To draw spiritual profit from the Old Testament we should learn to avoid
pitfalls. The Pharisees depended on the Old Testament, but too often they
missed the point altogether. This can be seen from the way they interpreted
Deuteronomy 6:8, part of the so-called Shemah text.
“Israel, remember this! The LORD - and the LORD alone - is our God. Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Never forget these commands that I am giving you today. Teach them to your children. Repeat them when you are at home and when you are away, when you are resting and when you are working. Tie them on your arms and wear them on your foreheads as a reminder”(Dt 6:4-8).
The meaning of the passage is clear. Israel should love Yahweh above everything else, and the people remember this at any time and in any place. “Tie them on your arms and wear them on your foreheads” means that all work (symbolized by the arms) and all plans (symbolized by the forehead) should be filled with an awareness of the love due to God. But the Pharisees took the verse literally They prepared small capsules in which they enclosed tiny scraps of parchment with the words of Deuteronomy 6:4-9. They tied one capsule to their forehead, another to their left wrist. This external practice became more important to them than observing what God had really commanded, namely, to rule their whole lives by love.
“They do everything so that people will see them. Look at the straps with scripture verses on them which they wear on their foreheads and arms, and notice how large they are!” (Mt 23:5).
But should scripture not be taken literally? The answer is yes if by “literally” we mean what the original author had in mind; the answer is no if we mean that we take the words just as they stand, in their superficial, word-for-word sense. The inspired author of Deuteronomy 6:8 did not prescribe that scripture texts be tied to the forehead or wrist. Taking his words literally is missing the point of what he really wanted to say. It goes counter to the true meanine of scripture.
The branch of biblical science that deals with meaning is called hermeneutics, that is, the science of interpretation. It is a difficult science. It has a long history because even the earliest Christian writers saw the need of discussing scriptural meaning. Many of the Fathers of the Church wrote on the subject; so did theologians of the Middle Ages, the champions of the Reformation and their opponents, and scholars of our own day. Even though there is agreement on general principles today, differences of opinion, of emphasis, remain. What from all this do we need for our spiritual reading of the Old Testament? Or could we simply ignore it?
We may not. After all, meaning is one of the principal ingredients of communication. If we miss the meaning of scripture, we are no longer listening to God. A text that is wrongly understood is as a plane that has lost its direction, as an envelope without its letter. So, while trying to avoid the more subtle and academic discussion of the matter, we will have to devote some thought to correct and incorrect interpretations.
To be practical and down-to-earth, there are five meanings or senses that we should be able to distinguish:
1) The literal sense (the meaning intended by the sacred author).
2) The fundamentalistic sense (the meaning based on a word-forword interpretation of the text).
3) The accommodated sense (a meaning imputed to the text on account of free associations of thought).
4) The applied sense (the application of the literal meaning to one’s own life).
5) The fuller sense (a more complete meaning of an Old Testament passage in the light of New Testament revelation).
Complicated, you may think. No, it is not so difficult, once we are used to the terms. In this chapter we will contrast the literal and fundamentalistic senses. The next chapter will reflect on the accommodated and applied senses. The one after that will bring the fuller sense into view. But let us first return to the Pharisees.
Deuteronomy 6:8 said, “Tie these words on your arms and wear them on your foreheads as a reminder”. By following the letter of this prescription, the Pharisees interpreted it in a fundamentalistic sense. The literal meaning of the text, however, the meaning intended by the sacred author, was that one should never forget to love God. If we give the matter some thought we will see that this literal meaning is much more demanding than the fundamentalistic one. Having little rolls of parchment dangling from one’s wrist and forehead does not cost much; loving God at all times does. What is more, the external interpretation of the law can easily function as an escape, making one forget the real obligation! It might even lead to religious show-business, as Jesus was pointing out: Contrary to what one might expect, following the letter of the law did not lead to greater faithfulness, but rather to actions that were just the opposite of what the inspired author meant!
Jesus gives another example. The Law commanded that one tenth of the harvest be set aside as a gift to God. “Set aside a tithe-a tenth of all that your fields produce each year” (Dt 14:22). The Pharisees took the word “all” in a very fundamentalistic sense. They maintained that even if one grew just a few types of vegetables, one-tenth part of each variety had to be set aside. But while they were concerned about meticulous accuracy in such external details, they missed what the Law was really asking for.
“You give to God one tenth even of the seasoning herbs, such as mint, dill, and cumin, but you neglect to obey the really important teachings of the Law, such as justice and mercy and honesty. These you should practice, without neglecting the others. Blind guides! You strain a fly out of your drink, but swallow a camel!” (Mt 23:23-24).
What looks like exemplary fidelity to the text turns out to be treason because it misses the real intention of God’s Word. A sad state indeed! It warns us to be on our guard. We may not just lift a sentence out of scripture and interpret it on its face value. We have to study the meaning it had for the author.
At times, the literal sense, the meaning intended by the author, is not so obvious. We may need to study the context of the piece of writing, the literary forms of expression, its connection with what went before or what comes after. It is not the external words that should preoccupy us, their meaning taken from a dictionary, but what the author had in mind. The intention of the author constitutes the literal sense, and it is this which is the only safe basis for all study and reflection of scripture. In his famous encyclical Divino Aff1ante Spiritu Pius XII stated that we should first and foremost discern the literal sense of a text “so that the mind of the author be made clear”. Vatican II put it in this way:
All that the inspired authors, or sacred writers, affirmed should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit....It follows that the interpreter of the Sacred Scriptures, if he is to ascertain what God has wished to communicate to us, should carefully search out the meaning which the sacred writers really had in mind, that meaning which God had thoughtwell to manifest through the medium of their words (Divine Revelation, Nos. 11-12).
It is the literal sense, the sense intended by the human author, which should be the guiding principle for interpretation.
The fundamentalistic sense is wrong because it only rests on the sound of the words, not on what the inspired author wanted to say. For instance, in Genesis 3:16 God says to Eve: “I will increase your trouble in pregnancy and your pain in giving birth. ” Taken at face value these words seem to teach: (1) God purposely made childbirth more difficult than it needed to be; and (2) this is a punishment for woman’s sins. Was this the meaning intended by the author? Certainly not! Genesis 2:4 - 3:24 is a parable in which the author reflects on humankind’s alienation from God. Our sufferings are seen as signs of our loss of friendship with God. The author mentions some striking examples: the sweat and toil required to make the soil produce food, the pain of childbirth. Neither of these two examples are specific punishments, aimed at specific people. God does not punish farmers more than skilled laborers, or women more than men. By generalizing and absolutizing the image of Genesis 3:16 we are distorting its meaning.
Jehovah’s Witnesses. as a rule, refuse to have blood transfusions. Occasionally this refusal leads to a death - say after an accident or in a difficult delivery. They justify their refusal with the statement that God has forbidden it. Leviticus 17:1-14 teaches that blood is sacred. “You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is in its blood; whoever eats it shall be cut off”(Lv 17:14,RSV). Thus, they argue, blood transfusion, being a feeding upon blood, is unscriptural and forbidden by God! This fundamentalistic interpretation, however, is absurd. Leviticus 17:1-14 is not speaking of human blood, but of animal blood. It forbids eating blood with the mouth, not receiving it into one’s veins in the course of a medical procedure. The reason for the prohibition was the fact that animal blood was used to make atonement (Lv 14:11). Last but not least, the Old Testament writer had absolutely no idea of anything as sophisticated as blood transfusion. Therefore, he could not refer to it in any specific sense. With the ritual laws having been abolished through the New Testament, the message that remains, based on the literal sense, is respect for human life. Such a respect would be an argument in favor of blood transfusions rather than against them.
Christmas trees provide another illustration. These too are prohibited by Jehovah’s Witnesses because of a passage in Jeremiah:
“The religion of these people is worthless.
A tree is cut down in the forest;
...and decorated with silver and gold” (Jer 10:3-4).
What to make of this? Again, we need to look carefully at the true meaning of the passage. Jeremiah condemns idol worship. The tree in the text is “carved by the tools of the woodcarver” (v.3) and is called an idol that cannot speak and cannot cause any harm or do any good. The Christmas tree is no more than an innocent decoration that had its origin in ancient winter customs of the European peoples. In no way is it considered by anyone to be an idol. The mention of the words “tree” and “decorated with silver and gold” does not give us the right to link the text to Christmas trees. What matters is Jeremiah’s intention- which was to denounce idols, not festive decorations!
What is the reason for fundamentalism? Is it simplicity or stupidity? Perhaps. But sometimes the real cause lies deeper. It takes courage to believe in a God who is a transcendent and spiritual being; to follow the spiritual principles dictated by one’s conscience. It is much easier to cling to externals as the supporting framework of one’s religion. Fundamentalists are insecure people. They prefer to rely on physical presence in the liturgy, on participation in visible rituals of grace, on the letter of the inspired word rather than on its spirit. For these external things can, somehow, be got hold of and become a guarantee of being all right with God. The fundamentalist approach comes close to making religion a magical practice. For the external realities, whether rites, customs or texts, are considered to have religious power in themselves, which is the essence of magical religion. But we know that however much God may use rites, symbols and human words, these are only means and signs. The true religious realities are the spiritual ones which cannot be seen or controlled by magical acts. Therefore it is the intention, not the external word, the spirit not the letter that count.
A form of fundamentalism I have come across in recent years is the quasi-charismatic “stick-your-knife-into-the-book” approach. What I mean is that some people have begun to use scripture as a source of oracular information. Suppose I have been invited to attend a particular apostolic meeting. I don’t know if I should take part. I already have so many commitments....I may be taking on too much....But then again, God may want me to take up this new task. What shall I do? To find out, to have an indication of God’s will and God’s pleasure, I say a prayer and open a bible at random. The text which my eye meets on the page I have opened will contain a valuable pointer! If my eye falls on, “People who promise things that they never give are like clouds and wind that bring no rain” (Prv 25:14), I realize I should not go because I may take on commitments I will not be able to carry out. But if I find the words, “I was glad when they said to me, Let us go to God’s House” (Ps 122:1), I decide God wants me to undertake this new task, and to do it joyfully. Many texts of scripture, of course, are neutral, so I may, at my own convenience, interpret them as I think best, or allow my eye to rove on until it finds a more explicit statement.
If such a practice is looked upon as no more than a joke, or a game like throwing up a coin to force a heads-or-tails decision, no harm is done. But if we actually think such a random reading conveys a message from God in response to a specific query, things are different. We are, then, in fact, attributing a magical property to scripture. Neither are we being very original. This type of bible consultation in which chance words, estranged from their literal sense and original context, are given an oracular function was a superstition practiced in the Middle Ages. It is not to be recommended, not even as a game. God does not speak to us in that way. Rather we should have the courage, after prayer and reflection, to make our own considered decision. It will lack the comfort of the external “pointer,” but will be much more reliable, for it will rest on the internal spiritual discernment of our mind and our heart.
Talking about playing a game with scripture gives me the opportunity of briefly introducing the accommodated sense. In the next chapter we will discuss it at length. Here I would like to do no more than compare it with the fundamentalistic sense. Both senses have in common that they attribute a meaning to scripture which was not in the mind of the original author. But in the case of the accommodated sense, it is more a matter of free associations of thought, not of claiming a divine sanction. An example may make this clear. At the conclusion of a drama and song competition in a school, the principal may speak the following words in his official address:
There are far more stars in our school than I had thought. Of course, we should remember what we read in Psalm 147, that God alone has “decided on the number of the stars and calls each one by name.” I am now going to call some of you by name, realizing there may be some greater stars among you only known to God.
There is nothing malicious in quoting scripture in this manner. But we should not imagine for a moment that the text is used in a true scriptural sense. Psalm 147:4 speaks of the heavenly bodies we can see in the sky at night, not of film stars or other talented persons.
The Fathers of the Church and theologians in the Middle Ages drew many spiritual teachings from scripture which were really more due to their own pious imaginations than to scripture. This spiritual or allegorical sense, as they called it, was nothing else but a baptized version of the accommodated sense. When St. John Chrysostom discusses how Jesus could be God and man at the same time, he quotes Exodus which describes God appearing to Moses in the burning bush: Moses saw that the bush was on fire but that it was not burning up (Ex 3:2). Chrysostom says:
Miraculous! The fire in the bush spoke with a clear voice. It said: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham.” Therefore, it was the Lord himself, in the form of fire. He filled the whole bush and distended its branches, but he did not burn it up....This was a prediction, a clear image of the mystery of Christ to come. For just as the bush could tolerate the fire, so Christ’s human nature could tolerate God’s majesty. Our intellect and our human reason do not allow us to see how divinity and humanity could be joined in one natural one-ness. But they were united, that is, in Christ.
-Easter Homily 17
The burning bush is indeed an interesting image of the union of the two natures in Christ. But did the author of Exodus 3:1-6 have this in mind when he wrote the story? Certainly not. The way Chrysostom uses the text is, therefore, no more than an accommodation. Strictly speaking he could not appeal to it as something conveyed to us by God. The link with the incarnation was an association of his own making, not a message covered by inspiration.
It will be clear from the preceding pages that it is the fundamentalists who err most seriously concerning the meaning of scripture. Their interpretation of texts does not spring from a different grammar or vocabulary; it originates in a mind-set that attributes exaggerated value to external things at the expense of inner religiosity. The fundamentalist often appears in the guise of a religious fanatic. But what he or she is fanatical about is imposing an external structure of beliefs and practices while overlooking the truly spiritual values or rejecting them as inadequate.
This is the danger Jesus speaks of in Matthew 23:1-36. His speech is a lasting warning to all letter-cavilers, literalists and legalists; to fanatics, fundamentalists and false reformers; to word-worshippers, witch-hunters and whitewashed tombs. While fanatically clinging to the letter of the Law, he tells them, they “neglect to obey the really important teachings of the Law, such as justice and mercy and honesty.” With unjust accusations they handed Jesus over to Pilate to see him killed. Yet they refused to enter Pilate’s palace because “they wanted to keep themselves ritually clean, in order to be able to eat the Passover meal” (Jn 18:28). God save us from peopIe like that!