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Becky Garrison interview with Jeannine Brown, Associate Professor of New Testament and Associate Academic Dean at Bethel Seminary at St. Paul (a.k.a. Lutheran Land) and author of Scripture as Communication: Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics.
GARRISON: What can a communication model of interpretation add to all the reams of New Testament scholarship?
BROWN: At least in the some academic sectors, the perception of the text is that of figuring out a puzzle. In communication theory we push past that to say, No, these are authors communicating with their audiences. They spoke to a broader audience as well, because I think they understood that they were writing for more than just their current audience. Yet we have to pay attention to those audience dynamics. So it’s about communication. Paul communicates with the Corinthian church. The writer of Matthew communicates to his audience. He’s not just saying, I’m going to talk generically about Jesus. The gospel of Matthew is a communication between people. So, we need to hear it that that level. Scripture is more than just human communication but it’s not less than that. Some of the insights that come out of linguistics can help us really understand the nature of language. Sometimes we are explicit in what we say but most of the time we presume a lot when we speak. A communication model adjusts to those kinds of features.
GARRISON: Why do you say that exegesis is at its heart a cross-cultural one?
BROWN: I say that because the Bible was written at different times and places than the our own. So, we have to become good at cross cultural listening. It’s not a text without a context. What we often do is to domesticate the text by putting it our own context. The question is how well are we going to work at trying to sketch that original context of 1st century Christianity [for the New Testament]?
GARRISON: How do you respond to those who shut off the conversation say saying, “Jesus said it. I Believe It. That settles it?”
BROWN: I love what Trevor Hart and others say about this: “that’s a tradition for you.” You think a person is just saying, Hey that’s the Bible, but it’s a particular tradition saying, We just believe what the Bible says. They are unconsciously being shaped by a tradition that has full sway over how they think and act. We all have traditions that inform how and what we believe. The goal of the book is to help people including myself become more aware of what we bring to scripture. I think, therefore, I have a grid when I come to scripture, and that grid shapes me when it comes to what I say about scripture. We need to look at those influences behind our search for the meaning.
GARRISON: Conversely, what do you say to those that say the bible is a historical document with limited applicably to today’s cultural climate?
BROWN: This is where my confessional perspective comes in. I'm a confessional person who says that scripture is more than just an historical text. I readily grant that this is a confessional statement and understand why other people might not agree if they don't come from a confessional tradition. But my experience has been that scripture speaks across that vast two thousand plus year cultural gap. It does that most profoundly when I've taken the time to look very carefully at scripture on its own terms and in its own context. I’ll tell my students that scripture may seem locked in the past, as if the more we study it, the more we keep it at arm’s length, but this has never ever been my experience. Every single time I look at a text closely with the presumption that it will speak to me, it does. It often leaps across and it hits me in ways that I didn't anticipate. This represents one small clue that I might be getting at something. Because the text doesn't say exactly what I thought it would.
GARRISON: Why did you shy away from the literary theory of deconstruction in your book?
BROWN: Communication theory and deconstructionism are pretty different theoretical vantage points that don’t have a lot of overlap. To be true and consistent to a communication theory implies that texts are a means of communication and there’s stability there to some extent. Does it mean that everything is in the text? No. There are things that are inferred or assumed by the text’s author and audience. But deconstructionists’ perspectives on the text imply that the text is an unstable entity and not a communicative device. Rather, they argue that the text is much more unstable and inherently antithetical–with point and counterpoint in it together. I have read deconstructionists and I have found helpful insights into biblical texts. So, I never want to say that these are not helpful tools.
GARRISON: How does the storied nature of human existence help us when it comes to biblical interpretation?
BROWN: It’s helpful when we start reading a text such as, say, 1 Corinthians. Paul and the church at Corinth have a beginning together and an ongoing relationship that continues by letters after Paul leaves. We are entering a communication between Paul and the Corinthian church mid-story. Even when we hit a narrative text like the Gospels where the relationships are not as apparent, we not only enter a Jewish story world that implies the whole of the Jewish struggle but we enter into the middle of the first century Roman imperial world. So when we get to Herod in chapter 2 of Matthew for example, who does Herod represent? Is he just a Jewish king? How much is he a Roman figure?
GARRISON: How does the postmodern perspective inform contemporary New Testament interpretation?
BROWN: No longer does the Western white male perspective get to be the only voice. At the same time, there’s a very strong powerful influence of historical criticism in our guild. So, I can go to two different sessions at the Society for Biblical Literature and be struck by how this section is listening to a variety of voices. One approach might not agree with what the other is doing. I am not sure how all this will play out, but I know that we’re not going to turn back the clock now. These voices say, “I no longer will sit on the margin. You will listen to me.”
GARRISON: Isn’t there a danger we could throw out the baby with the bathwater here by accepting nefarious nonsense as serious scholarship?
BROWN: I see strength in hanging on to good historical work for obvious reasons. And there’s also strength in listening to people who don't think just like me.
GARRISON: Some have accused feminist New Testament scholars of looking at scripture from a very narrow lens.
BROWN: What I like about feminist criticism in the New Testament is that they actually say they're coming from a certain vantage point. As finite humans, we don't come from a lot of differing vantage points. We come from a single vantage point. The Western vantage point is just one vantage point, but for a long time it seemed like the only because those were the only voices that got to influence the guild.
GARRISON: Any responses to those who see the New Testament as embodying the politics of Jesus without acknowledging say the resurrection?
BROWN: We’re all narrow when we come to the text. We then broaden our perspective by reading people who don't agree with us and come at scripture from different vantage points. We get to hear and wrestle with how some scholars might help us out by saying the political elements of Jesus’ ministry need to be explored. It’s not the only construct to be explored, because quite clearly the Gospel writers are interested in more than but not less than politics. Take Matthew 21 with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the Jewish expectation that a king will come. The story and history are there in Zechariah. Without speaking the words, Jesus makes a parabolic claim to be Messiah. How powerfully political! Nobody misses the symbol and its political implications: after all, he’s crucified five days later.
GARRISON: Given the myriad of biblical schools of interpretation that abound, how does one assess what’s biblical truth?
BROWN: Biblical truth is bigger than we can ever get a grasp of. So to think we can somehow ‘nail it’ is so presumptuous.
GARRISON: How do you then begin the quest for biblical truth?
BROWN: We all seem to be trying to reach toward it, but it’s not a single point. It’s a really more like a big circle or a globe—it’s complex. So, we see some parts of it better than we see other parts. There is biblical truth to be discovered. But I will never discover it in totality. But I want to search, learn and grow. I do that best when I come at biblical truth from different angles with the help of other voices. It doesn't mean I don't assess the voices I hear. But I do want to be open to really hearing something that at first brush might strike me as odd, scary, alien, and foreign and ask, Where does that come from? That reading makes perfect sense in that person’s context.
GARRISON: How do you suggest to your students who are training to be pastors how to disseminate the knowledge they’ve gained in biblical studies without coming off as a know-it-all where the truth lies solely with the pastor?
BROWN: I talk with my students about the power moves that get done in the pulpit when they say, “Well the Bible may say this in this translation, but in the Greek it says this.” The word “but” makes everything you’re saying inaccessible when nobody but you can find out this information. You become the sole power source. There are ways to say, I’m going to draw upon my learning in a way that distributes power. I tell my students that the one thing we can’t do in our seminaries is have a sort of elitist “now we know all the answers” so we can look down on those people, who still think more simplistically than we do. If you’re passionate about communicating something you’ve learned, what that you need to do is figure out how to communicate it in a way that is persuasive and audience-appropriate.
GARRISON: Which New Testament scholars are on your must read list?
BROWN: If you look on my list of who my students are reading in my classes, you will see N.T. Wright, Marianne Meye Thompson--I could list a hundred names and be really comfortable listing those names. I aim to find scholars who fit within a range of diversity, so my students can hear a range of voices. For example,Mark Allan Powell is a Lutheran theologian, who also wrote a great popular book called Loving Jesus. For lay people looking for an introduction to the study of linguistics, Mark Strauss’s and Gordon Fee’s How to Choose a Translation for All It’s Worth is a nice little introduction to translation issues. Other writers that come to mind are Joel B. Green and Brian K. Blount.
GARRISON: Conversely, what types of New Testament scholarship give you the willies?
BROWN: The kind of work that goes at biblical language without a keen sense of the importance of linguistic sensitivity and how language functions—that type of scholarship tends to make me nervous. It’s nerve wracking to see a footnote or a paragraph in an essay where somebody does gymnastics with biblical words. The notion that I study a word and I can mine the depths of that word and examine the Greek as if everything lies deep down in this one word. That’s poor linguistics. Being committed to a communication theory means we’re not going to do these strange, odd things with biblical worlds as though the words stand alone. We need to listen to the relationship between the words, with the context, and so on. Because there’s no Greek speaking person here from the Koine [Greek of the NT era] period here to say, what are you doing? Stop that!
GARRISON: What translations do you use?
BROWN: I use different translations for different reasons. I like the TNIV (the updated translation of the NIV) the more I use it. Some of the changes that they make, such as being more gender inclusive, are really helpful to bring the translation into 21st century English, and other changes draw on insights from more recent biblical scholarship. In my book Scripture as Communication, I intentionally used 7 or 8 translations. I ask my students to use two translations for their classwork, so that they can really compare them and study the issues.
GARRISON: So what’s your take on paraphrases of the Bible like The Message?
BROWN: Translations have particular audiences and particular purposes. A paraphrase is a great thing to read to get the surprise that you might not get in your particular routine of Bible reading. I would use it in my family context readily with my teenage girls.
GARRISON: How then do you apply your own personal faith to your profession?
BROWN: I'm growing into that. I don't think I've figured all of it out, because I really value what my profession has given me in terms of checks and balances. Having been brought up in a pretty conservative church I didn't have those checks and balances that say, You know what? You need to pay attention to the context of the particular books. I wasn’t given many of those boundaries. I appreciate what I've received from my guild, but, because I believe in the end that scripture is relevant to us, I will push for reading the Bible as God’s communication to us. For example, I am listening for a unity among the biblical books that some of my colleagues do not presume. I understand why they don’t. They have reasons for that. There are real tensions between biblical books. But my confessional sense is that in the end there’s a unity of voice that God has inspired.
GARRISON: What then is your faith tradition?
BROWN: I grew up in a Lutheran context. It was pretty traditional or conservative in terms of its flavor. The church I'm a part of is a Baptist General Conference church. So it’s Swedish Baptist kind of tradition. It’s a quite different place from the church I grew up in.
GARRISON: Now, what advice do you give to your students who don't want to park their faith at the door but they want to be taken seriously as an academic?
BROWN: I would say first be rigorous in your work. Go the extra mile to do your work well and deeply. Scholarship is about reading well and reading critically, recognizing what’s of value and maybe what’s not as much of value to the study that you're doing.
GARRISON: Given you study the bible from an academic perspective, how do you then use scripture in your daily prayer life?
BROWN: For a while I had hard time hearing God in the middle of my scholarship because I still held to some false dichotomies. But I’m growing into the truth that there doesn’t have to a dichotomy between study and devotion. Part of the answer for me is listening as I’m studying to hear what God speaks. I try to hear where God is in the midst of my scholarship.
GARRISON: Any practical pointers here for seminarians who claim their faith has being blown apart since they went to seminary?
BROWN: I think you just have to let it all sink in for a bit. Let your mind be blown and just realize that it will come into shape bit by bit as you gain some more perspective from a variety of sources. I think it helps to have an ability to recognize and sit with questions, tensions and fears. Set those out on the table and try not to need a resolution tomorrow. God is bigger than that pocket of questions, tensions, and fears. I don't do that wonderfully all the time but I do find that somewhere along the line, I’ll read or hear from a different perspective that will help me navigate the questions. But I don't want to jump on the first thing someone says whether it’s somebody who is highly critical of faith or somebody who is highly emotional about faith. I want to think critically and see how a particular idea resonates with what I’m thinking and questioning. Committed reflection is a way to avoid overreacting in one direction or the other.
GARRISON: But how do you pray with the text after you’ve analyzed it to death?
BROWN: I think it does help to switch it up. I listened to audio scripture for a class I taught on gospels and formation. We read through Matthew three times and the students could listen to one translation on audio. So I thought, I’ll do that, and I found it really helpful. I heard things that I hadn’t heard before. Often the students in my hermeneutics class think I’ve ruined them for devotional reading. But I’m more hopeful that we could bridge the dichotomy between study and devotional life. For example, I was recently writing an article on John and the theme of new creation. That new creation theology was a feeding experience for me as a Christian as I sat and thought about the implications of new creation for humanity and for this world.
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Dr. Brown is an excellent professor. I thoroughly enjoyed her hermeneutics class (I go to Bethel Seminary).
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Dr. Brown is an excellent professor. I thoroughly enjoyed her hermeneutics class (I go to Bethel Seminary). Posted by mike | Posted at 09/16/2008 3:34 PM