Context and universality
One of the problems with historical-critical approaches to the Bible is that they refuse to acknowledge how often the texts themselves demand a universal reading. They privilege the historical situation of the text over its transhistorical structure and aspiration. As with any lasting work of art, its significance is in part derived from the fact that it has real meaning even as it expands beyond its context and ‘original intent’–in fact, it becomes more meaningful the more it grows and encompasses. As Zizek puts it, “historicist commonplaces can blur our contact with art. In order to properly grasp [Wagner's opera] Parisfal, one needs to abstract from such historical trivia, decontextualise the work, tear it out of the context in which it was originally embedded. There is more truth in Parsifal‘s formal structure, which allows for different historical contextualisations, than in its original context” (Violence, 153).
As with Parsifal, so with the Scriptures. The Bible itself demands to be decontextualized, never content to be read as an historical artifact, always appealing directly to the reading believer. In the structure of the historical events themselves, as presented by the scriptural writers, there exists a universal ambition that imposes itself on the reader. This is the sense in which it is perfectly legitimate and indeed necessary to speak of the Bible as self-interpreting. This is why Bonhoeffer is right to tell his students to read the Bible as appealing directly to them, in whatever moment they read it.
29 October 2008 |
Comments (4)
Tags: Bible, Method, Slavoj Zizek
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The historical critic examines what the Bible meant to its authors and earliest audiences. Nothing more, nothing less. The true historical critic never claims to give the one, true meaning of the text for all time. No one denies that it could mean a whole lot more.
I don’t think it’s true that “no one denies that it could mean a whole lot more,” judging especially from the kind of mockery to which the exegesis of the fathers and the medievals is routinely subjected. Nonetheless, I probably ought not to have been so dismissive of the method as a whole, since I certainly think it’s helpful in what it does.
so in a sense, you’re saying that scripture is universal in its particularity…the universality of scripture is enhanced, not jeopardized by its being interpreted by, on behalf, and from the perspective of particular social contexts and communities, such that the “universal” meaning of scripture cannot be completely imposed from above, but is built upon from below. am i interpreting you correctly?
I entirely agree with what you’ve said, but it’s a corollary to what I was trying to say here rather than the same thing. I was trying to say that essentially the reverse: that the particularity of Scripture isn’t jeopardized by ripping it out of its specific context and reading it “universally,” as it were. But what that means in practice is exactly like you say. It means that anyone can read the Bible as speaking directly to them, in their particular context. Because the significance of Scripture is transhistorical and universal, there is no particularity that taints it.