I’ve learned a lot during the past couple of weeks as I’ve proposed different approaches to Biblical interpretation and got feedback (positive and negative). Here are the current posts as well as a selection of reactions from other bloggers:

1. My sermon series on the book of Judges: Chapter 1, All Thumbs: Although not strictly a part of this series, this did set me on course to pursue this topic.
2. Exegetical Sketches: Alexander’s Sword: Peter Kirk mentions this: here and here here
3. Exegetical Sketches: Alexander’s Sword in action: Douglas has been doing an experiment in bibliomancy inspired by this post.
4. Exegetical Sketches: Bad Boy Bible Study: This is where I turned up the heat and started getting some criticism.
5. Bad Boy Bible Study meets Ship of Fools: Tim, Doug, Henry, James, Bob, Douglas and John helped bring some balance to my perspective.
6. Bad Girl Bible Study: It was strange to me that this post didn’t get more reaction. I think it was possibly overshadowed by the previous post.
7. Exegetical Sketches: Swallowing the shell and spitting out the nut: Bob makes a very good point about Paul’s use of the OT.
8. My Sunday reading: Being called a Bultmannian gave me pause. After consideration I prefer to be called a Barthmannian.

The comment threads on my and others’ posts are well worth reading. My reading of Elisha, Jepthah, etc. has been enriched by the perspectives of fellow bloggers.

Their story. Our story. God’s story

“Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.”

Roger Schank, Cognitive Scientist

This topic is more than I can handle in a blog post. But I do want to throw out a few ideas and then allow them to bounce around out there. Essentially, the Bible is a book of stories. In Portuguese the word historia translates both the English words, history and story. In our English-speaking minds we tend to divide historias into truth and fiction. But that creates some problems for us. Fiction can often tell us great truths. And fact can often be a way of lying. The Bible tells us true stories. These stories are often a blend of fact and fiction and it’s not possible to separate them into neat categories. My approach to the Bible is that it speaks the truth in highly structured and artistic ways. Nathan’s story about the stolen sheep is true. So is Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. Jonah is true. So is Job. How historical are they, however? Our modernist tendency is to dismiss highly stylized writing as somehow inferior or less true than documentary history. It’s less important to sift out the truth from fiction than it is to savor these stories and the truth they impart. I have no problem with accepting all the Old Testament as pragmatically historical. In the worldview of the Bible, these stories form the background for interpreting and making sense of humanity’s place in the cosmos. The redemptive leitmotif, the Jewish monotheism and concepts of order and justice are vastly preferable to me than any of the modernist explanations of our origins, impulses and destiny.

Researchers like George Lakoff, Mark Turner and Roger Schank have helped us to see (!) that our minds organize information using stories and scripts rather than tables and flowcharts. This has huge implications for our interpretation and application of the Bible. Reducing the Bible to a systematized theology or a list of moral imperatives reduces the consequent impact of the Bible on our lives. The stories of the Bible are meant to be told and retold, pondered and savored. As Don Norman writes in Things That Make Us Smart, “Stories have the felicitous capacity of capturing exactly those elements that formal decision methods leave out. Logic tries to generalize, to strip the decision making from the specific context …” (Quoted in A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink, p. 103) The stories of the Bible rightly understood have a timeless ability to speak truth into our lives about ourselves and God.  But they are very much cautionary tales rather than accounts of exemplary models to follow. Meditation on their story (I can’t believe they did that!) ultimately leads to an enlightened appreciation of our own story (I can’t believe I did that!) to a renewed appreciation for God’s commitment to us (I can’t believe he did that!) So in approaching the narratives especially of the Old Testament, I’d like to suggest that we follow this three story model:

The Three Stories of the Bible

1. Their story: What does this story tell me about universal tendencies of human nature?
2. Our story: How can we see ourselves in the behavior of people in the Bible?
3. God’s story: How does God’s redemption add a plot twist to the story of our lives?

To see an excellent example of this model in action, check out Doug’s post about Jepthah’s daughter: Bewailing her virginity. The take-away lesson is not about plot development but rather character development. Our confusion of plot and character are a frequent source of bad hermeneutics. That’s why even though we accept the Bible as historical, in application it is essentially allegorical. No one expects us to curse jeering youth, sacrifice our daughter because of a foolish vow, or wipe out the entire populace of a city except for one harlot and her family. David’s courage won’t inspire us to collect foreskins, but it can still inspire us.