In this final part of the series of essays on the multivalency of Scripture, I will explore the three worlds of the text model. Essentially, it is a way of classifying existing approaches to Scripture. But more than that, it is useful in that it helps us to see that there are many different approaches and all are useful in helping us discover God’s message for His people in our time.
The Three Worlds: The World Behind the Text
In the first essay, recall that we noted how early twentieth-century Protestants believed that the words of Scripture have only one meaning, if only we can study its words exhaustively (fundamentalism), or if only we can understand the historical context and discover the “original, undiluted” text (modern liberalism). This break with a pre-modern view of Scripture can be traced as far back as Martin Luther.
It should be noted that while mainstream biblical scholarship today and the Catholic Church have always rejected the fundamentalist approach, both are willing to modify and adapt the tools used by the modern liberals, after stripping them of their modern assumptions.
This old approach, which is concerned with the historical context and background of the formation of Scriptural texts, is often called the historical method. It asks questions such as who might have written the text, when it could have been written, how many stages of editing the text might have gone through, how archaeological discoveries might explain certain texts, etc. The concern for the background of the text has led this approach to be classified as the study of the world behind the text.
The Three Worlds: The World of the Text
Now, as the field of biblical studies changed as it entered the postmodern era, it began to allow itself to be influenced by other fields aside from history. One highly impactful field is the study of literature.
Recognition of the limitation of how much we can know about historical context moved a group of scholars to begin studying the literary effect of a text. This approach asks questions such as why a text is structured in a certain way, what plot devices are used, why characters are portrayed in a certain way, etc. Due to a focus on the text as it is, without too much concern on its formation, this literary approach has been classified as a study of the world of the text.
Since this approach is a little less straightforward to understand for readers who are not acquainted with studies of literature, I will use the text of Genesis 18-19 to illustrate how it works. The text begins with Abraham offering three strangers water, bread, meat and milk in chapter 18. Afterwards, he receives a promise that his aged wife will eventually give him a descendant, resulting in an awkward conversation between Sarah and God. Later on, in chapter 19, Lot too displays hospitality to the same travelers, albeit only two of them. However, Lot merely offers bread, and an unleavened one too. (Imagine eating unconsecrated hosts for breakfast instead of leavened bread.)
In the following scenes, readers usually focus on the hostility of Sodom’s inhabitants and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is important, however, for a literary approach to pay equally careful attention to small textual details. In the aftermath of the chaos, Lot’s wife becomes petrified, and his sons-in-law fail to take Lot’s warning seriously, getting killed in the process. As a result, Lot no longer has the ability to produce male descendants, which is a disaster in this ancient culture.
Of course, he could have traveled further to find another wife, but this does not happen. Instead, the virgin daughters he previously tried to offer to Sodom’s inhabitants opt to make him drunk (oh, the irony), and proceed to have incestuous intercourse with him to produce male descendants. It is probably of no coincidence either that these sons become the ancestors of Canaanite peoples that Abraham’s descendants must battle with later on.
It is not hard to imagine that new discoveries of literary techniques and nuances in the text increase appreciation of biblical texts, even among readers who do not profess to be religious. (This is why it is reasonable to conclude that self-professed atheists who summarily dismiss the entire Scripture as a useless relic of the past simply have not done their research.)
In fact, from the later part of the twentieth century onward, both religious and non-religious scholars shifted from scoffing at the primitive literary style of the ancient biblical writers to appreciating their ability to produce complex texts that escape our contemporary ability to grasp them.
For example, older scholarship saw the Book of Job as a poorly edited and inconsistent book because its first two chapters and its last chapter take the form of prose, while the middle portion, the largest one, was written in poetry. (Never mind that this structure inspired the decision to use both black-and-white and color in the cinematography of The Wizard of Oz.)
Today, scholars prefer to think of good reasons for why the Book of Job was structured this way, and the debate continues. This thinking is not too far from the assumption of the pre-moderns, that Scripture is cryptic and it requires creative approaches to interpret.
The Three Worlds: The World in Front of the Text
An even more recent approach in biblical scholarship has continued to rise in importance until today. This approach, like the literary approach, was born partly from recognition of historical method’s limitation. However, it is also largely motivated by the sense that Scripture studies were too academic and irrelevant in the lives of ordinary people. (Unfortunately, in my opinion, this approach has fallen into the same pitfall, at least among scholars, because of the pressure to follow academic conventions.)
This approach can be distinguished from others from its emphasis on the lives of the readers of Scripture. It asks questions such as how God’s message for an ancient audience might be relevant for today’s reader, how the words of Scripture might console a poor person in a developing country, how a person with disability might hear texts that associate blindness with sinfulness, how a contemporary woman’s experience might enrich her interpretation of the text, etc.
Since the reader’s context is essential in the act of interpretation, this approach has often been called the contextual approach. (In fact, an important document released by the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1993, then chaired by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, uses the same label.) Using the three worlds classification, this approach falls under the study of the world in front of the text.
The Multivalency of Scripture for the Lay Reader
As one can see, scholars of Scripture today can choose one or more of these three approaches, before choosing a number of the different tools unique to each approach for their study. Archaeology can be quite useful for a study of the world behind the text, while linguistics might be more useful for the study of the world of the text. There is no restriction that prevents one from using more than one approach.
In fact, the more (good and valid) approaches are used, the more the reader can get out of Scripture. Since Scripture is multivalent, it is capable of speaking to audiences in any context across long periods of time and distant spaces. Its depth is limited only by the limitation of our interpretive strategies, and our carelessness when we abuse it.
Now, I began this series of essays with the goal of discussing the multivalency of Scripture in the context of more shallow approaches that emerged in the modern period. I have also argued that scholars today tend to appreciate the idea that the words of Scripture contain more than just one meaning, as the three worlds of the text model has shown. But on the practical side, are there any lessons that we lay readers can draw from the history of scholarship?
I suggest that there is at least one way to do so, and it starts with the world in front of the text. It is true that in academic discussions about the history of scholarship, this approach is very recent and it tends to be associated with more liberal movements in biblical scholarship. However, this approach is technically what preachers have done throughout the history of Christianity. It is unfortunate that academic discussions often fail to consider this salient point.
When preachers give sermons using Scripture, or when priests attempt to explain Scripture in liturgical homilies, what they are trying to do is to bring the message of Scripture to their parish or community to whom they are ministering. In fact, when preachers do not contextualize Scriptural texts for their own communities, their preaching sounds generic and bland.
As such, the rise of the study of the world in front of the text is an affirmation of both what responsible preachers have always done, and what devout Christians attempt to do when they pray with Scripture, whether privately or during the liturgy. Of course, such an enterprise is only possible if we accept that Scripture is multivalent, as the ancients had always affirmed.
Once we are clear about the purpose of studying Scripture, it becomes clear that the study of the world behind the text and the world of the text is really just a stepping stone, although a very important one. The preacher and the reader should be encouraged to use study Bibles printed with notes, the fruit of decades of scholarship, not “naked” Bibles, to gain deeper insights to the world behind the text and the world of the text. Ultimately, however, any good and relevant insight from these studies should only serve to help deepen an encounter with Scripture for its hearer, who lives in the world in front of the text.
Now, I did say that it is not my intention to explore the fourfold senses of Scripture in the second part of the series, since many others have done so. But there is one important and related point when it comes to the issue of practical application of scholarship. It is fashionable today to study traditional interpretive strategies, central in ancient and medieval periods, even among mainstream biblical scholars. It is often called the study of history of interpretation.
Scholars usually do not classify them using the medieval Catholic framework of fourfold senses, because this framework took time to develop and older commentaries did not use it. Either way, it is difficult to fit more traditional or ancient approaches into the three worlds model, although it is certainly not impossible.
But that is not the point. Most importantly, preachers and readers of Scripture today have access not only to the study of the world behind the text and the world of the text, but also a wealth of ancient and medieval commentaries on Scripture, as well as commentaries on these ancient commentaries.
Not only Christian ones, but Jewish ones too. For a start, interested readers can consider the commentaries of Rashi, a medieval French rabbi so influential that many medieval Catholic commentators of Scripture have used him in their explanation of Old Testament texts.
How spoiled for choice today’s Christians are! All we need to do is keep an open mind, use the best resources available, and enlist their aid in our encounter with the Word of God in human words, whether it happens at the next Mass or tonight.
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