The Four Assumptions of Ancient Interpreters

The reason there is even a question regarding how we should read the Bible has to do with the rise, in the last 150 years, of modern biblical scholarship. Taking a historical critical approach, their findings and conclusions challenge many of the traditional understandings of key biblical texts and foundational Christian doctrines. Yet, what most readers of the Bible don't know is that much of what Christian denominations have taught was determined long ago, in dramatically different cultures by, those James L. Kugel calls, "ancient interpreters." These interpreters were teachers or professional sages from the latter half of the Second Temple period (ca. 538 BCE – 70 CE), as well as early Christian evangelists/teachers and rabbis of the first three centuries CE.

Whether one is reading Philo of Alexandria, authors of the New Testament texts or the writings of the earliest rabbis in the Mishnah and Tosefta, many of their interpretations of the Hebrew Bible passages strike modern students and scholars alike as strange but, at the same time, as oddly familiar. These ancient interpreters "discovered" meanings for their own people to virtually every portion of the Old Testament. Yet, often, these interpretations seem to have little or nothing to do with historical or literary context.

Kugel details the example of the binding of Isaac (Gen 22:1–13). He notes that the ancient Jewish interpreters ran into two "problems" with the text: (1) Why did God have to test Abraham's faith? Didn't he know what the outcome would be? Why would God ask anyone to prove his/her faith by sacrificing their own child (or any human being)? and (2) When Isaac asked where the sacrifice was, Abraham lied to his son, for he obviously didn't know that God would stop him from sacrificing Isaac. Yet through some clearly reworking of the text, these interpreters ignore the plain reading of the text and came up with an interpretation that God had words with Satan (much like in Job 1 and 2) and thus he had to prove Abraham's faith. In addition, they provided some creative punctuation and determined that Abraham had been completely honest with Isaac and that Isaac had agreed to be sacrificed! To someone raised in the era of modern biblical scholarship, those interpretations seem quite stretched, if not completely inconsistent with a straight-forward reading of the text.

Noting how these ancient interpreters found meaning, Kugel lists what must have been their assumptions about the biblical texts: (1) "...the Bible was a fundamentally cryptic text, so that when it said A, it really meant B;" (2) "...the Bible was a book of lessons directed to readers in their own day. It may seem to talk about the past, but it is not fundamentally history. It is instruction, telling us what to do.."; (3) "...the Bible contained no contradictions or mistakes. It was perfectly harmonious, despite its being an anthology"; and, (4) "...the entire Bible is essentially a divinely given text, a book in which God speaks directly or through His prophets."

As Kugel then claims, and my experience and observation would support, these assumptions are accepted, even if not consciously, by many modern day Jews and Christians. That is...

• The Bible is a guidebook for every aspect of daily life 
• Its prophecies are being fulfilled in today's world, regardless of historical context
• It does not contradict itself or contain any mistakes, inaccuracies or inconsistencies 
• Its meaning is not always obvious and thus interpretation requires much more than just a straight-forward historical approach
• In its parts, and as a whole, it is the inspired and inerrant word of God. 

Thus, Kugel concludes, "That is why, even today, trampling on these assumptions can get people's hackles up..."

But surely, Christians today would deny that this was true of early Christian interpreters. In reality, early Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Bible was very similar to ancient Jewish interpretation, especially in their tendency to read the Bible allegorically. For that is exactly how early Christians "uncovered" the hidden references to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus in the Old Testament texts–that is, the Messianic prophecies.

More to come...

Note: All quotations in this blog post are from chapter 1 of How to Read the Bible: A Guide for Scripture, Then and Now by James L. Kugel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007).