GLOBAL INTERPRETATIONS OF CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES

1. GLOBAL INTERPRETATIONS OF CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES RLST 206 AND DIV 3845 Feb 6 2012

2. Today • a) 3:10-3:55 Contemporary Models for the Interpretation of Scriptures: INTER(CON)TEXTUAL HERMENEUTICS: In a World Context pp. 33-49, 71-75. • b) 3:55-4:55 Group Discussion (inter(con)textual interpretations of : • Lamentations • Gospel of John • d) 4:55-5:30 Lecture:Classical Models for the Interpretation of Scriptures: Apocalyptic Judaism, Matthew, and Paul

3. Visit on Sunday Feb. 19: • Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church 4905 Franklin Pike Nashville, TN 37220 • “The Divine Liturgy” (worship service; 10:00 am) followed by Q & A with Fr. Gregory Hohnholt • Have questions ready out of your readings of Greek Orthodox interpretations of the Gospel of John and of Hebrews in the Global Bible Commentary • We will organize rides (leaving campus 9:15)? From where? • Who can provide a ride?

4. Next Week: Sign upIf you deal with John today… you cannot next week … So very simple ! • Group 1: John GBC by PetrosVassiliadis (Greece) • Presenter of GBC : George Greene • Leader: Miladys Perez • Group 2: Letter to the Hebrews by Stelian Tofanâ • Presenter of GBC : Chanel Baker • Leader : Alison Stuhl • Respondent:Michael Durham

5. Your quizzes • Either excellent • Demonstrating that you had carefully done the readings • Or very poor • Demonstrating that you have not done the readings • Some in the middle, • with some confusions • And some absent, for various reasons • No makeup. We will have an additional quiz, and we will drop your lower grade (which might be an absence)

6. Scriptural Criticism: 3 dimensions of reading Scripture

7. Very quickly: Two weeks ago We have seen that • all interpretations are “inculturated” = influenced by the (cultural) context from which we read. This means that our • Textual Choices are viewed as LEGITIMATE, = grounded in the text, according to our culture • Theological/hermeneutical choices areviewed as PLAUSIBLEaccording to our culture • Contextual Choices are viewed asVALID (= valuable) according to our cultural life-context

8. Very quickly: Last week, Liberation Interpretations • Focused on Interpretive Contextual Choices • Ethical/moral test: Loving Neighbor • How is this text as interpreted helpfulin a specific life-context? • Is it the “best”? The most helpful? And avoiding negative effects? • As Brian noted, this assessment is very different if we are in North America and in Latin America • Involves a particular Theological-hermeneutical choices: • Scripture as corrective lenses

9. Very quickly: Last week, Liberation Interpretations We have seen that • Using scripture as “corrective glasses” believers purposefully use Scripture to see their social life-context in a new light • Or to see the lights (Tamez: “lanterns” in the barrios; “stars”) • Scripture as Prophecy: giving believers to see what others cannot or will not see • Prophecy as critique of society as it is • And as utopian ideology. A critique of culture as present (problematic) ideology • Yet, NOTE: ALL Scriptural Interpretationsinvolves seeing the believer’s life-context in a different light

10. Very quickly: Reading the Bible as aword-to-live-by believers necessarily see their social context in a different way. • Envisioning a certain way to interact with others and their social contexts • Constructively • E.g. affirming what is positive in this context; Schools, Hospitals, church programs, Room in the Inn (churches offering shelter for homeless during cold nights); Ten-Thousand Villages (fair-trade store) • Antagonistically • E.g. denouncing injustices; oppression; slavery; abuses; denouncing systemic evil—colonialism… and today neo-colonialism…

11. Very quickly: Despite common views, most Interpretations by believers are Legitimate and Plausible • As long as we do not recognize that other people’s interpretations • Interpretations by CHRISTIAN BELIEVERS from all kinds of origin and cultural contexts around the world • As well as interpretations by ordinary CHRISTIAN BELIEVERS in Western churches, including Fundamentalist, Charismatic and Prosperity Gospel Christian movements • are as LEGITIMATE and PLAUSIBLE as those by biblical scholars • It is IMPOSSIBLE to discuss with them the validityof our respective choices of interpretations

12. Finding that other people’s interpretations are strange or seem wrong is a call 1) very quick

13. Finding that other people’s interpretations are strange or seem wrong is a call 2) very quick

14. Respecting the interpretations of others also in class = Reading with them Then we truly READ WITH THEM And are in a position to Discuss with them the VALIDITY for specific contexts of our respective interpretations.

15. Today: Inter(con)textual Interpretations • Focused on Interpretive Theological /Hermeneutical Choices • How to make sense of the biblical text? • Issue: PLAUSIBILITY of the text and what it says about human life. • The Biblical Text Makes Sense for us if, and if only, we read it in terms of other texts or significant events of our lives and cultures. • Read over againstother texts or in line with other texts

16. Inter(con)textual Interpretations • Christian believers alwaysread the biblical text TOGETHER WITH OTHER UNRELATED TEXTS of their culture and life . . . • Otherwise. . . • The biblical text does not make sense (is not plausible) • Believers cannot live-by the Bible, as long as they cannot relate it in a meaningful way to their lives.

17. Inter(con)textual Interpretations • How to make sense of life? Through texts • Role of the “master narrative,” the big story (the story that generates all the other stories in our culture, or community, or life) • Texts make sense by presupposing the master narrative; • Example: journalistic texts. • E.g., Standard journalistic coverage of political events… in election time, a lot of stories about the candidates on all kinds of issues… What is happening? Yes… but, look at the story of their lives. • ALL follow the master narrative about winning… who is going to win, issues important for winning, people contributing to the candidates; winning or not winning….

18. Inter(con)textual Interpretations • Super Bowl makes sense when seen through a master narrative of winning • Winning is all what counts; all eyes are on the New York Giants (those who lost are soon ignored and forgotten… By the way, who lost last night? These losers and the repeated sacks are better forgotten!) • “Classics” of a culture are expressions of the master narrative (Gadamer) • Everything which does not fit the master narrative is ignored, silenced, excluded. • Inter(con)textual Interpretations: Biblical Texts making sense bypresupposing a master narrative…

19. Inter(con)textual Interpretations • Texts make sense for Americans in terms of an American Master Narrative • Actually, several American Master Narratives. For each: • What is the ultimate goal of life? • What is success? • How to attain success? • What are the obstacles? Their root problem? • How are obstacles overcome? By whom? • What happens to other people?

20. Inter(con)textual Interpretations • Everything which does not fit the master narrative isignored, silenced, excluded. • YET Counter-Cultural Texts make sense of life by challenging the master narrative • Novels; poetry; arts= Showing there is more to life than what the master narrative allows us to see • by-passing the master narrative • Giving voice to what is ignored, silenced, excluded.

21. Inter(con)textual Interpretations • Making sense of a biblical text by reading it with other texts that reflect the master narrative: • Positively: Finding concordance between the biblical text and these other texts: • How does the biblical text prolong and reinforce the master narrative (and the other texts)? • What Kyung-mi Park does with Buddhist traditions • Negatively: Emphasizing the differences between the biblical text and the other texts and their master narrative • Reading Biblical, Scriptural text as resistance literature = as iconoclastic

22. Inter(con)textual Interpretations • Making sense of a biblical text by reading it with texts that challenge the master narrative: • Positively: Finding concordance with these other texts • Biblical text as resistance literature with other resistance literature = iconoclastic • What Lee does, reading with the counter-cultural poems of the mothers of Tiananmen Square • Negatively: Challenging these “other texts” which challenge the master narrative • Conforming = condoning the master narrative

23. Inter(con)textual Interpretations Role of Scripture:Making sense of life with Scripture while reading it with other texts • Scripture as providing a Master Narrative: • Scripture as Family Album – Book of the Covenant. • EITHERFinding concordancebetween biblical text and our master narrative and its texts; rejection of Iconoclastic literature : How the biblical text give the complete master narrative –completing the master narrative of other texts? • OR Using Scripture as a Counter-Master Narrative • Scripture as Good News – Providing a totally different master narrative – with glorious outcome • The Good News for which iconoclastic texts (counter-master narrative texts) are longing • Scripture as “the Whisper Putting on Flesh” (Brian Blount, 14-15) • Biblical text as resistance literature

24. Additional Issue for Discussion • What is the inter(con)text … the intertextYOU presupposed? • What is the master narrative you presupposed? • What is the root-problem for it? The ”overall/major problem…”? • What is the “solution” for it? • What is the role of Scripture you presupposed?

25. Lee Chi Chung Archie李熾昌 教授

26. Lamentations and Poems of Tiananmen Square massacre • Presenter of GBC : Toni Bland • Leader : Brenda Kao • Respondent: Julia Rushing • General Respondents: • Chanel Baker • Annie Ameha • Brian Rossbert • Courtney Drescher • Miladys Perez • Brendan Matthews • Alison Stuhl

27. Kyung Mi Park, with Sawako Nakayasu, Kiriu Minashita, Takako Arai, Rachel Levitsky

28. GROUP # 2 GOSPEL OF JOHN • Presenter: Julie Carli • Leader: Brittany Melvin • Respondent: Kathryn Biddle • General Respondents: • Alex Dahlgreen • Samantha Hesley • Michael Durham • Shaun Kahler • Zachery King • George Greene • Nicky Hackett

29. Discussion 3:55-4:55 • Leader: 7-8 minutes – main points of the differences between Lee’s or Park’s inter(con)textual interpretations and the leader’s • Which intertext (or contextual master narrative) is used? What is emphasized in the text? What Problem? Root-problem? Role of Scripture? for • Respondent: 5-6 minutes main points of the differences between Lee’s or Park’s inter(con)textual interpretation, the leader’s, and the respondent’s • same questions • General respondents:46 minuteswhat are the main pointsof differences between Lee’s or Park’s inter(con)textual interpretation, the leader’s, the respondent’s and yours. What is at stake? Is this important or not from the perspective of YOUR ”overall problem faced by Christian believers”?

30. Park Kyung-Mi’s Inter(con)text as she reads John in Korea: • Making sense of John by reading it with Buddhist texts from her context • The mantras recited by Buddhist monks = like Jesus' mysterious language in John when Jesus interacts with people (= VISION) • Zen concept regarding the “spirit within, energy without” 內有神靈 外有氣化 • Give to the de-spirited Christians a vision of the Paraclete(the Spirit, 14:26) as the divine external energy that helps the community to love and is correlated to the internal spirituality through which the community is in communion with Christ and/or God

31. Park Kyung-Mi’s interpretation of John (Ewha Women’s University) • I. Specific Context. Korea and globalization as an economic and cultural phenomenon • Problem: globalization tears down economic walls that separated nations (good!) BUT a formidable challenge for humanity as a whole as well as for individuals as it deeply affects people’s vision of life or “inner world” • Root-problem:vision of life

32. Park Kyung-Mi’s Inter(con)text as she reads John in Korea: • Buddhism often tells people that suffering and hardship are in essence a path to peace and to the ultimate life; peace and life are hidden in such suffering. = To abandon oneself to God is to accept abandoning life. • Not so for John; John “demands that people rush into the world that refuses them and hates them, and wrestle with this world to reform it. John’s gospel demands that the community be both courageous and proactive in its interaction with the world.” • Intertext used negatively as resistance literature

33. Park Kyung-Mi’s Inter(con)text as she reads John in Korea: • For John (read positively with a Buddhist intertext), “the oneness between God and human beings is possible only when we free ourselves from all the existing dualistic conflicts” (good and evil, man and woman, and you and I); transcend self-centeredness. • BUT John readily sees the flower of the resurrected life blooming on the cross, the frame of death. • This perspective enables us to be truly loyal to life, to obey its order to go on living (生命 =life =order to live). When one accepts this order, all individual fears, dreads, and pains become secondary. • Being in touch with God in this way requires that we (生命=life) live on against all odds. • = NEW VISION for dispirited Christian in Globalized Christians

36. Matthew and Paul Classical Models of Interpretations of Scriptures

37. COVENANT (Exodus 19 and 20) as Hermeneutical/Theological Frame • Election (as the Chosen People of God) = God’s freeing the People from bondage • Vocation (to be a people of priests = Sanctification of the Name) • Law = Way to walk… How to fulfill this vocation (to sanctify the Name)

38. Early Rabbinic/Pharisees: Covenant • Covenant: • 1) God’s intervention, redemption from slavery = election;= haggadah (past) • 2) Vocation: people of priest for the nations; haggadah = sanctification of the Name • 3) Law = how to walk: halakah

39. Early Rabbinic/Pharisees: School: Halakah Sanctification of the Name • Oral Torah = living tradition= harmonize Torah and life • Gezeroth = teaching independent from Scripture • Takkanoth= teaching radically changing the teaching of Torah = Prosbul of Hillel • Sanctification of the Name • Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

40. Early Rabbinic/Pharisees: School: Halakah Sanctification of the Name • Making a fence around Torah • Always changing and growing tradition: Mishnah, Talmud; reinterpreted in terms of the new situations in life; • Here Revelation, Scripture = open; on going; discerning what is God’s will = how to sanctify the name today • Being faithful = adapting, changing…

41. Exodus 19:3-6 • 3 "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: 4 You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, 6 but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites."

42. Exodus 20:1-4 • 1 Then God spoke all these words: 2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3 you shall have no other gods before me. 4 You shall not make for yourself an idol,

43. Pharisees = One Covenant Election: complete = everything has been revealed on Mount Sinai (Oral and Written Torah) Haggadah: Closed sacred history; Liturgy; interpreting Scripture by Scripture (Midrash) Halakah: needs to be reinterpreted again and again (Mishnah, Talmud, constantly interpreted in terms of social, cultural situation) Apocalyptic = New Covenant (people still in bondage) Election: God is electing, choosing a remnant/a new faithful people = new interventions of God Typology; Prophecy are fulfilled Haggadah = Open sacred history, ongoing activity of God , establishing and reestablishing the covenant through choosing/calling a new people, through interventions of power Halakah = Very strict; AS BY PRIEST IN THE TEMPLE Pharisees and Apocalyptic ModelsSee Early Jewish Hermeneutics in Palestine

44. Deadly Letter of Scripture and Life Giving Spirit of Scripture • 2 Corinthians 3:6-7 [Paul and others are] ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets… • 3:14-17 But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. 15 Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; 16 but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

45. Formula Quotation: fulfilling prophecy: Jesus = the child who was sign of liberation • Matthew 1:22-23 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us." = Isaiah 7:14 • Isaiah 7:14 14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. … 16 For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted. 17 The LORD will bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house

46. Formula quotation; Fulfilling Unknown Prophecy • Matthew 2:23 There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, "He will be called a Nazorean."

47. Formula quotation: Jesus Fulfills the Type David and Abraham • Matthew 1:1 1:1 An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. • Etc. etc. • = Jesus Fulfills the Types, David, Abraham, etc. etc. • = in Jesus the “types” of scripture are fulfilled

48. Formula quotation: Jesus fulfills the Type Israel • Matthew 2:14-15 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, "Out of Egypt I have called my son." • Hosea 11:1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

49. Formula quotation: Jesus fulfills the Type Israel • Matthew 4:1-2 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.

50. Jesus: Fulfilling the Type Moses • Matthew 5:1-2 When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: • Sermon on the Mount = New Law • 18:20 = Jesus = Torah = Presence of God “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." • Everything has been revealed in Jesus • 28:20 teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."