Biblical Interpretation: A Roadmap - Softcover

Ringe, Sharon H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0687016088 ISBN 13: 9780687016082

Verlag: Abingdon Press, 1996

Inhaltsangabe

Biblical Interpretation: A Roadmap is a guide to discovering and asking the key questions - about biblical texts, about readers of the Bible, and about the interaction of the two - that forms the basis of biblical interpretation today. These questions are organized around three fundamental assumptions that govern the authors' approach to reading the Bible: the biblical texts arise from particular historical, social, and cultural settings: the reader likewise reads from a specific setting; and neither the diversity of the texts nor the multitude of readers stands in isolation one from the other. Tiffany and Ringe here offer an approach to biblical interpretation that takes both the texts and the reading context seriously, guiding and encouraging readers to draw upon the expertise and authority of their own life experiences and contexts. They also recognize that wide-ranging experiences and contexts are necessarily involved in biblical interpretation, showing how critical engagement with those contexts, in all their historical, social, and cultural diversity, is itself an unavoidable and invaluable part of the interpretative process.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sharon Ringe is Professor of New Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C. She is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and adjunct professor at Universidad Bíblíca Latinoamericana, San Jose, Costa Rica.

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Biblical Interpretation

A Roadmap

By Frederick C. Tiffany, Sharon H. Ringe

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 1996 Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-687-01608-2

Contents

Abbreviations, 
Preface, 
An Introduction to This Roadmap, 
Basic Assumptions Underlying the Process of Reading, 
Learning to "Love the Questions", 
The Design of This Roadmap, 
PART 1: THE ROADMAP, 
1. Locating the Readers and the Reading Context, 
2. Encountering the Biblical Text:, 
3. A Close Reading of the Biblical Text:, 
4. Reading Contextually:, 
5. Engaging the Text, Other Readers, and, 
PART 2: ADDITIONAL SAMPLE TEXTS, 
Introductory Note to Part 2, 
6. Numbers 10:11-12:16, 
7. Jeremiah 22:24-23:8, 
8. Psalm 77, 
9. Mark 3:1-6, 
10. 1 Corinthians 11:17-34, 
PART 3: ISSUES AND RESOURCES IN INTERPRETATION, 
11. Some Issues in Biblical Interpretation, 
12. Selected Resources for Biblical Studies, 

CHAPTER 1

Locating the Readers and the Reading Context

Beginning the Journey at Home

The journey of biblical interpretation begins at home, with attention to the immediate contemporary environment in which the biblical text is encountered. This might seem like an odd place to begin a process of biblical study. Would it not make more sense to begin with the biblical text and information about the biblical world, which is to say the world within which the text originated? Is that not the world the interpreters want to explore and understand? Why start with the world of the readers of the biblical text?

One reason for the decision to begin at home is that every journey into and with the biblical texts will be new, principally because each community of interpreters at every moment of its life is unique. Even if a person or group returns to a text studied earlier, that return trip will not be exactly like any previous ones. Each person will have changed, the composition of the group may have varied, and the wider historical and social context will be different. Because of those changes and the uniqueness of each particular moment of interpretation, each encounter with the text will be a distinct and distinctive adventure. Thus, to start with the readers' circumstances affirms this diversity and this dynamic of change in the study of biblical texts.

The decision to begin at home also grows out of the conviction that the world in which we all live is God's creation, and that God is present through and active within that world. In and through this world God reveals God's self. This was true in biblical times; it is true today. Thus the world is a primary "text" within which one can discern God's word. The Bible is also God's "text" or word—a record given a place of privilege by historic decisions of the church, and a record that itself represents the discernment of God's presence and action in the world by a number of particular communities at specific moments in history. The church affirms, and the experience of many people confirms, that reading this record guides efforts to discern and interpret God's more immediate word received through the text of the present world.

A third factor in the decision to begin the journey at home is a consideration of the nature of texts that have been recorded in writing or other media. It is the very nature of any recorded text that it does not remain confined to its original context. Once recorded, any text takes on a life of its own, such that its meaning or significance is no longer defined by or limited to the context of recording. It certainly is not limited by the historical facts about the event which it purports to describe or record.

Even oral communications function in this sense as recorded texts. A conversation between two people is context-specific, and meaning occurs principally at the moment when the communication takes place. Despite that primary meaning, later reflections on the event and on what was said and heard can lead to new perceptions. These understandings are derived from the memory of the communication (in a sense from the recording of that communication event on the memory of participants), more than from the original communication itself.

Even in such a context-specific communication as an oral message, the transmitting and receiving of meaning are complex functions. There is the intended meaning of the speaker, signer, singer, or writer, and there is the message received by each person or group present in that moment. Experience teaches how perplexing the process of communication is. Even in situations where the participants are relatively homogeneous and share common cultural assumptions, primary language, general history, and similar expectations, what the speaker intends and what the audience receives may differ substantially. Words have particular associations in the minds of each person, and those associations influence what is perceived in the communication. A word that is commonly assumed to convey happiness—the word "picnic," for example—may trigger memories of a tragic accident or other event, or years of buried sadness at the picnics one was not able to attend. In other words, the word may have no positive meaning at all for someone, or it may suggest media pictures portraying a fun thing that other people do. Similarly, the word "family" may conjure images of good times and security for many, while for others it evokes feelings of pain and abuse. Meaning thus occurs not in isolated words or signs, but in the relationships of those words with each other and in the interaction of those words within and between the worlds of experience of the communicator and the receivers.

It is important, therefore, even in the immediacy of face-to-face exchanges, for the communicator to seek to understand as fully as possible the experiences of the receivers. The receivers, in turn, will want to understand where the communicator is coming from. What is common in their experiences? What values or understandings are assumed? What are presumed to be shared perceptions of a given situation? Where and in what ways are their experiences and perceptions different?

Communications that are recorded in more lasting forms, such as a written document, an audio recording, a video recording, or some other medium of preservation and transmission, are even more complex. These records—or, in general terms, "texts"—can and will be transported into new settings, each of which gives rise to a new communication event. Though the words (and in the case of a voice recording, even the tones and inflections of the speech) are transmitted faithfully from one context to another, the changed contexts within which a text is received affect the meaning of the communication in such a way that it is as if the text itself has become new. Since meaning occurs in the interaction between the text and those who receive it, and is not defined or delimited by the text alone, each new occasion with a text will create new meanings. A common experience of this shift of meanings comes when one reads a novel or sees a movie for a second time, and finds in it meanings, delights, or disappointments that were not apparent in the first encounter. A more dramatic instance of new meanings comes when one rereads a book like Winnie the Pooh as an adult after having loved it as a child, or when one rereads the moving Diary of Anne Frank after visiting the Franks' home in Amsterdam or after a pilgrimage to one of the concentration camps where Jews and others...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Abingdon Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1996
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0687016088
• ISBN 13: 9780687016082
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 240
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland