Reading the Bible as Literature

All readers are equal when we approach the Bible as literature. No one has the authoritative meaning. In literary interpretation, there are supportable, less supportable, and unsupportable readings of a text. When investigating what a story means, we look for details that support (or don’t support) the meaning we favor. Multiple interpretations are inevitable because that’s how symbolic language works: like a prism refracts light into an array of colors, so symbol multiplies meaning into an array of interpretations. When we read the Bible as literature, we explore an array of interpretations; we do not close down any avenues of interpretation. We also ask the questions we would ask of any literary work: Who wrote this and how might the author’s experience have affected the work? When was it written and how is it affected by the social, political, and cultural context out of which it grew? What are its distinctive stylistic features and thematic concerns? What does it mean? How can it shed light on lived experience? 

Rather than reading the Bible as a religious rulebook and evaluating the legitimacy of its moral code, we read to meet the characters, contemplate the themes, and appreciate the fierce beauty of the Bible’s language, image, and narrative. We stop asking whether the Bible’s geological and historical claims match the claims of most post-Enlightenment geologists, archaeologists, and historians. (They often don’t.) We sidestep binary “debates” that hamper useful discussion: creation vs. evolution, there-is-a-God vs. there-isn’t-a-God. Instead, we read to understand what the storytellers were thinking about. What human experiences do the stories explore? How are the stories told? We also work to grasp the larger story presented through the many books that comprise the Bible.

Calling the Bible a “book” is misleading. The word Bible comes from the Latin word biblio, which means library, not book. So when we read the Bible, we are reading a collection of literary works developed by many different writers, oral storytellers, compositors, editors, and scribes, across many centuries. If you know how to look, you can detect a narrative arc--different in Jewish and Christian traditions--that makes a whole out of the disparate parts. Different faith communities use different Bibles because not all faith communities agreed on what belongs in the library. For Jewish people, there is only one testament, the Hebrew Bible, which Christians call the “Old Testament.” Jewish compilers organized their library differently from how Christians organized theirs. Christians combined the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) with the Christian Scriptures (New Testament) to arrive at the Christian Bible, which had more or less taken shape as a canon (list of authoritative books) by the fourth century ce. Catholics and Protestants organize their Bibles differently, with Catholics recognizing some books as “canonical” that Protestants consider “apocryphal,” for reasons that arise from each community’s evolution.

As stated above, the study of literature requires that all interpretations--all meanings made from a story--be supported with reference to the story itself. Even though the story of Adam and Eve eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil nowhere mentions sin, original sin, the Devil, or a “Fall of Humankind,” Christian readers commonly consider the story to illustrate “original sin” and take the serpent to be “the devil.” In fact, the “original sin” reading is one interpretation among numerous possible interpretations. Jewish interpretation does not include the idea of “original sin.” Serpents, in ancient cultures of the Near East, do not symbolize “evil.” Ideas about the “Devil” took a long time to evolve; that character, as imagined by contemporary Christians, did not exist for ancient Hebrew storytellers. To read “original sin,” “Devil,” or “The Fall” of humankind into the forbidden fruit story, you have to go outside the text, to church tradition, which has made those particular interpretations so familiar, they feel inevitable. I would not try to invalidate church-dictated interpretations, but would instead ask for church-based readers to recognize that the text itself does not necessitate the concept of “original sin” or foreclose other interpretive possibilities. Because the text itself does not make an “original sin” interpretation inevitable, readers can safely develop other interpretations by attending closely to the language. 

Of course, reading the Bible in translation complicates the process of paying close attention to biblical language. There are more translations of the Bible than I could list here. I teach with the Oxford New Revised Standard Version of the Bible because my academic and personal experience has made that Bible the most familiar to me; however, I recognize the validity of all versions of the Bible. Translation itself is an act of interpretation, which gets shaped by tradition. When a particular Hebrew word can legitimately be translated “young woman,” “maiden,” “unmarried woman,” or “virgin,” the English word that the translator selects can dramatically affect the reader’s understanding of the text! For readers working in English, it helps to compare several translations. When I read in English, I usually read the Oxford New Revised Standard version, because many Bible scholars favor that translation. When analyzing a passage closely, I check several different English translations and consult a skilled translator of Hebrew or Greek, who can help me wrestle with the original languages. When it isn’t possible to read in the original languages, compare multiple translations, or obtain the services of an experienced translator, it’s wise to approach the interpretive process with humility, knowing that translation and tradition set limits on the degree of confidence we can have in our interpretations. Viewed through the lens of another tradition or translation, the same text may support readings that differ from the most familiar interpretations.

Many religious readers accept interpretations that institutional religion has deposited onto certain stories over centuries. If you are religious, you can always cherish your familiar interpretations. But familiar stories can still surprise anyone who reads in a diverse community. If you grew up reading the Bible, you may feel like you already understand the stories. Don’t be too sure. Literature surprises you. Reading the Bible as literature liberates the text from control by any one tradition, which makes interpretation unpredictable, fresh, and exciting. If you were taught that a particular story must be interpreted in some specific way, feel free to hold on to that interpretation. Feel free also to enjoy the additional interpretations that arise from examining familiar stories with unfamiliar lenses.

I’m aware, of course, that reading the Bible as literature can be uncomfortable. Readers often have passionate feelings about the Bible—either that it is a source of truth or a source of lies aimed at social control. Some people hold these views even without reading the Bible! You may believe the Bible is the “Word of God.” You may consider the Bible an influential collection of fairytales. You may think the Bible contains propaganda that denies earth science, oppresses women, and condemns LGBTQ+ folks. You may believe that the Bible invalidates all religious culture that is not Jewish or Christian. No matter what you think about the Bible, you can read it as literature. You can follow the plot, contemplate the imagery, respond to the characters, notice the literary strategies, and puzzle over meaning. Since both religious and nonreligious people can appreciate literature, approaching the Bible as literature creates an opportunity for readers with different worldviews to encounter the Bible together, to consider the questions and possibilities the stories raise. In a nation as diverse—and as supposedly divided—as the United States, building conversational bridges across cultural boundaries like atheist/theist and conservative/liberal can help us focus on values we share, rather than obsess about the disagreements we allow to define us.

Sources: 

Thomas Schmidt, Approaching the Bible as Literature

Pete Enns, The Bible Tells Me So

Pete Enns and Jared Byas, The Bible for Normal People podcast

Karin Hedner Zetterholm, Jewish Interpretation of the Bible: Ancient and Contemporary

Carol Newsom, Sharon Ringe, and Jacqueline Lapsley, Women’s Bible Commentary, Third Edition

Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics

Philip Almond. The Devil: A New Biography.