Title: How to Read the Bible: History, Prophecy, Literature - Why Modern Readers Need to Know the Difference, And What It Means for Faith Today
Author: Steven L. McKenzie
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195161491
Pro:
• Clear explanations of the genres used in the Bible
• Good discussion of how to understand the intentions of the authors of the texts
Con:
• Does not explain why the biblical authors’ intentions are the only or best basis for interpretation of literature
Description:
• Exploration of how to read the Bible through the intentions of the authors
• Argues that the biblical writings cannot be disconnected from their cultural origins
• Disputes common, literalist readings of the Bible
Book Review
Interpretation is always a complicated task, one which involves interaction between the text, the reader’s expectations, and the intentions of the author. How these elements play off against each other help determine the reader’s understanding of what the text is supposed to mean — either in general or specifically for them.
To help people approach interpretation of the Bible in a more informed manner, Steven L. McKenzie has written the book How to Read the Bible: History, Prophecy, Literature - Why Modern Readers Need to Know the Difference, And What It Means for Faith Today. McKenzie’s basic thesis is relatively simple: we can best understand what a biblical text means by understanding what the author originally intended, but since we don’t have access to the author’s original notes or interviews, we have to rely on circumstantial evidence in the text itself. One important but often ignored clue is the genre of the text itself: all textual interpretation depends in part upon what a text’s genre is, and this has to include biblical texts as well. We can’t reasonably interpret the Bible without our interpretations being informed by how a text’s genre (historiography, wisdom literature, apocalyptic literature, letters) structures and informs the content.
McKenzie’s writing, research, and arguments are all very strong — but does he actually accomplish his goals? That’s harder to say.
Liberal religious believers will likely read this book and nod in agreement, finding confirmation for what they were already thinking as well as support for their positions. Conservative religious believers may be less sympathetic, disagreeing at almost every point of McKenzie’s arguments. Why the difference?
The key, I think, will lie with disagreements over the basic premises. In the first place, conservative believers won’t always agree that humans are the original authors of these texts — and even where they are somehow the “author,” ultimately it is God’s intentions which count, not the human hands which God guided. There is no way to respond to such objections from within McKenzie’s argument.
In the second place, there is reasonable basis for disagreeing over what role the authors’ intent should be accorded in the first place. Just because the author intended a book to be read in one way a thousand years ago, does this constrain us to read it in the exact same manner today? Perhaps a biblical text was intended as biting commentary on the politics of its day, but couldn’t it be read now as providing spiritual insight on the nature of humanity?
The same is true of any ancient text: Plato may have had one intention in writing any particular dialogue, but philosophers today aren’t bound to adhere to that intention when interpreting the meaning and significance of the ideas today.
McKenzie is correct in his criticism of those who insist that these texts have to be read as literal histories and/or as being about our own time. Such insistence can legitimately be described as misreading, but it is arguable that McKenzie is making a similar error when he insists that biblical texts must be read according to the intentions of their authors.
McKenzie’s purpose is to provide readers with a way to accept biblical stories that can’t be literally true, thus preventing them from dismissing the Bible entirely. In this I’m sure he will succeed — but that’s a relatively narrow purpose without much lasting impact, I suspect. It might have been a more interesting work had he explored a variety of ways to read biblical texts with the intent of demonstrating that the literalist approach, while not completely invalid, is by no means the only or best approach for most of the Bible.
