A Bonus Reflection Stemming from my Book Analysis of “God: An Anatomy” by Francesca Stavrakopoulou (Part 10: Scholarship and Shakespeare; Corpses or Creativity)

Over this past week, I’ve been reflecting on the reaction to my recent book analysis series on Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s book, God: An Anatomy. Although Part 9 essentially wrapped up my thoughts on the book, there was still something else that I couldn’t quite articulate that has been bugging me this week. Hence, this post—call it a “Rejoiner to the Series,” if you will. It has to do with the Bible: how different people approach the Bible, the problem with much of the academic study of the Bible, as well as some aspects of the “Evangelical-Apologist” approach to the Bible. And ultimately, it is an attempt to articulate just how I understand the Bible. Enjoy.

The Problem with (Some of) Biblical Scholarship
Back when I was in my master’s program at Trinity Western University, there was one incident in one of my classes that left a distinct impression on me. I believe it was an Aramaic class. Now, it has been my experience that the most difficult classes for most students in Biblical Studies programs tend to be the language classes, be it Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic. During my first year at Regent College, for example, New Testament Greek probably took up 80% of my studying time, and yet it was my worst grade (for the record, I got a “B”). The same generally held true while studying Hebrew at Trinity Western. Heck, the same held true during my undergraduate years with my English degree. Simply put, learning all the grammar was challenging—it took me more time to get it down. Yet, when it came to understanding and interpreting literature, that is where I excelled.

In any case, in that Aramaic class, I, along with most of the other students, struggled to slog through all the vocabulary and grammar rules. One student, though, was just a natural at all that. Every single quiz or assignment, it was guaranteed that “Bob” would not only get a 100%, but would ace every bonus question as well. Some people are just really good at vocabulary memorization and grammar rules.

During one class, though, we got slightly off topic and somehow got to looking at Zechariah 2, particularly 2:5, where YHWH, speaking about Jerusalem, says, “For I will be a wall of fire all around it, says the LORD, and I will be the glory within it.” When the professor asked how the verse should be interpreted, I said that “wall of fire” was obviously a metaphor that spoke to YHWH’s future protection of His people. Immediately, “Bob” interjected and objected, “How do you know it’s a metaphor?” “It seems pretty obvious,” I said, “unless you really think God is saying He’s going to be a literal wall of fire around Jerusalem.” Bob just looked at me and said, “Well, why can’t it be a literal wall of fire?” and then proceeded to give a lexical and linguistical run down on how homat really means “wall” and esh really means “fire,” and therefore “wall of fire” means “wall of fire”—not a metaphorical wall of fire, but a literal wall of fire.

He was dead serious. It was dumbfounded. The class soon moved on, but at that moment something clicked in my mind regarding something that had bugged me from the time I was at Regent, up through my time at TWU. I realized that there are a whole lot of scholars and academics who are really good at grammar, lexicons, linguistics, and dissecting every word and phrase down to the most infinitesimal detail, but who simply do not know how to read biblical literature. Ask anybody who has read any number of Bible commentaries or journal articles, and they will attest to the fact that the majority of time scholars obsess over the historical-critical minutiae concerning things like textual variants, roots, etc., but never get around to trying to explain what the actual text means and how it reads. (As a side note, “Bob” was also taking courses at Regent, so I asked a friend of mine who was still there about “Bob.” My friend told me he always came across as an arrogant know-it-all).

Now, all those things can be necessary and helpful, as long as they eventually come back to the text and help us understand the actual text before us. But this doesn’t always happen. Too often, the actual text of the Bible becomes an afterthought. Indeed, for many scholars, the very idea of a “final form” of the text or the “original intent” of the author is passe. Sadly, as the few angry Twitter hyenas/online scholars so angrily expressed over the past six weeks during which I went through Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s book, it really is true that for a large portion of mainstream biblical scholarship, there really is absolutely no interest in the biblical text as it appears to us in its final form and the question of authorial intent has been abandoned for the kind of scholarship that Dr. Stavrakopoulou displays in her book.

Granted, many of her claims are a little more “out there” than I seen elsewhere, but I do think her work really does represent where a lot of biblical scholarship is today: an assumption that the biblical text as we have it is not really about history and more about post-exilic ideology that obscures the “real history” of ancient Israel. The result is, as Iain Provan argues in his book, A Biblical History of Israel, scholars tend to read into the text their own biases, assumptions and agendas, all the while telling themselves (and others) that they are being objective, they can see through the textual biases, and they—not those who question them—are the true scholars. Tradition and textual testimony are thrown out in favor of interpreting decontextualized verses through the lens of, well, whatever the hyper-skeptic wants, be it archeology, ANE myth, or any number of modern criticisms.

Shakespeare and the Bible
Just imagine if Shakespeare Studies was approached in the same way Biblical Studies is approached. You take a course on Shakespeare’s tragedies, but instead of actually reading Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello, the professor just tells you that Shakespeare (if there really was a Shakespeare…maybe it was Christopher Marlow) actually was a closeted homosexual who was also a misogynist, as well as a racist Englishman who was an early supporter of English colonialism. And then, to bolster those claims, the professor simply took out cherry-picked quotes and passages from the plays to show that Shakespeare really hated women (Hamlet drove Ophelia to suicide) and hated black people (I mean, the entire play of Othello perpetuates racial stereotypes!). And let’s not forget Romeo and Juliet—Shakespeare lifted the story from Arthur Brooke, who stole it from the Italian writer Matteo Bandello! I mean, how can anyone find that story historically reliable? In any case, it is pretty obvious that if the patriarchal English norms had not been forced upon those two young lovers, they wouldn’t have ended up dead!

I’m sorry, but such an approach to Shakespeare would be not only nonsensically stupid, but it would be a crime against great art and literature. It would amount to the rape and desecration of beauty and art. And that, I submit, is what a significant portion of modern Biblical Studies is doing with the Bible.

And that brings me to a point I wanted to make in the course of my previous nine posts: What is the Bible? Now, there are many ways one can answer that question. Most Bible introduction books will no doubt have the similar academic answers, all of which are valid: It is essentially a library of a variety of writings spanning thousands of years; it contains many different genres—history, poetry, prophecy, law, etc. Some books will also emphasize that the Bible is inspired, with more hardline conservative Protestant takes also emphasizing that it is inerrant.

I will quibble with the current notion of “inerrancy,” but everything else I’ve listed I agree with. For me, in a nutshell, the Bible is the inspired testimony and revelation of a very real God’s involvement in the history of Israel and the early Church. That being said, it bears witness to those historical events by means of art, poetry, and literature. And, although it is necessary to do the historical and linguistical work to make sure we properly can understand the text that we have before us, in the end, it is the inspired, revelatory, and creative interpretation of that history that matters. That is the “wrestling ring” in which we encounter God. That is where our personal involvement is demanded of us. And if you don’t step in that ring and wrestle with what is there, if you instead keep the biblical text at arm’s length (or more properly, at an “academic’s” length), if you instead choose to treat the Bible as a mine from which you simply cherry-pick verses to justify your particular stances and agendas, then what’s the point? You’re just throwing tomato soup at a Van Gogh painting and convincing yourself that what you’re doing matters, that you’re more enlightened than everyone else, and that you’re not just an annoying little activist whose only goal in life is to destroy what is beautiful.

Conclusion
I suppose that is what I really want to emphasize here: The Bible is art. The Bible is beautiful. The Bible is literature. Yes, it is testimony of God’s involvement with historical people and events, but the prophetic and inspired power of the Bible comes to us through its literary art and beauty. And because of that, it displays a creative power. It isn’t just inspired—it is inspiring.

When I was in college, my Shakespeare professor began his class by holding up a King James Bible and telling the class, “If you want to truly understand Shakespeare, you need to read the Bible, because so much of Shakespeare’s writings is inspired by the Bible.” The same can be said of so much of art, literature, and music over the past 2,000 years. The Bible has given us a living narrative that we are able to understand our own lives by. It has that creative and shaping power for those who dare to take, read, and wrestle with it—not analytically dissect it, but rather to wrestle with it, live with it, dance to its harmonies and rhythms.

Simply put, if reading and studying the Bible isn’t inspiring, if it doesn’t inspire you to do something creative and beautiful with it, then you’re not reading it right. You’re not really engaging with it. If you instead choose to dissect it as if it is a corpse, you’ll find it is your own corpse you are cutting open.

People who do that are more than often rather angry and cynical and in self-inflicted pain. As I’ve seen quite often, many of those kinds of people come from pretty staunchly Fundamentalist/Evangelical backgrounds. They grew up in an environment where the Bible was analytically dissected to justify a wide range of cultural, social, and political “right-wing” stances, but then (rightly) rejected that “brand” of Christianity and that way of reading to the Bible. The only thing, though, is that they ended up rejecting Christianity altogether while still maintaining that same mindset when it comes to reading the Bible. They still hold to the conviction that the Bible is something to be dissected to justify certain agendas and stances, and in that respect, they still are no different from the “right-wing Fundamentalism” they abandoned.

All that said, the way in which you approach the Bible is key. Ultimately, you’ll either view it as a corpse requiring dissection and an autopsy, or you’ll view it as the creative and life-giving narrative of the living God who longs to inspire you to take part in His creation.