The fish is not used here to share Jewish cuisine or dietary laws but as a tool for something else. Tobias’ inevitable apprehension about his first nuptials with a woman whose track record is death has to be the understatement of the story. However, in these extraordinary adventures, Raphael’s advice after his climactic revelation is well-measured. Raphael enables Tobit to become a visionary and a prophet. The scale of the story moves from domestic suffering to universal mercy with Israelite restoration and a new Jerusalem. Raphael’s speech is finer than Tobit’s, not because of novel artistry but because it is the message of God. If this were merely Hebraic romance, Jerusalem would not be as crucial at the end.

There are references to castigations for failing to observe the Law.15 Raphael also appears in 1 Enoch 10.4,16 and Tobit refers to several of the later (canonical) prophets.17 There are clear biblical allusions between Tobit’s hymn in Tobit 13 and the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 rather than seeing Tobit’s hymn as part of the original narrative. The eschatological conclusion of Tobit’s hymn is also similar to the Second Temple period psalms whereby Israel longed for deliverance, the gathering of its dispersed and the glorification of Jerusalem.18 Revelation 21.18–21, Tobit 13.16–17 and Isaiah 54.11b illustrate the architectural features of the new Temple; this is not coincidence. If John draws on Isaiah and Tobit for his prophecy it means the ‘Apocryphal’ writings are more useful than sceptics believe. Raphael’s ascension uses language similar to that used to describe Jesus’ ascension and may have provided a literary model.19 The polysemous nature of the Bible narrates stories by which readers can live in any age. The test of their relevance travels beyond the narrative itself. We are not the interpreters but the interpreted. It is Tobit’s virtuous deeds in burying Jewish corpses that attracts the enmity of the Assyrian king but ultimately gains favour with Yahweh. Inherited ties and duties are prominent not just for the human world but for one’s relationship with God.

Journey’s end

Tobit and Intertextuality

Literary works are neither true nor false and while the Bible narratives can be both literal and true, their meaning can also be imaginative and poetic. So the debate should not be are the events in Tobit true or false and therefore, canonical or apocryphal, but how do readers stand in the face of God’s revelation through the narrative? Are readers enriched by an understanding of the ancient world in which Tobit lived purely because of its literary devices, or can the Israelite God speak to the reader today about biblical intents that use the imagination to convey their divine truths?

Tobit draws on both biblical and non-biblical literature. Tobit alludes to Genesis 22, 24.1–67 and 29.1–30 which recount the sacrificial journey of Abraham and Isaac to Moriah; the journey of Abraham’s servant and Jacob to Mesopotamia; the story of Joseph and the book of Job. Tobit refers to the biblical characters Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob when advising Tobias to choose a wife from his own tribe in Tobit 4.12, thus bridging

One of the ways ancient Hebrew writers rejected polytheism was by rejecting the epic narrative in favour of new forms of writing for their monotheistic purposes. Thus, Tobit is both a sacred text and a Hebraic romance. As Alter concludes, ‘learning to enjoy the biblical stories more fully as stories, we … see more clearly what they mean to tell us about God, man and the perilously momentous realm of history.’20

This type of writing not only stabilises the words but also centralises and canonises their meanings. Sacred texts are rarely the work of one person with one pen at one time, but that does not detract from their divine inspiration. To gain credibility among readers in proving the sacred nature of the text, intertextuality ensures that one text relates to other sacred texts and emphasises common aims and ideas.

the Pentateuchal world of the patriarchs with the exilic Hebrews. The unifying dynamic here lies in the events of each story happening outside of the land of Israel. The reader is alerted to the exile’s devastating impact on the Hebrew people and that God’s relationship with Israel is not defined by or confined to geography. The hope then granted to Tobit and Sarah encourages the reader to believe that a universal hope is near.

The unfolding story of Scripture

Andrew Ollerton Dr Andrew Ollerton is the creator of The Bible Course and works with Bible Society. He recently published a new book entitled The Bible: A story that makes sense of life (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2020).

Bible Society recently tasked me with writing a paper to answer the question, ‘What is the Bible?’ My challenge was to develop a theology of the Bible that reflected Bible Society’s commitment to generous orthodoxy across Christian traditions. Most importantly the paper was to be useful, a model that could inform Bible Society’s work internally and helps us communicate the Bible externally. This article gives a brief overview of the model I developed and then unpacks one particular element of it – the unfolding story of the Bible.1

A threefold model 1. Literature Most obviously, the Bible in its material form is a collection of writings. The word ‘Bible’ comes from a Greek word (biblia), which means ‘books’. It is plural because the Bible is a diverse multivolume work collated by the Church in order to preserve her history, identity and message. This much is a matter of fact rather than a statement of faith. Considered simply as a book, the Bible is an irreplaceable piece of world-shaping literature. So our task is not to edit the content or control the reception but to boldy curate the Bible, translating and publishing it for the world. 2. Story Contrary to popular opinion, the Bible is not a random collection of pious sayings and moral lessons. The anthology of literature is woven together to form an overarching story with a coherent plotline from start to finish. The narrative

arc of Scripture incorporates both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian New Testament. It covers long stretches of ancient Near Eastern and Mediterrean history. Despite many paradoxes, tensions and digressions along the way, these two testaments bear witness to one fundamental story – the God of Israel has raised Jesus the Messiah from death. Therefore, our task is not only to curate the literature but also to narrate the overarching story of hope that centres on Jesus Christ. 3. Revelation Considered as Christian Scripture the text of the Bible is also an act of divine self-disclosure. The human words it contains are in some sense also the Word of God. Perhaps the clearest statement of this is found in Paul’s second letter to Timothy: ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God’ (3.16–17; ESV). Though distilled in human words, the Scriptures ultimately derive from the creative, dynamic and performative breath of God. The Bible is therefore a site of revelation and experience.2 It calls the reader beyond an appreciation of the literature and an understanding of the story to a profound encounter with God: ‘As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts”’ (Hebrews 3.7; ESV). We therefore curate the literature, narrate the story and seek to facilitate moments of revelation through the Holy Scriptures. At a headline level, this threefold model helps us respond to the honest question, ‘What is the Bible?’ The rest of this article will consider in more detail what it means to say that the Bible is an unfolding story. 11

Transmission

NOTES 1. Visit Bible Society’s webpage to see a popular video: ‘What is the Bible?’ www. biblesociety.org.uk/ explore-the-bible/ 2. As John Goldingay notes: ‘The biblical text has generative power to summon and evoke new life’. See his, Models for Scripture (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995), p. 252. 3. R Bauckham, ‘Reading Scripture as a Coherent Story’, in The Art of Reading Scripture (EF Davis & RB Hays eds; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 39. 4. For a helpful introduction to this distinction and it’s relevance to biblical interpretation see G Loughlin, Telling God’s Story: Bible, Church and Narrative Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge university Press, 1996), pp. 52-62. 5. See C Bartholomew & M Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding our place in the biblical story (London: SPCK, 2006). 6. NT Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (SPCK: London, 1992), pp. 41-42. 7. Cartoon by Peter Steiner in the New Yorker, July 1998. 8. For a helpful guide to what this might mean for our reading of Scripture as a whole, see R Hays, Reading Backwards (London: SPCK, 2015).

The drama of Scripture From Genesis to Revelation, the biblical writings are structured by sequences of historical events and theological reflections, which together comprise the unfolding story of God’s action in the world. Of course, the Bible contains large sections that are non-narratival in form – the ceremonial laws in Leviticus or the wisdom teachings in Proverbs. However, as Richard Bauckham has argued, while not all Scripture is generically narrative, ‘The story Scripture tells, from creation to new creation, is the unifying element that holds literature of other genres together with narrative in an intelligible whole.’3 Referring to Scripture as ‘story’ needs to further qualification in order to avoid two unhelpful extremes. A form of liberalism can reduce biblical stories to fictional tales or folklore: ‘are you sitting comfortably?’ However, 2 Peter 1.16 insists that the Scriptures bear witness to real history not ‘cleverly devised stories’. An opposite danger is a form of literalism that ignores the layers of editing and interpretation by bibilical authors themselves. With this in mind, I have found helpful the distinction made by the literary scholar Gerard Genette between story (what occurred) and narrative (how it has been told).4 For example, the four Gospels do not give CCTV-style reporting of the life of Jesus, as if to objectively reconstruct what happened. Instead, the four evangelists draw creatively on eyewitness sources in order to narrate the story of Jesus as a form of testimony: ‘These things are written that you might believe’ (John 20.31). With this in mind, perhaps the most useful way to grasp how the whole Bible forms an overarching story is through the idea of a drama or play, comprising several acts. This metaphor nicely conveys a dynamic sequence of scenes and acts that together form one coherent performance. Though the playwrite remains out of sight, their purpose and intent plays out through the characters on stage. The application of this metaphor to the Bible has been given fresh energy in recent decades by the likes of Lesslie Newbigin and Tom Wright. More recently, Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen have provided a helpful approach that structures the drama of Scripture in six acts:5 Act 1: Creation God establishes his kingdom Act 2: Fall Rebellion in the kingdom Act 3: Israel The king chooses a covenant people Act 4: Christ The coming of the king Act 5: Church Spreading the news of the king Act 6: New Creation The return of the king Taken as a whole, this drama encompasses God’s action in the world as creator and redeemer, which in turn gives rise to a sacred history and a covenant

people who bear witness to it. Consequently, in order to safeguard a collective memory of ‘the wondrous works that God has done’ and to ‘make known his deeds among all peoples’ (Psalm 105.2, 5), the Bible provides an authoritative testimony to salvation history. Christianity is in essence not an ethic or a philosophy but a gospel story – the message of what God has done. Understood this way, some striking features of the story of Scripture become apparent. Allow me to highlight three. 1. A universal story The beginning (Genesis 1.1) and ending (Revelation 21.1,5) of the Bible frame the whole story on a cosmic scale – from the creation of the world to its ultimate consummation. Even when the horizons of the plot seem to shrink to a middle-eastern tent-dweller (Abraham), somehow the whole world is still in view – ‘in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed’ (Genesis 12.3). Throughout Israel’s chequered history, key characters (e.g. Joseph, Ruth, Jonah), dramatic symbols (e.g. Solomon’s Temple embroidered with creation imagery) and expansive prophecies (e.g. Isaiah 49.1–7; Micah 4.1–5) keep reframing Israel’s story in the light of a cosmic vision. In particular, monotheism and election form two central tenets – Israel’s God as the sovereign creator chose Israel for a larger redemptive purpose. In the New Testament, this vocation is revitalised in the Messiah’s life, death and resurrection in order that the saving grace of God may once again go global to ‘all nations’ (Matthew 28.19). The Bible therefore stakes a claim as universal history that encompasses all of created reality – past, present and future. The drama of Scripture ‘offers a story which is the story of the whole world. It is public truth’.6 There is no larger story. International politics, scientific discovery and environmental catastrophe all fit within and play out of the larger narrative that Scripture contains. Whilst it is perfectly acceptable to disagree with the Bible’s account and prefer alternative metanarratives (of which there are plenty), it is not possible to reduce the Bible to a mere court of appeal for religious matters or a pietistic handbook for the faithful. The very structure of the Bible defies such reductionism. I listened to an episode of Desert Island Discs, that featured the English comedian Lee Mack. When he learned that the Bible came as standard on the imaginary island, his instinctive reply was fascinating: ‘I would definitely take the Bible. After all, if aliens landed on planet earth and asked what’s life all about, I’d say, “Well there’s this book that purports to have the answers. He went on to admit: ‘I’ve not actually read it. Isn’t that crazy!’ I think Lee Mack has a better understanding of the Bible than many religious people. It is not just a collection of pious sayings and moral rules. In its own unique way, the Bible purports to make sense of human life on planet earth. It is a universal story.

Winter 2020-21

2. A messianic story A cartoon in the New Yorker portrays someone inquiring about the location of a title at the counter of a large book store. The assistant searches on the computer and then replies: ‘The Bible?… That would be under self-help.’7 Contrary to popular culture and perhaps a few too many sermons, Scripture does not provide a neat set of DIY instructions. Instead, the whole story hinges on human the intervention of the Messiah. Understood from a Christian perspective, the entire Old Testament leans forward and anticipates the ‘anointed one’ who will embody Israel’s vocation and redeem humanity. By the close of the Old Testament Israel is pregnant with promises that she herself cannot deliver. But as the virgin gives birth, ancient prophecies find their fulfillment: ‘for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given’ (Isaiah 9.6). The Gospel writers depict this ‘son’ as a man in a particular historical context – a radical teacher and demonstrator of the kingdom of God whose words and actions redefine previous expectations of the Messiah. However, only after the resurrection do the authors of the New Testament piece together the clues and reach an astonishing conclusion: the one who played the decisive role in the drama was none other than ‘mighty God’. The playwrite has indeed entered his own drama and walked on the stage of human history in the person of Jesus Christ. From the perspective of the resurrection, the story of Scripture bears witness to Christ who is the centre of gravity. As the risen Jesus demonstrated on the road to Emmaus, the Bible must in some sense be read back-to-front (Luke 24.25–27).8 The very plotline of the biblical drama therefore refutes every counter-narrative that asserts human autonomous action as the solution to the world’s problems. The modernist grand narrative of human progression has become dominant in Western culture. It manifests itself in films, novels and box-sets that depict humans as the heroes who gain mastery over the world through their own ingenuity. However, the Bible has more in common with plotlines from fairy stories where humans face forces of chaos and evil beyond their control and require supernatural intervention to secure a happy ending.9 In the drama of Scripture, only the gracious intervention of God is sufficient to overcome the curses of this fallen world: ‘while we were still weak … Christ died for the ungodly’ (Romans 5.6). The Christ event is, therefore, the definitive guide to the entire landscape of the Bible. As the medieval theologian Hugh of St Victor concluded: ‘All divine scripture is one book, and this one book is Christ, speaks of Christ and finds its fulfillment in Christ.’10 3. An unfolding story Across the front cover of a book I recently published there is an illustration of the entire Bible story. Toward the end, a modern-day character is depicted receiving a message on their mobile phone: ‘You are

here!’ The drama of Scripture is still unfolding and we are now immersed in its plotline with a part to play. Of course, within the Bible itself, the end of the story has already been secured and heralded from afar. The book of Revelation concludes with visions that anticipate the ultimate hope of a restored creation: ‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth … and he who was seated on the throne said “Behold, I am making all things new”’ (Revelation 21.1,5). However, whilst the end is foretold and the canon of Scripture is closed, the actual story remains open and in play.11 God’s people are now called to embody the redemptive action of God in the world. The church inhabits the ‘last days’ within the drama during which the Spirit of the Messiah empowers his followers to bring hope to the world. The Scriptures therefore play a crucial role in equipping God’s people for action. To consider how this works, we can draw on a helpful analogy developed by Tom Wright.12 Imagine a company of actors who discover a long-lost Shakespeare play. Let’s say it originally had six acts but only five have survived – the first four and the final act. So the actors must perform the missing fifth act in order to complete the play. How might they do this? First and foremost they need to immerse themselves in the story so far, in order to enter the mind of the playwright and sense the inner logic and heartbeat. Then through faithful improvisation they can perform the missing fifth act in keeping with the whole.

Conclusion The Bible is a divine account of our human story, stretching back to the dawn of time and forwards into eternity. By immersing ourselves in the story, we can faithfully act it out in our modern context. Though the Bible does not directly address genetic engineering, gender dysphoria or Artificial Intelligence, we can confidently respond to contemporary scenarios through a process of faithful improvisation. This is now our task. The purpose of Scripture must not be reduced to a doctrinal backstop or therapeutic pick-me-up. The Bible provides a narrative framework that God’s people are called to inhabit, a charter for our ongoing mission. As Pope Benedict XVI noted in his Apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini:

9. This point was made by CS Lewis and it underpins the narrative framework he developed in his fictional works. It is further elaborated by R Bauckham in, The Bible in the Contemporary World: Hermeneutical Ventures (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015). 10. De Arca Noe, 2.8. 11. This eschatological framework ensures we read Scripture as a narrative whose outcome is certain and yet also as an unfolding story that refuses closure and is never exhausted. Instead, the Bible story requires prophetic readings and creative retellings in every generation to respond to any given moment. 12. See NT Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to read the Bible today (London: SPCK, 2013).

The light of Christ needs to illumine every area of human life: the family, schools, culture, work, leisure and the other aspects of social life … The word of God reaches men and women through an encounter with witnesses who make it present and alive. Unlike a visit to the theatre, God’s people experience the drama of Scripture not as spectators in the crowd but as actors on the stage. We must immerse ourselves in the story of the Bible in order to daily situate our fragile lives within this grand narrative. Then, we will have confidence not only to embody the plotline but also to share its message of hope with our world.

Continuity and discontinuity The relationship between the two testaments

David Allen Dr David Allen is Academic Dean and Tutor in New Testament at The Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, Birmingham.

The supposed dichotomy between the wrathful God of the Old Testament1 and the loving one encountered within the New Testament persists in popular culture, and even in current church contexts. This can lead, sadly, to a side-lining of the Old Testament in the life of the Church, and/ or to the implicit suggestion that it is too hard, too foreign, or too difficult for the contemporary Christian reader. This ends up effectively neutralising the Old Testament, denuding it of its capacity to address the Church, and shape the life of the faithful believer. It also seemingly endorses, conceptualises perhaps, the perception of a fundamental discontinuity between the two testaments, i.e. the first demarks an era of law, the second, by contrast, the era of grace. Such a demarcation is fallacious of course, both theologically and historically, as recent work on Second Temple Judaism(s) and the New Perspective on Paul has demonstrated,2 and it is rooted in serious misunderstandings of the respective textual corpora. But, for whatever reason, the unfortunate dichotomy persists, and the variety and depth of the Old Testament’s scriptural repository – hymnody, wisdom, narrative, prophecy – can easily end up ostracised or overlooked. By contrast, an informed biblical reader wants to enable the hearing of both testaments, to ponder seriously the continuities and discontinuities between them, and to embrace the interpretative and theological questions that these similarities and differences occasion. We would wish to argue that both testaments corporately form ‘one’ whole Word of God, and manifest a coherent and ultimately consistent, if still complex, ‘biblical

theology’. The alleged points of discontinuity or difference – the ‘tensions’ so to speak – are not eradicated or dismissed by this premise, nor is there by implication just the one scriptural voice; indeed, there are a multiplicity of voices operative within the biblical record, thereby creating both melody and disharmony. But, equally, such plurality does not negate the essential unity of the canon, and the one mind/purpose of God may still be said to subsume the ‘whole’ biblical text; the diversity within the unity need not compromise that unity, and may be said even to enrich and enhance it. A key lens – or window – onto such matters comes when one considers the intertextual – or even intratextual – engagement functioning within the canon, namely when the New Testament writers use and appeal to the Jewish Scriptures.

The Old Testament is the starting point for the New Testament One of the earliest – if not the earliest – received ecclesial traditions was that Jesus Christ died, and was raised, according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15.3–4). The Old Testament testimony to the Christ event was not just a convenient happenstance therefore; rather it was integral, fundamental even, to the christological formulation in which the early Church invested itself. Paul (sadly!) does not specify the specific scriptural texts he has in mind here – the appeal may reflect the ‘combination’ of the fullness of scriptural testimony rather than individual, particular texts – and it likely represents tradition he has inherited rather than formulated himself.

Winter 2020-21

But either way, the evident, pre-Pauline perception was that the crucifixion and resurrection had scriptural warrant and proof. The significance of this should not be overlooked. The death of Jesus – and the resulting worship of a crucified Messiah – was the presenting question, the contradiction in terms to which the early Church needed to respond. Why did God’s Messiah have to die, and why so on a Roman cross? The justification was thought to be found in the Old Testament, interestingly so bearing in mind the lack of an explicit scriptural text that spoke of a crucified Christ.3 Whilst some Christians might point, for example, to the testimony of Isaiah 53 in this regard, that text speaks of a servant figure rather than a ‘Christ’ one (and 1 Corinthians 15.3 is clear that Christ died). Similarly, Isaiah 53 does not appear to be a text to which the New Testament writers greatly appealed (and/or if it were, one might expect more explicit evidence of it). They looked to the Psalms, and particularly the righteous sufferer psalms like Psalm 22 or Psalm 69; the so-called cry of dereliction (Psalm 22.1) is put on the Markan Jesus’ lips (Mark 15.34) or the Johannine Jesus is said to be thirsty (John 19.28), in fulfilment of Psalm 69.3. The narratives of Jesus’ death are invested significantly with appeal to the Old Testament (with the Gospel of John notably so), even if it necessitates finding scriptural fulfilment in some rather curious events – such as the splitting of Jesus’ clothing (John 19.24) or the death of Judas (Matthew 27.9). Across the New Testament, we find the Gospels, Paul, Hebrews and other New Testament writers all likewise drawing on the Jewish Scriptures for communicative effect. Jesus frequently bases his teaching on the Old Testament, and much of the Gospels’ portrayal of Jesus depict him debating with others on matters of scriptural interpretation. Matthew, in particular, portrays Jesus in terms of continuity with the Old Testament, whether that is through the manifold appeal to scriptural fulfilment in the Matthean birth narrative (Matthew 1.22; 2.5,15,17,23), or the explicit declaration of Torah fulfilment that contextualises the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5.17–20). Paul can appeal to the parts of the Decalogue (Romans 13.9), and also develop their understanding (cf. Galataians 5.14), and scholars have also suggested that his wider theology is shaped by Old Testament themes or texts (for example, that Deuteronomy 32 contains ‘Romans in nuce’).4 Even someone like the writer to the Hebrews, who seems to note – in whatever fashion – an end to the first covenant/ testament, still finds the origins of that second covenant fundamentally within the first (Hebrews 8.7–13; cf. Jeremiah 31.31–34); the ‘new’ derives from the old. Likewise, Hebrews presents God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit all speaking (present tense) the language of Scripture (cf. Hebrews 1.5–6; 2.12–13; 3.7–11); Scripture is put on the divine lips, so to speak (pun intended). Indeed,

we might view Hebrews’ hermeneutical agendas as exemplifying continuity and discontinuity; the continuity is preserved, but the discontinuity or ‘newness’ is not foreign to the preceding scriptural testimony; instead, it necessarily draws on it. Hence one might suggest a rule of thumb that, when exegeting a New Testament text, the first

if you only know the New Testament, you don’t know the New Testament question be asked is ‘where is the Old Testament in this?’ Such presence may be explicit, for example a marked scriptural quotation, but it may be more subtle or allusive. It could be through some form of narratival usage, thematic application or the deployment of Old Testament characters. The motif of exodus, for example, whether that of Deutero– Isaiah (Isaiah 40–55) or of the wilderness generation, permeates the New Testament, and the pattering of the Christ event, albeit in different ways by the respective New Testament authors, is almost always indebted to the portrayal. To put it another way, and perhaps in terms that focuses the presenting question in nuce, as the biblical scholar Martin Hengel is apocryphally alleged to have said: ‘If you only know the New Testament, you don’t know the New Testament.’ That is, to put it bluntly, one cannot read the New Testament without the Old – the two corpora are inextricably linked – theologically, hermeneutically, content-ly. The Old Testament – the Hebrew Bible – can stand on its own feet, but the New Testament ‘needs’ the Old Testament for its communicative intent to be achieved.

Textual ‘meaning’ is fluid rather than fixed

NOTES 1. As will be seen, the terminology and nomenclature of Old and New Testaments are not without significant difficulties, but they remain (rightly or wrongly) the terms generally used by Christian readers and hence, if only for convenience, we will use the terms. 2. See inter alia KL Yinger, The New Perspective on Paul: An Introduction (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011). 3. The nearest ones are perhaps Ps 89.38–45,49–51, but they are not explicitly cited by the NT authors. 4. R Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 164. 5. On this example, see P Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), pp. 114–15.

How does one construe or derive the ‘meaning’ of a text, particularly when it re-occurs at different places across the Bible? To answer this question, one will want to explore the relationship between the author and the reader as the respective arbiters of ‘meaning’; similarly, one will also need to consider the degree to which texts evolve and their meanings develop or even change over time and place. Core to the consideration of the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament is recognising the capacity for texts to have multivalent sense or interpretation; textual meaning is fluid rather than fixed, with the context of a text determinative of such meaning. The transfer or ‘relocation’ of a scriptural text (from Old Testament to New Testament) necessarily impacts upon its meaning, and the referent of an Old Testament citation, when re-presented or re-contextualised in a New Testament milieu, is impacted by such relocation. This can be explicit (Luke 20.37, and its seemingly unrelated citation

Transmission

6. Some argue for an essential continuity or extension of textual meaning when an OT text is relocated into another context (cf. GK Beale, Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament: Exegesis and Interpretation [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012]; A Chou, The Hermeneutics of the Biblical Writers: Learning to Interpret Scripture from the Prophets and Apostles [Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2018]). Others stress the fundamental change in meaning that can occur if/ when texts are recontextualised – cf. S Moyise, Evoking Scripture: Seeing the Old Testament in the New (London: T&T Clark, 2008). 7. F Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London: T&T Clark, 2004).

of Exodus 3.6 in respect of the resurrection)5 or perhaps more subtle (the allusion to Isaiah 45.23 in the Christ hymn of Philippians 2.9–11, where Christ rather than YHWH becomes the recipient of worship). But either way, the interpretative ramifications are significant. Scholars debate as to whether this equates (just) to the evolution of meaning (with it thereby remaining somehow consistent with the ‘original’ Old Testament context) or whether there becomes an inherent ‘newness’ to the quotation such that its original sense is superimposed or supplanted by its New Testament relocation.6

discontinuity between and within the testaments is not, in and of itself, a barrier to confidence in God’s Word Clearly, the more the ‘newness’ is stressed in such matters, the more the argument for testamental discontinuity is present. And along with the new context for the citation, the role of the ‘reader’ as a core ingredient in defining textual meaning becomes integral. Like other first-century commentators, such as the Qumran Pesherists or Philo of Alexandria, the New Testament writers are effectively reader-response critics who are engaging with their Scriptures in the light of their own experience (i.e. in their case, the impact of Jesus Christ). Such experience may well generate new (or different) meaning or perspective on the received Old Testament text, and potentially in ways that might look strange to their Old Testament forebears. Yet for all this potential ‘newness’ or discontinuity, by rooting their reflections in the scriptural record, the New Testament writers still assume some inherent consistency with previous understanding, otherwise the communicative effect is lost. When using the same corpora of Old Testament material, whereas the New Testament writers sometimes find points of similarity with each other (cf. their various, related appeal to Psalm 110.1), they equally find fundamental points of difference, even when utilising the same text. For example, Mark’s Gospel presents the crucified Jesus as abandoned by God (Mark 15.34), but that would not be the case for John, for whom God is very much ‘present’ in the cruciform action. Thus, if there is discontinuity between the two testaments, there is equally discontinuity with the New Testament in its usage of scriptural material. That is not to water down the significance of those points of testamental difference, nor negate the significant theological questions that so arise, but rather to contend that difference, in and of itself, is not problematic. No performance of a play or piece of music is identical with any other, as it always assumes the interpretative lens of its performer

or musician. As such, textual ‘meaning’ can be somewhat different to that in its previous location, sometimes quite radically so, but this does not necessarily render it false or invalid or ‘unfruitful’. Presumably the starting point for such discussion is to allow the juxtaposition of the different textual ‘performances’, so as to see what explanatory fruit is so yielded. Furthermore, such difference may be as much intratextual as intertextual. Within the Old Testament itself, we find traditions reworked, re-presented and re-contextualised (cf. the similarities and contrasts of Exodus and Deuteronomy), and hence such internal differences are core to unpacking the ‘whole’ picture, even of the Hebrew Bible. Likewise, in his work on Paul’s use of the Old Testament, Francis Watson argues for Pauline awareness of two voices within the Jewish Scriptures, a voice of law and a voice of grace. He suggests that Paul recognises these two traditions, and sets them in opposition to each other, effectively establishing an interpretative discontinuity, but a discontinuity located within the Old Testament itself, rather than one between the first and second Testaments.7

‘Discontinuity’ has interpretative value If there is a case for the dependence of the New Testament on the Old Testament, and if there is still a strong element of continuity between the testaments, the question of Old Testament–New Testament discontinuity still persists and impacts on the perception of a coherent ‘oneness’ to the biblical record. Discontinuity, or difference, or tension, are not, in and of themselves, a barrier to confidence in God’s (one) Word. Firstly, tension(s) between the Testaments – or even within a Testament itself – is not, of itself necessarily problematic. Handled well, and handled sensitively, discontinuity can manifest the richness and diversity of the scriptural record, exemplifying the complexity of the human encounter with God. Even within the New Testament itself, of course, there are points of tension and discontinuity, whether chronological (when did Jesus clear the Temple?), pneumatological (when, and from whom, did the disciples receive the Spirit?) or soteriological (compare the realised soteriology of John with the futurist perspective of Paul). Such differentiation is ‘explainable’ and the diversity can faithfully co-exist within the one corpus. Secondly, where discontinuity is present, it can equally be overstated. Hebrews, for example, speaks of an end to certain covenantal practices (Hebrews 8.13), but not all aspects of covenantal life are ‘discontinued’ – the Law, for example, seems to be generally upheld by the Epistle (though cf. 13.9). Thirdly, when matters of discontinuity are ignored or negated, this can have damaging effects. One thinks, for example, of the potential supercessionism of 1 Peter, and the way in which it appropriates imagery drawn from the Jewish

Winter 2020-21

Scriptures that was formerly the preserve of Israel, and re-applies it to the Petrine Gentile authorship (1 Peter 2.9–10). Likewise, the portrayal of the Jews in Matthew’s passion narrative raises challenging interpretative questions, as does their widerdepiction in the Johannine portrayal (cf. John 8.34–59); the significance of John’s Jesus speaking of ‘their law’ (John 15.25) would certainly warrant questions as to continuity of John’s Gospel with the first testamentary discourse. Hence, if anything, glossing over such points of discontinuity can have dangerous ramifications for the interpreter; discontinuity can perform a helpful reorientation role in this regard. In sum, therefore, such cautions and concerns do not cease the exploratory exercise, but rather commend it. Disharmony, or tension, can yield explanatory power, and, just as musical discord can be ‘revealing’, so textual disharmony can also be valuable and fruitful. There will be melodious incidences between the texts – ways in which they work together, but equally the juxtaposition of two ‘opposing’ (or discontinuous) texts reveals fundamental points of disjuncture within the biblical testimony for interpretative benefit. One thinks of the so-called herem passages, for example, and their textual appeal to divine vindication of violence; read in isolation, or as the literal ‘mind of God’, such passages can be seen as depicting a divine particularism and mode of vengeance. It takes the explicit discontinuity, though, between this and other texts of Scripture – whether drawn from

the first or second Testament – to contextualise the message accordingly; the juxtaposition with texts like Amos 9.7–10 at the very least expand the portrayal of God found there. A text may be Godbreathed and inspired, but it may be dangerous when left in insolation; the dangers of ‘silencing’ discontinuity are prevalent even when dealing with the Old Testament.

Conclusion The full contours of the biblical canon give ‘space’ for texts to interact with and against each other, for continuity and discontinuity to be explored as part of profitable theological dialogue. One might think therefore of the biblical testimony as an orchestra, as a body of voices who ‘play’ together and whose overall effect or function comes from that combined voice.The biblical canon gives the context – the concert hall one might say – for the orchestra to play, for the sounds of the texts to be heard. It also offers a defining point – a boundary marker that precludes not every option being used. It opens up a plurality of explanation, a plurality of performance once might suggest, but not an infinite or inexhaustible one. Good biblical reading, informed biblical reading, gives space for the full orchestra to be heard, for all the instruments to have their moment and place. The symphony may contain places of harmony, just as it also contains places of disharmony; but the ‘whole’ effect of that symphony is when all elements are given space to be heard.

Textuality and orality in the Bible ‘You want to make the Bible come alive? I didn’t know it had died. In fact, I had never even heard that it was ill. Who was the attending physician at the Bible’s demise? No, I can’t make the Bible come alive for anyone. The Bible is already alive. It makes me come alive.’ (C Sproul)1

Jerry Hwang Rev Dr Jerry Hwang Academic Dean and Associate Professor of Old Testament at Singapore Bible College. This article was originally published in Mission Round Table 11, vol. 1 (January 2016), pp. 4–8 and is used by permission. Other issues of Mission Round Table are available for viewing and downloading at www.omf.org/mrt.

‘Chronological Bible Storying is changing Christian communication forever. Emphasis on oral learning preferences is the next wave of missions advance … the beloved “three points and a poem” is dead; long live the chronological narrative!’ (M Snowden)2

Introduction The feisty remarks above from RC Sproul and Mark Snowden share a passion to redeem the stereotype of the Bible as a dead book. Yet their proposals for recovering the dynamism of God’s living Word are rather different. Sproul, being a theologian of traditional persuasion, emphasises that the textuality of the Bible demands renewed commitment to reading and studying the Scriptures as God’s written word. By contrast, Snowden is a missiologist who seeks to replace traditional methods of pedagogy with the newer practice of storying – skilled performance of God’s oral word. The purpose of offering these quotations is not to broaden the existing divide between advocates of textuality and orality, lesser still the proverbial gap between theology and missiology. I seek instead to re-examine certain assumptions about the Bible that underlie how advocates of textuality and orality methods seek scriptural support for their views. Rather than pitting these modes of communication

against each other in anachronistic ways, as is sometimes done, it is necessary to understand how they reinforce each other as a symbiosis in the Bible itself. As David Carr comments in this regard, ‘[S]ocieties with writing often have an intricate interplay of orality and textuality, where written texts are intensely oral, while even exclusively oral texts are deeply affected by written culture.’3 That is to say, the Bible is God’s oral address to his people which has been preserved for future generations as a written text. The need to hear and heed these words continually finds support in the Bible’s many directives to memorise them, meditate upon them, and read them aloud – a rich combination of tasks that necessarily taps into orality and textuality as complementary dimensions of human experience. The article will proceed in three sections. The first section will survey the diverse kinds of orality contained in the Bible’s literary forms. The oral character of the Bible is found not just in narrative texts, but also in usually overlooked genres such as law, prophecy/apocalypse, epistle, and wisdom. The second section will explore the broader question of why the spoken nature of God’s address has come down to us in written form. These observations about the nature of the Bible will afford an opportunity for the final section to evaluate the role that literacy has played in ancient and modern cultures. Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong, among many others, have been influential in arguing that much of the world lies beyond the reach of the ‘Gutenberg Galaxy’.4 There is much truth to this view. I will also propose, however, that the methods of orality and textuality ought to remain partners

Winter 2020-21

in mission since the Bible was always intended by God to leap off the page and arrest its audience in a personal encounter which includes both hearing and reading.5

The Orality (?) of the Bible Any discussion of orality must begin with the recognition that the majority of the Bible is prose narrative. The Old Testament begins with an unbroken story from creation (Genesis) all the way until Israel’s post-exilic period (Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther). Statistically speaking, books that are mostly narrative represent about 50 per cent of the Old Testament. This figure is mirrored by the fact that the narratives of the four Gospels and Acts compose approximately 55 per cent of the New Testament. As many advocates of orality- and storybased methods rightly note, the predominance of narrative in the Bible stands at odds with the Western modernist tendency to favour its nonnarrative genres.6 The result can be a truncated understanding of the ‘gospel’ as a series of abstract theological propositions distilled from Paul’s letters rather than a concrete story about how Jesus Christ accomplishes God’s plan of salvation.7 Two issues arise, though, when the Bible’s abundance of narrative is offered as evidence that storytelling is the Bible’s main method of propagating itself.8 The first and more obvious issue is that the textuality of the Bible remains inescapable as a big book composed of 66 smaller books. Any proposal emphasising Scripture’s own orality still needs to reckon with how its traditions have also been transmitted by written media and more than (though never less than) oral retelling. Indeed, the textuality of the Bible as preserver of its orality is predicated upon a second and more fundamental question – to what extent are oral traditions part of the fabric of the Bible itself? By limiting the discussion to narratives, especially the Bible’s pithier stories, advocates of orality methods seem to underestimate the extent to which the Bible in its entirety could support their case. In short, it is not merely the Bible’s shorter stories that were geared toward oral recitation for audiences that preferred hearing to reading, but also its longer stories, laws, prophecies, and wisdom literature. The Bible’s shorter stories originated in an oral setting.9 Before Israel has even departed from Egypt, to name just one instance, Moses looks ahead to the Promised Land when parents must retell the exodus story to their children: ‘When you enter the land that the LORD will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, “What does this ceremony mean to you?” then tell them, “It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians”’ (Exodus 12.25–27 NIV, italics added). Especially fascinating in this explanation of Passover is that Israel’s dwellings in Egypt are both ‘the houses of the Israelites’ and ‘our homes’, even though a

generation born in Canaan would have never lived in Egypt. Chronological precision becomes less important than transporting both the audience and their descendants back to Egypt, much like the imagined conversation between father and son in Deuteronomy 6.20–25. In these Old Testament passages as well as in Judaism more generally, dead and living generations are joined as God’s singular people by addressing everyone in Israel’s history as ‘we/us’ (e.g. Deuteronomy 5.3). By way of corollary, the genre of Old Testament law also builds upon the oral delivery of a short story. Later in Exodus, God declares that the story of Israel’s deliverance is of higher priority than the laws to be given: ‘I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery’ (Exodus 20.2 NIV). It is not Moses who speaks here but the LORD himself. The laws following this declaration are therefore Israel’s grateful response to deliverance rather than a legalistic means of earning it. These laws are not only grounded in a story of salvation – a feature unique to Israel’s literature – but the legal codes of the Old Testament are distinctly personal for addressing a second-person audience of ‘you’ (e.g. Exodus 20.3–17; Deuteronomy 5.6–21).10 Judicial codes from elsewhere in the ancient world, as in the laws of Hammurabi the Babylonian king, are promulgated impersonally from a human ruler to third-person citizens identified as ‘he/ they’. In short, Israel is privileged among the nations to receive laws to ‘you’ that are directly from the King of the universe and set within the old, old story of how he saved ‘you’.11 While the power of retelling shorter stories (e.g. Jesus’ parables) has been generally recognised,12 the more recent emergence of performance criticism has also shown that longer sections of text were also meant to be recounted orally,13 both in narrative books taken as a whole and the nonnarrative genres of prophecy/apocalypse, epistle and wisdom.14 For biblical narratives, the New Testament books of Mark and Acts have received particular attention in how their authors likely intended them as oral performances or perhaps even dramatisations which interacted with their original audiences.15 Among the prophetic/ apocalyptic books, Jeremiah is representative in how the prophet’s words first assume the form of spoken oracles from God to the peoples and their kings (Jeremiah 7.25–26) before later becoming a text with the help of Baruch the scribe (Jeremiah 36.1–3). However, they become spoken addresses again when Baruch’s brother Seraiah takes a scroll of the oracles against Babylon (Jeremiah 50.1–51:58) to read publicly there as a sign of its impending fall (Jeremiah 51.59–64). The apocalyptic book of Revelation is similar in recording oral addresses that are later written down (Revelation 1.3,11,19), as well as adopting the form of a circular letter which was to be read aloud to the seven churches of Asia Minor (Revelation 2–3).

NOTES 1. RC Sproul, Knowing Scripture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1977), pp. 14–15. 2. M Snowden, ‘Orality: The Next Wave of Missions Advance’, Mission Frontiers 26 (February 2004), p. 14. 3. DM Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 7. 4. M McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962); WJ Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982). 5. This both-and approach is also embraced by the International Orality Network in their book, Making Disciples of Oral Learners (Bangalore: ION/ LCWE, 2005), pp. 11–12. 6. E.g. G Johnston, Preaching to a Postmodern World: A Guide to Reaching Twenty-First- Century Listeners (Leicester: InterVarsity, 2001); RA Jensen, Telling the Story: Variety and Imagination in Preaching (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1980). 7. S McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011). 8. As suggested by, for example, PF Koehler, Telling God’s Stories with Power: Biblical Storytelling in Oral Cultures (Pasadena: William Carey, 2010), p. 29; M Novelli, Shaped by the Story: Helping Students Encounter God in a New Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), p. 48. 9. W Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 11–17. 10. JG McConville, ‘Singular Address in the Deuteronomic Law and the Politics of Legal

Transmission

Administration’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 97 (2002), pp. 19–36. 11. D Patrick, The Rhetoric of Revelation in the Hebrew Bible, Overtures to Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), pp. 74–75. 12. E.g. GM Burge, Jesus, The Middle Eastern Storyteller: Uncover the Ancient Culture, Discover Hidden Meanings (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009). 13. The main works in performance criticism are published by Cascade Books (Eugene, OR) as part of an ongoing series, ‘Biblical Performance Criticism: Orality, Memory, Translation, Rhetoric, Discourse.’ 14. See JDG Dunn, ‘Altering the Default Setting: Re-Envisaging the Early Transmission of the Jesus Tradition’, New Testament Studies 49 (2003), pp. 139–75; Doan & Giles, Prophets, 9 15. WD Shiell, Reading Acts: The Lector and the Early Christian Audience (Biblical Interpretation Series, v.70 (Boston: Brill Academic, 2004); WT Shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel: FirstCentury Performance of Mark(Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003). Note also, though, the cautions against overcorrecting toward ‘pan-orality/panperformance’ view of the NT books from LW Hurtado, ‘Oral Fixation and New Testament Studies? “Orality”, “Performance” and Reading Texts in Early Christianity’, New Testament Studies 60 (2014), pp. 321–40. 16. C Forbes, ‘Ancient Rhetoric and Ancient Letters: Models for Reading Paul, and Their Limits’, in Paul and Rhetoric (ed. J Paul Sampley and P Lampe; T&T Clark Biblical Studies; New York: T&T Clark, 2010), pp. 148–49. 17. Carr, Writing, pp. 127–28. 18. JH Walton & D Brent Sandy, The Lost World of Scripture:

Besides the book of Revelation, the bidirectional relationship between written text and oral event is also found in other familiar specimens of the GrecoRoman epistolary form – the letters of the New Testament that Paul, Peter and other writers sent via couriers to read aloud before the congregations of the early Church (e.g. Acts 15.31; Colossians 4.16; 1 Thessalonians 5.27).16 As a final example on the primacy of aural learning in the Bible’s world, the wisdom sayings in Proverbs repeatedly command the audience to ‘hear!’ (e.g. 1.8; 4.1; 22.17). These calls to virtue are set in the context of everyday family life, whether directly as a summons from a male authority figure to younger charges to ‘listen!’ (e.g. 5.7), or indirectly when wisdom and folly are personified as women who ‘call out’ (9.3,15) to impressionable young men and invite them into their respective houses (9.4–6,16–18). The wisdom sayings of Proverbs certainly become a written text at some point in their transmission through history (25.1), but the focus of the book remains on inscribing its poetry ‘on the tablet of your heart’ (3.3; 7.3) as words to be memorised, recited and cherished.17 These observations across different biblical genres illustrate that orality is part and parcel of the written Bible. Given how the Bible evidently reflects the ancient preference for oral communication and learning by hearing,18 the question inevitably becomes one of how and why Jews and Christians came to be ‘people of the book’. The next section will address this issue in light of the modern assertion that written texts are becoming increasingly passé, the Bible most importantly among them.

The Textuality of Orality and the Orality of Textuality On one level the reasons why texts exist are selfevident. Much like advocates of orality methods still use print media to disseminate their ideas rather than only discussing them face-to-face, the Bible also seeks to speak broadly as God’s revelation to the whole world. Beyond this truism about mass communication, however, the Bible records two other factors that led to oral sayings becoming written texts at certain historical junctures. These factors are not exclusive of one another and indeed worked together when inperson transmission proved to be inadequate for keeping alive these precious traditions. Put another way, one could summarise that the written production of the Bible was intended to preserve and reinforce its orality as a text to be continuously heard by all peoples. The first reason for textualising the Bible was that the continuity of oral traditions was threatened when their gatekeepers began to depart from the scene. This could happen through the death of a scribal figure such as Moses, whose impending death led him to transcribe his farewell sermons in Deuteronomy and entrust them to the Levitical

priests who would recite them every seventh year at the Feast of Tabernacles (Deuteronomy 31.9–13). The transmitter’s death did not need to be imminent, however, for the threat of opposition to a scribe or prophetic figure would have also been a sufficient impetus for textualising oral traditions. When the original scroll of Jeremiah’s words is read to King Jehoiakim, who then casts them into the fire, the LORD commands Jeremiah to dictate another scroll which contains additional words against the king (Jeremiah 36.21–32). Along the same lines, the writers of the four Gospels produced their books so that a newer generation of Christians would still have access to the words and deeds of Jesus after the eyewitnesses to his life were imprisoned or had passed on.19 In this regard, the gap of several decades between the earthly ministry of Jesus (~30–33 AD) and the writing of the Gospels (~65–95 AD) is not evidence that traditions about Jesus were corrupted or even invented by the early Christians, as skeptics think, but testifies instead to the dominance of oral traditions about Jesus in a cultural climate that preferred hearing to reading and writing. In this respect, recent New Testament scholarship has moved away from the anachronistic view that the Gospels were composed primarily as written texts for a particular church or community. Instead, several converging lines of evidence show that the Gospels were widely circulated as interlocking oral and written traditions among Christian assemblies in different places.20 The other reason for the Bible becoming a book lies in the need for oral traditions to travel where human speakers cannot. Texts can more easily cross physical borders, such as when the prophet Jeremiah is forbidden to enter the Temple and palace in Jerusalem where his words are to be proclaimed (Jeremiah 36.1–8). Or to cite a New Testament example, the Apostle Paul writes letters both from prison where his movements are restricted (e.g. Philippians) or while on the move to address a Christian community he is unable to visit at that moment (e.g. Romans). The borders favouring the mobility of written texts over authoritative storytellers may also be more than physical, just as migrants who cross languages and cultures quickly sense the need for new, vernacular expressions of old traditions. Evidence for this sort of cross-cultural movement can be seen in the physical migration of the Jews to exile going together with a shift in their language from Hebrew to Aramaic, the language of Babylon. Even after some Jews returned from exile, Nehemiah records a fascinating scene in Jerusalem when Ezra’s public reading of the Old Testament law is accompanied by Levites who offered simultaneous translation and explanation in Aramaic for those who apparently could not understand the original Hebrew (Nehemiah 8.1–8).21 This change to Aramaic as the heart language of the people also extends to the production of biblical texts, for several postexilic books contain Aramaic sections which use

Winter 2020-21

this lingua franca to confront the world with the sovereignty of Israel’s God (e.g. Daniel 2.4b–7.28). Similarly, the later move from Aramaic to Greek in the fourth century BC results not only in the translation of the Old Testament into Greek (known as the Septuagint), but also paves the way for the New Testament’s eventual spread from Palestine to the broader Hellenistic world, quite literally on the backs of Greek-speaking Christians during the first century AD.

Orality, Textuality, and Literacy The close relationship between orality and textuality in the Bible leads necessarily to questions about the extent of literacy in the biblical world – who would possess the skills to harness the synergy between God’s spoken and written words? Following McLuhan’s lead, advocates of orality methods tend to assert that literacy was uncommon in ancient times.22 This leads to the implication, sometimes unstated, that the task of reading and writing texts is reserved for a gifted, educated elite (whether then or now). As a matter of method, it is imperative to understand the manner in which the Bible characterises itself as a text to be read. Modern people usually associate reading with the silent act of opening a printed book, but the task of reading in biblical times always involved the audible recitation of a written text.23 This cultural given can especially be seen in the verbs that denote reading in Hebrew and Greek. The operative verbs are Hebrew qārā’ and its Greek counterpart anaginōskō, both of which primarily mean ‘to call out’ or ‘to cry out’. It would be anachronistic to understand the Old Testament reference to ‘reading’ the law on the part of Israel’s king (Deuteronomy 17.19) or the New Testament reference to the Ethiopian eunuch ‘reading’ the scroll of Isaiah (Acts 8.28) as anything other than an oral recitation. The modern practice of silent reading was quite rare until the Middle Ages, more than a millennium after the New Testament period.24 Reading texts was therefore of less value than hearing them, and the Bible consistently reflects such a cultural milieu by being written more for the ear than the eye. This is not to minimise the enormous contributions of Bible translators in modern times who work closely with literacy specialists to create written languages and Bibles for pre-literate peoples. It appears, however, that the concept of ‘literacy’ in the cultural environment of the Bible is not primarily the ability to read and write a given language. This insight is not as foreign as it might seem to modern people, just as the English idiom ‘biblical literacy’ relates more to how well the Bible has been learned by heart and expressed in life than the basic cognitive skills required to read in the first place. And given how the communally oriented world of the Bible (not to mention much of the Majority World today) typically expected these texts to be recited in a public forum, one

might add that ‘biblical literacy’ in the truest sense entails how well the community of faith as a whole displays living proof of internalising the Bible, rather than how well an individual can decode the words of the Bible in isolation from others. That being said, the modern concept of literacy can remain a useful bridge between oral and textual modes of communication. It is no accident that the major developmental periods for the Bible’s individual books occurred at moments when the ability to read increased significantly among the general populace or when a new lingua franca was adopted. For example, the dawn of biblical literature in the age of the patriarchs and Moses during the second millennium BC coincided with the revolutionary change from the extremely complex writing systems of Babylonian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs to the much simpler alphabetic script of Hebrew and other Semitic languages. Cuneiform and hieroglyphs both required the memorisation of hundreds of signs, restricting mastery of languages using these systems to a select group of royally educated scribes. By contrast, the Hebrew alphabet only has 22 letters and can be learned rather quickly, a technological breakthrough which facilitated the production of the Hebrew Bible and the corresponding rise of a class of common people in Israel as its readers.25 As noted in the previous section, much the same can be said about the arrival of Aramaic and Greek in biblical history, for it was at such times that the other nations of the world were surprised to hear the God of Israel addressing them directly in their own languages (e.g. Jeremiah 10.11 [in Aramaic], and Acts 2.4 [in all the languages of the Jewish diaspora]).

Conclusion The Bible does not force us to choose between orality and textuality. Instead, the Old and New Testaments address the whole person and community of faith – both head and heart – through a combination of oral and textual methods. The Bible’s holistic strategy for communication overcomes the modern dichotomy between textuality and orality which stems from an inadequate grasp of how they always relate to each other in dynamic ways. In summary, spiritual transformation is not the unique contribution of orality methods; nor does the textuality of the Bible necessarily provide a superior medium for God’s objective truth to which oral learners will typically lack access.26 Taking their cues from how the Bible interposes itself across textuality and orality, wise theologians and missionaries will instead perceive both dimensions of God’s living truth, since fixating on one medium to the exclusion of the other can only result in the need to ‘rescue’ the Bible from limitations of the interpreter’s own making.

Ancient Literary Culture and Biblical Authority (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2013), pp.17–29, 77–86. 19. DL Bock, ‘The Words of Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or Memorex?’, in Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus (ed. MJ Wilkins & JP Moreland; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), pp. 73–99. 20. Dunn, ‘Altering’; R Bauckham (ed.), The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); KE Bailey, ‘Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels’, Asia Journal of Theology 5 (1991), pp. 34–54. 21. Schniedewind, Bible, pp. 179–80. 22. E.g., Koehler, Telling, p. 28. 23. D Boyarin, ‘Placing Reading: Ancient Israel and Medieval Europe’, in The Ethnography of Reading (ed. J Boyarin; Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 12–16. 24. For a complete history of silent reading, see P Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997). 25. JA Berman, Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 119–24. 26. As CD Strong points out (‘Contextualization, Biblical Inerrancy, and the Orality Movement’, Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics 7 [2014, pp. 276–77), the assumption that oral learners are less capable of exercising biblical discernment runs throughout a blog post on missions and orality by John Piper (‘Missions, Orality, and the Bible: Thoughts on Pre-, Less-, and PostLiterate Cultures’, 16 November 2005, http:// www.desiringgod.org/ articles/missions-oralityand-the-bible [accessed 7 December 2015]).

On the authority and credibility of Scripture

Walter Moberly Walter Moberly is professor of theology and biblical interpretation at Durham University and the author of numerous books.

The Bible is the most read and most influential book in human history. Yet people today read it ever less and less. The question, ‘Why bother with the Bible?’ is a live question even within churches, never mind beyond them. There are all sorts of reasons for this. The Bible can represent an establishment history from which some want to escape (‘The Bible underwrote Christendom and empire and gender discrimination, and we’ve had it with all that.’). The content of the Bible can be considered boring and platitudinous (‘Yeah, yeah, we know all that stuff about a loving God and being nice to each other. Time to get real.’). The Bible may be historically inaccurate, and anyway is addressed to alien cultures in a world of long ago, and so hardly to be relied on as a guide to life in the twenty-first century (In Gershwin’s famous formulation: ‘It ain’t necessarily so, the things that you’re li’ble to read in the Bible’). People who are interested in spirituality can find that there is much in the Bible that seems irrelevant (‘Why should I have to bother with all that stuff from ancient history – kings, pigs, hats in church – if I want to be a spiritual person today?’). The time that it takes to read the Bible regularly may have been available in previous ages, but there are too many other demands on time today (‘With so much of the world and its literature, art, music and movies available on apps, why should I give my limited time to the Bible?’).

Why bother with the Bible? In order to answer this question, some Christians point to the fact that Scripture is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3.16) and shows God revealing himself 22

by speaking and acting in the world. If the Bible is from God, then it must be taken seriously. Yet the Qur’an also depicts God speaking and acting, and many Christians, like others, feel happy just to shrug that off (‘OK, it makes the claim. But I don’t believe it.’). But then why not shrug off the Bible in the same way as the Qur’an? We probably need to start somewhere else. How do we, in practice, make sense of life and find our way in it? There is so much going on in the world that it can appear bewildering. We cannot possibly pay equal attention to everything around us. Whether consciously or not, we all select certain people, organisations, places and activities as a way of providing a focus that can make sense of things. We privilege these over others and choose to place our trust (in one form or another) and find our identity here rather than elsewhere in the hope that here we will flourish. Unless things go badly wrong, our early trust and focus in life start with our parents, school teachers and friends. As we grow and become more confident we start to align ourselves with groups, movements, activities or organisations that make sense to us – or at least offer the prospect of making a living and being able to keep going. This process relates also to faith in God. Perhaps this is most obvious in relation to unfaith. Why do people not believe in God? Although there may be no particular reason, often there is one. People can be put off by particular individuals (‘That vicar was so judgmental’) or events (‘How can I believe in a God who let this tragedy occur?’) or

Winter 2020-21

understandings (‘Biological science shows how life has evolved, so how can I still take seriously what the Bible says about God as creator?’). Such factors can be decisive for unbelief, and factors that might perhaps suggest otherwise – wonder at beauty, revulsion from evil, the witness of a self-giving life – are then discounted. Some things count for more than others in the way we form our view of the world. (As Qui-Gon Jinn says to the young Anakin in The Phantom Menace, ‘Always remember: Your focus determines your reality.’)

’Not just another book’ Christian faith is a particular mode of this selecting, privileging, and trusting that everybody does. The object of focus makes it distinctive: we put our trust in God as known in Jesus. How do we know about God as known in Jesus, so as to be able to put our trust here? Because of the Bible. The New Testament shows us Jesus. It shows a person who is astonishingly winsome. He cares for people whom others do not care about. When he speaks about life and God, people listen, for he speaks as someone who knows what he is speaking about. When nervous officials ask difficult questions, he has the alertness and the wit to reframe the issue, bounce it back at them and offer fresh insight. He challenges complacent assumptions and inverts familiar ideas of what counts as important in life. In addition to all this, the New Testament sets out three particularly astonishing understandings of Jesus. First, the culmination of his life is his death, his intentional giving up his life for others, indeed for us. He suffers torture, execution, desolation, yet this is where God’s forgiving and life-giving will is supremely realised. All routine assumptions about what God ‘should’ do to save the world are turned upside down. Secondly, Jesus not only was, he also is. His death was not the end. Rather, God raised Jesus to a new kind of existence in which death no longer features (which is only really comparable to God’s initial creation, the giving of existence rather than nothingness). The compelling figure of the Gospels is still living today. Thirdly, Jesus is the human face of God. Jesus not only shows what it means to realise the potential of our human nature (‘fully human’) but also displays the character, purpose and priorities of God as far as these are humanly able to be grasped (‘fully divine’). The ultimate mystery of life and the universe is made accessible in this particular person, who calls people to trust him and to follow him. Yet Jesus is not around anywhere on earth to be seen, heard or touched. If what the New Testament says is true, how might such truth be accessed? Here we need to enlarge our frame of reference. To understand what the New Testament says about Jesus, we need the Old Testament also. For without the Old Testament, the nature and meaning of

‘God’ and of what it is to be human (‘in the image of God’) will not be understood. The Old Testament shows God giving himself and Israel learning what it means to know him. This happens over time, amidst the complexities of life in a world that was far less provisioned and less secure than the world of today (even, as I write, in the midst

the Bible is our privileged guide for making sense of the world in which we live of Covid-19 worldwide). This God is personal and relational, good and just, compassionate and severe. He calls Abraham and Israel to be his people and to learn a way of being in the world that runs counter to many natural assumptions about what matters most. The range and depth and complexity of the Old Testament reminds us that learning what matters most is not easy and takes time. Without this Old Testament context it is all too easy to misread Jesus’s supreme revelation of God in narrow or unrealistic or self-serving ways (expecting God to ‘fix it’ or ‘make it good for me’ as the first priority).

NOTES 1. I offer a fuller version of the argument of this essay in my The Bible in a Disenchanted Age: The Enduring Possibility of Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, Baker Academic: 2018). Important fresh vistas are also provided in Sandra Schneiders, The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture (2nd ed.; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1999).

Of course, the world of both the Old Testament and the New Testament is in many ways a more limited world than the world of today, not only in its extent (Middle East in the Old Testament, Mediterranean world in the New Testament) but especially in terms of knowledge about how the world works in scientific terms. However, despite all the immense differences between then and now, there is a fundamental continuity of human nature. The struggles to live well and responsibly, to trust, to find love, to resist evil and corruption, to handle prosperity and adversity, to recognise the uncertainties of life, to face suffering and death – all these things that still characterise us today can be recognised, identified with and learned about in the Bible, where they are set in relation to the purposes of a good, sovereign and trustworthy God. Thus, Christian faith is a matter of looking to Jesus and the Bible as our key, our privileged guide for making sense of the world in which we live. This making sense is not primarily a matter of knowledge in a scientific sense, valuable though that is, but rather of wisdom, an existential and practically oriented knowledge of how to live well. Christians learn to focus here rather than elsewhere – not so as to ignore everything else in the world, but so as to frame it rightly and get it in perspective, so that it can be handled better than otherwise.

Towards truth and trust But how can one responsibly adopt Christian faith, with its focus on Jesus and the Bible, when there 23

Transmission

are so many other religions and ideologies in the world? First, faith needs to make intuitive sense. That is, its upholding of life in terms of goodness and grace, justice and mercy, time and eternity, needs to resonate with our own deepest hopes and intuitions of what really matters. It does not all need to resonate, and indeed is unlikely to do so, as many aspects of the life of faith only make sense over time. However, one of the striking features of the Gospels is that people who were in significant ways compromised and corrupted (‘tax collectors and sinners’) still had dimensions of heart and

truth cannot be known unless one is willing to engage it with one’s whole person mind that could recognise something different and better in Jesus when they encountered it (‘grace and truth’) and respond accordingly (though not all did, as response to grace and truth can be costly in practical terms). Secondly, we must recognise the importance of our nature as social beings. Of course, as individuals we exercise our reasoned judgment and make choices about what to believe and how to live. But we do not do so in isolation. Sociologists have developed the notion of plausibility structures, which is a recognition that things make sense to us because they make sense also to those who are our significant others – those whom we like or respect or trust. This modern notion of plausibility structures is a rediscovery of older understandings of the importance of others for our own identity and choices. St Augustine once famously said, ‘I would not have believed the gospel if the authority of the catholic church had not moved me.’ By this he did not mean that he discarded his own reasoned judgment and submitted to authority-claiming pronouncements. Rather, he meant that the gospel only made sense to him, and he only dared believe such an astonishing account of what human life and destiny really is, because of the persuasive power of faithful lives that had shown something of what the gospel means. Today, people generally come to faith, or not, because of the impact of significant others. This is often parents, teachers, friends in the first instance, if they as believers persuasively make sense of life. Others can have impact also, in various and unpredictable ways: a youth group leader, Christian Union friends, a caring minister, street pastors, a debt adviser, food bank distributors … or someone significant seen and heard on TV or other media, from Billy Graham to Pope Francis; or it might be through reading those whose writings make sense of faith. In all such cases, I/we can 24

reasonably reckon that, if these people trust in God through Jesus and take the Bible seriously, then it can make sense for me/us to do so also. I am moved by them to enter into something bigger than myself, the faith and life of the people of God (in its many forms), and make the ways of that people into my own ways. (Unbelief works similarly. Many, moved by a culture that does not care about God, reckon that that makes sense for them too. And for atheism, the work of Richard Dawkins and others can provide a requisite plausibility structure.) Thirdly, the possible impact of significant others is not just a matter of the present, but also of the past. That is, although all the biblical documents were written some two to three thousand years ago, they have never just been left in the past. Rather in every generation from then until now there have been communities of believers who have sought to live by the content of the Bible. The Bible’s language and images have been constantly used, set in fresh contexts and appropriated in the life and liturgies of believing communities down the ages. It has not always been done well (study of church history can often be a sobering experience). Yet when one sees the priority so regularly given to nurture and families, to learning and schools, to care and hospitals, to art and music, to dying and burial, and to the supreme value of faith, hope, and love, one sees a distinctive vision of life. The fact that so many people continuously down the ages have found wisdom and truth in the Bible gives us the expectation that it can do so for us too. We may no longer interpret the Bible identically to those in previous ages, yet there remains real continuity insofar as we still seek to engage those realities of God and life of which the Bible speaks. Finally, for all the right and proper impact of significant others, we must not just ‘go with the crowd’, but rather enter for ourselves into the reality of which the Bible speaks. How can we ultimately know that what Jesus says, and by extension what the Bible says, is not just hopeful human imaginings? Jesus in John’s Gospel raises this key issue (John 7.16–17). First he makes the claim of what he says originating not just in his human mind but also in the initiative of God: ‘Then Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me.”’ Then he gives a criterion for the all-important question of how one can validate such a claim: ‘Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own.’ No amount of just thinking hard or studying extensively can do what is necessary. Rather, one must ‘do the will of God’ if one is to know. The most important truth cannot be known unless one is willing to engage it with one’s whole person – the responsive heart, the believing mind, the faithful action. In the Bible and in God’s world, truth and life inseparably belong together.1

Celebrating, living and sharing God’s Word

Peter Brignall The Rt Rev Peter Brignall is the Bishop of Wrexham and Chair of the God Who Speaks initiative.

The Bible cannot be just the heritage of some, much less a collection of books for the benefit of a privileged few. It belongs above all to those called to hear its message and to recognize themselves in its words. At times, there can be a tendency to monopolize the sacred text by restricting it to certain circles or to select groups. It cannot be that way. The Bible is the book of the Lord’s people, who, in listening to it, move from dispersion and division towards unity. The word of God unites believers and makes them one people.1 It is the skill of any musician to move their hands and fingers simultaneously and consecutively to bring to life the beauty of the composers work, allowing it to be heard and fully appreciated. The musician translates the notes on the paper to sounds in the air for the music to tell its story. This two hands partnership could be used to illustrate that partnership between Bible Society and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. For the last 12 months we have collaborated to make the Bible sound fresh in our communities though The God Who Speaks campaign. Like any musical piece this initiative has its movements – fast and slow, pianissimo and fortissimo, themes and variations, cadenzas and improvisations, fugues and counterpoint. All to the purpose of making the Bible be that underlying score in the lives of our Christian communities. Like a good musical score or soundtrack, it describes and gives atmosphere to the story being told through interpretation and meaning. These enhance the storyline and would be missed if not

there. The storyline is, of course, life’s meaning and journey of each one of us before God, and in God.

Inspiration The inspiration for The God Who Speaks campaign lies in the 1,600th anniversary of the death of St Jerome and the 10th anniversary of the Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini (The Word of the Lord) by Pope Benedict XVI. I would want to add the 400th anniversary of the first complete edition/translation of the Bible into Welsh, following the foundational work of Bishop William Morgan (1545–1604). Sadly, he never saw his 1603 completed work published as the publisher’s text was lost in the Great Plague in London. Finally published in 1620, Bishop Morgan’s version was used in Welsh churches until 1988. St Jerome (340–420) was born in Strido, Dalmatia. He studied in Rome and was baptised there. Being attracted by the ascetic life, he travelled to the East, where he was reluctantly ordained a priest. Pope Damasus recalled him to Rome to be his secretary. Following the death of Pope Damasus in 384 Jerome returned to the East, to Bethlehem, where with the help of St Paula, he founded a monastery, a hospice and a school, and settled down to the most important work of his life. Jerome’s translation of the Bible into Latin from the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek is a work that with some revisions, is still in use today. Additionally, he was the author of many works, including letters and commentaries on Holy Scripture. His lifetime was filled with turmoil in the world and in the Church, yet through this all he was

Transmission

NOTES 1. Pope Francis, Apostolic Letter Aperuit Illis, 30 September 2019. 2. Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, 30 September 2010. N. 1. 3. Ibid., N.5. 4. Ibid., N.124. 5. Ibid., N.123. 6. Pope Francis, Angelus, 27 July 2014. 7. Verbum Domini N.73. 8. Ibid., N.73. 9. Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, N.27. 10. Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments 29 June 2014. 11. Aperuit Illis, N.3. 12. Ibid., N. 15. 13. Pope Francis, Scripturae Sacrae Affectus, Apostolic Letter on the 1600th Anniversary of the death of St Jerome, 30 September 2020. 14. Scripturae Sacrae Affectus. 15. E.g. many schools and dioceses have been engaging with the Bible in creative and innovative ways, from Bible study craft days, St Jerome’s lion storytelling and Scripture soundbite videos, to Bible art competitions, Scripture detective trails and Window on the Word parish photo shoots.

a true pastor helping refugees and those in need. He died at Bethlehem. The Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini is Pope Benedict XVI’s response and teaching document with recommendations arising out of the 12th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishop, meeting in the Vatican from 5–26 October 2008 whose theme had been ‘The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church’. The Synod was itself in the words of Pope Benedict a ‘profound experience of encounter with Christ, the Word of the Father, who is present where two or three are gathered in his name (cf. Matthew 18.20).’ 2

Theme and variations Since the late 1870s and the pontificate of Leo XIII there had been a growing awareness of the importance of the Word of God and the study of the Bible in the life of the Catholic Church. This reached a new pitch at the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) with the promulgation of the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum (Word of God) generating revived interest in the Word of God in the life of the Church, the theological reflection on the divine revelation and to the study of Sacred Scripture. Pope Benedict, picking up on the experience of encounter referred to above, speaks of his desire for the work of the Synod ‘to have a real effect on the life of the Church: on our personal relationship with the Sacred Scriptures, on their interpretation in the liturgy and catechesis, and in scientific research, so that the Bible may not simply be a word from the past, but a living and timely word.’3 Verbum Domini continues that process of assimilation and lays out the principle themes of the place of the Bible in the Church’s life and mission. First, the very fact of biblical revelation; the God who speaks and invites our response, and the nature of the relationship that engenders and the faith it inspires. With that faith which is the key, the Church is able to interpret the Bible authentically – the faith and the interpretation are in harmony and provide the correct understanding. Secondly, Verbum Domini sets out the word of God and the life of the Church in her liturgy and formal worship, sacramental celebrations and preaching, the inspiring of pastoral activity, formation and private prayer in all of the faithful: ordained, religious, and lay, especially in family life. Thirdly, Pope Benedict addresses the issue of the mission of the Church to bring the Word of God to the world not just by proclaiming it in itself, but through its proclamation in the social issues and cultural settings of today’s world, as well as in the ecumenical and interreligious dialogue in which the Church engages. His closing words are a prayer that, ‘every day of our lives … [may] be shaped by a renewed encounter with Christ, the Word of the Father made flesh: he stands at the beginning

and the end, and “in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1.17) Let us be silent in order to hear the Lord’s word and to meditate upon it, so that by the working of the Holy Spirit it may remain in our hearts and speak to us all the days of our lives. In this way the Church will always be renewed and rejuvenated, thanks to the word of the Lord which remains for ever (cf. 1 Peter 1.25; Isaiah 40.8).’4 Pope Benedict has spoken of the joy that comes when by the power of the Holy Spirit the divine word enters into us and bears fruit for eternal life. Joy that is to be shared, for ‘By proclaiming God’s word in the power of the Holy Spirit, we also wish to share the source of true joy, not a superficial and fleeting joy, but the joy born of the awareness that the Lord Jesus alone has words of everlasting life (cf. John 6.68)’.5

Fugue and counterpoint Within three years of the promulgation of Verbum Domini, Pope Francis had been elected Pope. It was apparent from the very beginning of his pontificate that he saw the need to make the words of that Apostolic Exhortation a living reality in the Church and world, proclaiming the place and importance of the Gospels and the Bible as a whole in the life of the individual and the community. He used his weekly General Audiences on Wednesdays in St Peter’s Square, as well as the Sunday Angelus Message, to promote the reading of the Sacred Scriptures by saying: ‘Everyone should carry a small bible or pocket edition of the gospels and should find at least a few minutes every day to read the word of God’ (June 2014) and a month later, repeating the importance of reading a passage from the Gospel every day; of keeping it in our pockets, our bags, always at hand, as ‘everything makes sense when you find this treasure that Jesus called “the Kingdom of God”: that is, God who reigns in your life, in our lives. God is love, peace and joy in every man and in all men … Reading the Gospel means finding Jesus and receiving this Christian joy, which is a gift from the Holy Spirit.’6 The message of Verbum Domini was not one for the individual alone, but for the Church community in all its aspects. ‘[T]he Synod called for a particular pastoral commitment to emphasising the centrality of the word of God in the Church’s life, and recommended a greater “biblical apostolate”, not alongside other forms of pastoral work, but as a means of letting the Bible inspire all pastoral work.’7 This was first formulated by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation Dei Verbum (N.24) with the purpose of not adding another layer of meetings to pastoral activity, but rather to make ‘the Bible the inspiration of every ordinary and extraordinary pastoral outreach [which] will lead to a greater awareness of the person of Christ, who reveals the Father and is the fullness of divine revelation.’8

Winter 2020-21

In October 2012 some six months before Pope Francis’ election in March 2013, bishops from all the countries of the world gathered in Rome for the 13th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops to take place in the Catholic Church. This time on the subject of ‘New Evangelisation’ – to reflect upon a rediscovery of personal encounter with Jesus and engage with renewed vigour in the mission of spreading the joy of the gospel and becoming spirit-filled evangelisers. Pope Francis responded to the Synod proceedings with his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) in November 2013. In it he sought to encourage the Christian faithful to embark upon a new chapter of evangelisation marked by the joy of those whose hearts and lives have been filled with their encounter with Jesus and that as the basis of ‘the renewal of structures demanded by pastoral conversion’.9 That Synod and this Exhortation are but one application of the biblical apostolate called for in 1965 and from which came the Homiletic Directory.10 The first part of the Directory is concerned principally with (1) the place of the word of God in liturgical celebration and, (2) the principles of Catholic biblical interpretation. It is against this whole contemporary background that the celebration of the two anniversaries was placed. During the spring and early summer of 2018 initial plans were drawn up, and by the autumn were presented to Bible Society and the Plenary Meeting of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference. Both accepted the proposals and a celebration campaign to inspire, animate and facilitate the dioceses and parishes in England and Wales in a greater and yet more innovative use of the Scriptures in daily life was born, with the title The God Who Speaks. It was to begin on the feast day of St Jerome (30th September) 2019 and run through the liturgical year 2019–20.

Pianissimo and fortissimo Launch events included Cardinal Vincent Nichols speaking from the National Gallery, London, about the painting of St Jerome and St John the Baptist by the Italian Renaissance artist Masaccio; the production of 60,00 copies of St Matthew’s Gospel for distribution across the Catholic community as well as a special edition for prisoners; the creation of a distinctive website www.godwhospeaks.uk to carry Bible related articles in culture, music and art, prayer and liturgy resources; resources for schools; formation resources and much more. Since that graduated launch, a huge amount of content has been added to the website. This in part due to the ever-increasing involvement and demand by schools and dioceses. The campaign was never intended to be top down, but an omni-directional exploration and sharing across England and Wales. The project was given two further fillips by Pope Francis; one, right at the beginning when on 30 September 2019 he gave the Church the Apostolic

Letter, Aperuit Illis (He opened their minds) which draws on Nehemiah 8.3 and Luke 24.45. In this Letter the Pope instituted the ‘Sunday of the Word of God’ to be observed annually on the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Catholic liturgical calendar. Falling as it does in the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity it deliberately ‘has ecumenical value.’ 11 This short letter of Pope Francis gave timely endorsement to The God Who Speaks iniative at its outset for what he said was exactly what the campaign was committed to seeking to do, namely to ‘help God’s people grow in religious and intimate familiarity with sacred Scriptures (cf. Deuteronomy 30.14)’.12 The second fillip came this year on the anniversary itself in the Apostolic Letter,’ Scripturae Sacrae Affectus (Devotion to Sacred Scripture)13 in which Pope Francis writes of St Jerome’s ‘living and tender love’ for the written Word of God which continues to inspire us in an age when, ‘Sadly, the richness of Scripture is neglected or minimized by many because they were not afforded a solid grounding in this area. Together with a greater emphasis on the study of Scripture in ecclesiastical programmes of training for priests and catechists, efforts should also be made to provide all the faithful with the resources needed to be able to open the sacred book and draw from it priceless fruits of wisdom, hope and life.’14 It is to provide at all levels of the Church that ‘solid grounding’ in the Scriptures that the campaign has worked for and continues to do so. This, like so much else in the last nine months, has been curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic, or more correctly had to change direction and emphasis. Covid-19 has affected hundreds of national and diocesan initiatives and events; diocesan Scripture tours that had been planned for venues across the countries have had to be postponed; the wonderful and remarkable mosaic art work commissioned specifically for the campaign entitled ‘Little Bits of God’ by the artist Pete Codling, has yet to be seen in its full splendour by most of the dioceses, albeit there are two videos of its creation and completion on our website. Like so much else, we have found new ways to continue the work of the initiative which is now to run until the Sunday of the Word of God 2022.

Cadenza and improvisation What the lockdowns and coronavirus restrictions have taught us is that the Word of God is not to be silenced, indeed it is quite the opposite. This is especially true at the diocesan and local level where our network of Scripture Champions have used our resources and opportunities to explore a continued involvement by groups as well as individuals of ways of celebrating, living and sharing God’s Word.15 The coronavirus has thrown light on areas of life that may well have been overlooked in a time of health and growing prosperity, and has provided the opportunity to bring the healing, redeeming, and hope-inspiring Word to our world as it is today.

Across the world, millions of people are not engaging with the Bible. This is often because the Scriptures aren’t available or accessible, or because their significance and value haven’t yet been recognised. Working with partners in more than 200 countries and territories, Bible Society is on a global mission to offer the Bible to everyone. This is because we believe that when people engage with the Bible, lives can be changed – for good.

Our promise: Your data is stored and processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy. We may use your data and other public information for analysis, so that we can use our resources effectively and contact you appropriately, unless you ask us not to. For further details, including your rights and to change your preferences, visit biblesociety.org.uk/privacy or call Freephone 0808 178 4921.

The Bible in Transmission is published by Bible Society, Stonehill Green, Westlea, Swindon SN5 7DG T: 01793 418100 F: 01793 418118 biblesociety.org.uk Registered charity 232759 Incorporated by Royal Charter Chair of Trustees James Featherby Chief Executive Paul Williams Editorial Team Fleur Dorrell, Nathan Mladin, Oldi Morava, Mike Otter, Revd Fr Marian Paloka, Michael Pfundner, Nick Spencer Editor Tony Graham

The Bible in Transmission – Spring 2021

Articles inside

On the authority and credibility of Scripture

Celebrating, living and sharing God’s Word

Continuity and discontinuity: The relationship between the two testaments

Textuality and orality in the Bible

Sacred text or Hebraic romance?: Literary devices and biblical intents in the book of Tobit

The unfolding story of Scripture

The Bible as literature

Editorial