interpretational theory
So. My new testament assignment for tomorrow is a paper about my own theory of interpretation of the new testament. We had to consider some of the theories we've looked at in class, as well as some other questions about the place of christian tradition and such.
I am totally pleased with this paper, so I thought I'd post it. It's kind of long (about 12 pages), but I thought people might find it interesting, at least the first few paragraphs which are about my own social location.
(I apologize that my footnotes didn't copy; let me know if you're interested in my source for something and I'll point you towards a book or two)
Dancing out of the Margins: Creative Possibilities for Liberative Interpretation
My suburban, middle-class parents have always put a very high value on education, so they pulled together enough money to send me and my sister to a private Quaker school, which was a fantastic education both in academics and in social privilege. We were not poor, by any means, but compared to 95% of the families at Friends, the fact that I could not shop at Abercrombie and was not given my own Porsche (or any car) on my 16th birthday put me squarely at the bottom of the heap. I saw most of my classmates living without any knowledge of what the rest of the world was like, while I could see fairly clearly how lucky I had gotten, even compared to my public school friends. So, while I was set a bit apart anyway, for those ephemeral reasons kids are left out by their classmates, I chose (consciously and unconsciously) to set myself apart even more from these insanely wealthy families who for the most part were completely blind to their own privilege and social position. My awareness of my own luck and privilege has left me with a strong consciousness of economic injustice, which is something that for the last several years I have committed myself to working against.
My other most significant social position is in relation to my sexuality and gender identity. Ever since I could figure out what it meant, I have identified as some flavor of queer-see above about me being a pretty marginal kid. As my sexuality has evolved and I ended up in a relationship with a man, I have become more comfortable articulating that I am not only “queer” because of who I am attracted to, but “queer” because I don’t define myself as either particularly female or male. When forced to choose, my gender identity is something along the lines of “9-year-old boy” or “faggy punk-rock kid”; but at the same time I am perfectly comfortable with my female body and have no interest in changing it. (Except for my biceps. But who doesn’t want better biceps?) I don’t feel included in terms like “girls” or “women,” so while I am committed to feminist struggles-because I get hit with misogyny as much as anyone else-I am deeply uncomfortable with dualistic language that pits “women” against “men.” Where does my experience fit into that binary?
Most “traditional” biblical interpretation, then, leaves me a little cold. Regardless of whatever the original intent might have been, the Bible has overwhelmingly been used to support the status quo of economic, racial, and sexual inequality in binary, absolutist terms. While even the texts we have represent an incredible diversity of perspectives and opinions, single verses or phrases are often pulled out of context to justify almost any reading; “the poor will always be with you,” “women, obey your husbands,” “blessed are the poor.” Even though a holistic look at the New Testament, taking into account Jesus’ own economically marginalized position and his intense collegial relationship with Mary Magdalene and other women, leaves an overall impression of commitment to economic and social justice and to queering the rigid social structures of the time, such phrases are used to support continued inequality, injustice, and even sometimes romanticized views of poverty.
The way I see such biblical passages used to support any and all perspectives makes me wary of any one rigid theological reading. Even non-traditional theologies like Liberation theology and Feminist theology often imply that there is one correct reading of a text-different from the oppressive interpretive tradition, certainly, but there is a sense that Liberation theology, for example, has revealed the “true” meaning of the Exodus story which was obscured by previous readings. While I think such re-readings are absolutely necessary in the process of making and re-making meaning from a text, to latch on to any one reading as “gospel” is to miss out on the vast array of interpretational possibilities for different times, contexts, or interpreters. When a text and its interpretation become set in stone, it is almost impossible for vast numbers of people to feel any connection to the text because the classical interpretation might not make sense for them in their own contexts.
Because of what I see as the dynamic, unfixed nature of any text, the category of Postmodern readings seems to come close to capturing my own interpretational theory, insofar as “postmodern” can be said to “capture” anything. In its broadest sense, Postmodernism refers to the reinterpretation of “meaning” itself, and the process of “radically calling into question the apparently stable foundations of meaning on which traditional interpretation is situated” by recognizing that any meaning taken from a text is unique to the interpreter, affected by their own social location, history, and experiences. This perspective recognizes that there are as many different readings as there are readers, and that no one interpretation can claim to be true for anyone beyond its own author.
An embrace of postmodern thinking has been necessary in order for me to define my own identity, even for myself. In our traditional framework, a person is born with either a female body or a male one, and these imply a female or a male identity, respectively. With the rise of feminist thinking, we have been able to broaden our ideas of what a female identity can look like, but while our range of “valid” identities has widened, we still place them into two discrete categories. With increased acceptance of transsexual identities has come a slight challenge to the idea that a female body necessarily implies female identity (and vice versa), but the discourse here is couched in the traditional binary terms: a transman is really a man born with the “wrong” body. To suggest that a female body might not necessarily imply a female identity, or that “female” and “male” are not the only categories into which identity might fall, requires a postmodern leap. My body is a text for which I reject the traditional interpretations, saying instead, as I sometimes do, that “my gender is a matrix in seven dimensions”; it is interpreted differently by everyone who sees me and by myself depending on the day, and cannot be described by simplistic schemas in one or two dimensions.
This postmodern questioning, this rejection of absolutes, is necessarily carried over into my New Testament interpretation. To me, there is no reason that Jesus has to be any one way, or that Paul must be read as saying any one thing, even if these readings are necessary to support a particular Christian doctrine. Because any interpretation will be informed by the legacy of different uses and interpretations of a given text, it is essential for me to understand those and account for them, but once that is done I have no problem throwing out problematic interpretations or doctrines in favor of new, imaginative readings that can speak to my own patched-together-with-bits-of-string homemade identity and the marginal identities of those who are socially excluded: the queers, trannies, freaks, and homeless folks to whom I am accountable.
This accountability is of primary importance to me, surpassing whatever accountability I might feel to Christian institutions or tradition. I feel no inherent attachment to most Christian doctrines, except as they can be reappropriated for liberative or empowering purposes. Ivone Gebara’s communitarian interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity is one such example, as she takes the symbol of multiplicity-in-unity as a powerful metaphor for the human experience of the tension between diversity and interconnection. Most of these doctrines were originally created, whether explicitly or not, squarely within the patriarchal tradition and contribute to its maintenance. The language of Sonship and Fatherhood used to describe Jesus’ relationship with the Creator reflects very little aside from its traditional, power-laden uses in human terms. The christological debates in the 4th century that began to shape the doctrine of the Trinity centered around nothing more than this language; for how can anyone be equal to a Father?
I have been incredibly excited to learn about the Roman imperial context of the New Testament writings and the counter-empirical interpretations. Not only do they make sense textually, as in the case of the Gerasene demonaic story, but the possibility that major parts of the New Testament were actually written in resistance to the status quo makes me feel powerfully connected to these texts in a way I have not been before. This connection gives me liberty, then, to take what I read and imagine new writers, new subtexts, new contexts that speak to my own experiences and to those I am in solidarity with. For me, these historical intentions do not represent the absolute meaning of a text-I am skeptical that a text could even have an absolute meaning-but rather that knowing the historical context and possible intentions provides a springboard for contemporary identification with and reimagining of these historical characters and situations.
As an example, a historical-critical look at the New Testament suggests a reading of Jesus as a socially marginalized person. He is poor, uneducated, the wrong ethnic background, from the wrong part of town. Because of this historically-based reading, James Cone is able to propose the not-necessarily-historical reading of Jesus as Black . Jesus’ social position in his own time can be seen as very much parallel to the marginalized position of a Black man in contemporary American society, so while Cone’s reading is necessarily based on a thorough historical analysis, it is also unabashedly contemporary and imaginative. In my own interpretation, the historical-critical background is essential insofar as it allows me to make new, creative leaps like Cone’s while staying rooted in the text itself. A historical-critical reading is fascinating and necessary, but cannot be an end in itself. There has been too much interpretation done in the meantime-and physical or spiritual violence based on that interpretation-to make a simple return to the “original” meaning of a text useful for the majority of people.
Just as a solely-historical interpretation is not satisfactory, neither is an exclusively contemporary one. Any interpretation must stay somewhat rooted in the text and its background not because of the inherent superiority of history, but because to divorce ourselves totally from the history of a text presents even more potential to make it say whatever we want it to say to support our present argument. A technique of interpretation like prayer, squarely based in the contemporary context, can be a valuable one, but when used irresponsibly can serve to reinforce the legacy of Biblical interpretation in its oppressive or non-liberative forms. If a community is asked to pray on a text without any other interpretive work, their interpretations, while certainly unique in some ways, will be dominated by the traditional interpretation and will not realize all of the creative possibilities of prayer.
If, for example, a group of slaves was asked to pray on a passage like “slaves, obey your masters,” which had been used only to keep them “in their place,” while they would certainly have their own readings, without any other more-academic study their readings would most likely be overwhelmingly negative and dominated by the violent history of that passage in their own lives. If, on the other hand, they had been able to first examine some of the history of Roman slavery, the persecuted context in which it was written, as well as its juxtaposition with passages such as “there is no... slave nor free,” their prayerful interpretation would be incredibly rich and complex.
Prayer-as-interpretational-method has incredible possibility for my own interpretation. It allows the imagination to take a passage and run with it, giving it new, unique meaning for each individual interpreter. Before the imagination can have its way, though, it must be set free from the shackles of traditional interpretation. So many people have been told that there is one correct interpretation, only one meaning to any given passage, that to simply say “what do you think?” will be to get a more-or-less parroted rehearsal of this orthodox reading. The reader must first be given license to do what they want with a text, and then a prayerful interpretation can bear fruit in some incredible ways. This method will certainly provide a reading that will make real sense to each interpreter, that will be consistent with their own experience. It allows an interpreter to imagine Jesus and the apostles in situations they know from their own life, which explicitly creates the ongoing interpretive process that is necessary for a text to remain relevant to large numbers of people.
As we create our own interpretations of New Testament texts in prayer, the lenses through which we understand the world are necessarily brought to the forefront. For me, one of those constantly-present lenses is my own perspective of queerness and queer theory, as presented by Davina Lopez and others. While “queer theory” is nearly as broad a category of interpretation as “postmodernism,” it is the most appropriate classification for my own theory, if only because queerness is the language that comes first to my mind. This focus on queerness does not imply digging through the text for “clues” to the unspoken presence of “gay or lesbian” characters-queer theory recognizes the constructed and constantly-shifting definitions of sexuality, including the fact that “gay” and “lesbian” are not only modern terms, but completely modern identity categories as well. While there have certainly always been non-mainstream sexual practices and proclivities, the ability to define oneself entirely in relationship to one’s non-normative sexual orientation is a product of the 20th century with its social movements and the rise of identity politics.
Queer theory, on the other hand, defines “queerness” simply as something outside the traditional heterosexual, binary-gendered marriage-oriented culture. This, too, is culturally specific, however: what is queer or unusual in one situation may be completely normative in another. Perhaps it makes more sense, then, to speak of queerness as something opposed to its own mainstream. If it is standard cultural practice, for example, for men to have sex with boys, while it may be considered “gay” in our modern sense, it is not particularly queer except when put into cross-cultural dialogue. This implies, too, that we must begin to look at what is “normal” with the critical eye it usually escapes: the greatest privilege associated with normality is freedom from the critical gaze, yet the qualities that make up “normal” are the standard by which “abnormal” is measured. Thus we have a giant yellow ruler measuring each of us and declaring all of us “normal” or queer, yet like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, as a society we have agreed not to ask why this ruler is there or whether its decisions are in any way valid. Queer theorists have begun to point out this normative ruler; we are speaking up and demanding to know the criteria by which we are excluded from the mainstream, and challenging the existence of such criteria in the first place.
A queer reading of the New Testament, then, must start by looking at the “normal” of the early Christian era. As Davina Lopez has outlined, “normal” meant Roman domination and Roman definitions. In the Roman context, masculinity and its associated values were all that mattered. Masculinity meant power, freedom, wealth, divinity, dominance, penetration. Roman conquests, even, were depicted as sexualized violence; the powerful masculinity of Rome subduing, “penetrating” the battered and wounded female nation. Interestingly, their more difficult conquests were represented by a woman in soldier’s drag-this was a nation that fought back in a masculine way, but it was eventually vanquished and feminized. The New Testament writers, in setting themselves against the Roman power structure, were implicitly setting themselves against this gendered dynamic as well. Even the fact of worshiping Jesus-a man crucified, humiliated, tortured, emasculated, possibly raped -is an explicit challenge to the gendered dynamics set up by the Romans. It is a consciously queer statement against the status quo, siding with the oppressed, marginalized, humiliated against those who have declared them worthless.
Queer readings can help to identify these situations-where the social position of certain figures is opposed to or marginalized by the dominant discourse-and claim them as sources of power. What might it mean, for example, to a person coping with sexual abuse to know that Jesus suffered many of the same things? Or for someone struggling with a marginalized gender identity to see Paul explicitly claiming a gender not quite in line with the Roman ideal of masculinity? Just as James Cone saw a Jesus marginalized by racial/ethnic identity and could then imagine a Black Jesus, recognizing that Jesus’ gendered sexual position was a devalued one can allow any number of imaginative readings based on Jesus’ solidarity with the outsiders, freaks, and queers.
My own reading is clearly dominated by queer-flavored perspectives, as this is currently an incredibly salient part of my life, but I also do not see this as somehow divorced from my class background. In the modern American society of which I am a product, poverty and class issues are equally significant dimensions on which people are marginalized. To be homeless or poor in this society is to be invisible, worthless, excluded. I am constantly making the choice to side with those who are silenced based on their gender or sexuality, and I see the silence around class issues as working in much the same way. To be poor in academia or other privileged contexts is to be erased, to pass; I know a similar pain when I pass as straight, as female, even as lesbian. My queer reading, then, is not just queer with respect to gender and sexuality, but also queer around issues of class, race, occupation, and no doubt many more things I have forgotten or am not yet conscious of.
Jesus’ identity was certainly marginalized by ethnicity and gender as I have mentioned, but also inextricably tied with those was class and occupation. Jesus and his followers were not wealthy, in fact they were on the margins of society in every respect. To side with this motley, homeless bunch is undoubtedly a queer position, in opposition to the dominant assumptions and values. This group certainly included prostitutes and other women, marginalized simply by the fact of their sex. The fact that Mary Magdalene was central to the Jesus movement, and quite possibly one of the closest confidants of Jesus himself-and yet in an apostle’s role rather than a sexual one-represents an incredibly transgressive move by all parties involved.
The queerness of my own interpretation, therefore, must recognize that Jesus and his followers went against society’s expectations in any number of ways, and remain accountable to all those who are on the fringes of modern society. Recognizing Jesus’ homelessness, his radical counter-imperial teachings, and his associations with prostitutes and tax collectors can allow for new, creative counter-mainstream readings that speak to the poor, the sex workers, the anarchists, and anyone else who is on the margins whether by choice, by bad luck, or by human greed and blindness.
While staying accountable to those at the fringes, it is interesting to recall that “history is written by the victor”: the texts we have as orthodox today represent the opinions of those who won. The framework of the Christian canon is therefore interesting in that it provides clues into the doctrinal debates of the 1st and 2nd centuries. Those groups or writings deemed heretical were excluded, while those declared orthodox were accepted and passed on. The differences we see in non-canonical texts represent ideas that were suppressed or marginal, which can suggest alternate interpretations of canonical texts, apart from the centuries of doctrine and official interpretation. Since I have very clearly placed myself on the side of the marginalized in other respects, it seems only logical to include those dismissed as heretical. Why did they espouse this different belief, and why was it threatening enough to be called heretical? The answers to these questions might speak strongly to me and to others who have been marginalized in modern society, since there are obvious parallels between any kind of social exclusion and the constructed nature of “heresy”.
I have found value in each of the interpretational theories we have studied in New Testament 101, if for no other reason than they represent perspectives that have been valuable to a group of people at a certain time. The process of interpretation, for me, involves playing around with an array of different readings, no matter how absurd they might seem. Some will make more sense to me than others, in light of my own study and experience, and yet it is important to me to also understand the readings that make less sense. While the latter readings will not feature explicitly in my own interpretations, I hold them in a kind of dynamic tension with my own rather than dismissing them out of hand. It is essential that my interpretation not become solidified; just as it will not be useful to someone else without them putting their own spin on it, I do not claim that an interpretation that is powerful for me now will remain powerful in exactly the same form. Any reading of my own must stay dynamic; it must be able to change to account for shifts in my life and situation.
My own process of interpretation seems to be characterized best by ideas like creativity, dynamism, freedom, and play. While starting out rooted in a solid understanding of history and tradition, I find the most possibility in the New Testament when I am permitted to explore, to try out ideas and see how they fit. My interpretations are not necessarily “true,” even from my own perspective, but my favorite interpretations present possibilities that allow my mind to explore-what if Jesus were Black? What if we read the New Testament as a dream? What if Mary (the mother of Jesus) were an underage rape victim in Buenos Aires? What if Paul were gay, whatever that might mean in his context? These aren’t things I particularly believe as historical facts, but they present exciting new interpretational possibilities.
For instance, we don’t actually know what Paul means when he refers to the “thorn in his side.” We can’t ever know for sure, but imaginative situations like Paul being gay, while an entirely ahistorical speculation, provides us with new possibilities to consider. For those of us who know what it feels like to come out as something other than straight, this is a vehicle to identify with Paul and imagine what he could possibly be referring to. He is almost certainly not referring to closeted homosexuality in the way we know it today, but by drawing this parallel, we can identify with the feeling of secrecy, of hiding something deep and “shameful” even from one’s friends, and of the resulting internal conflict. Is it too much, perhaps, to connect Paul’s inconsistent statements about women’s role to his conflicted opinion of himself resulting from this secret he keeps? Again, we cannot know for certain, but to entertain this possibility among others provides an interpretation that is not set in stone, which can accommodate the shifting and interrogation necessary for it to make sense to a broad range of people.
Therefore while I have taken something of value from many of the theories we have studied, what is truly valuable to me is the breadth of diverse methods in itself. For me, to study this range of interpretive possibilities is not to be given a list of methods from which I must choose, but to be told that there is no one right way; different passages and different situations require a different combination of interpretive theories, some of which probably haven’t even been codified yet. This interpretive play must at least begin with a historical understanding of the political context, genre, or social structures, and so on, but with these factors in mind, the imagination can take over. This creative imagination, then, provides the opportunity for any given text to be incredibly powerful to people who may have felt alienated or even oppressed by traditional interpretations. Biblical texts have endured for this long because they have been reinterpreted and reshaped to speak powerfully to people in countless different situations, often socially or economically perilous ones, over the years. We must allow ourselves to continue this process.
I am totally pleased with this paper, so I thought I'd post it. It's kind of long (about 12 pages), but I thought people might find it interesting, at least the first few paragraphs which are about my own social location.
(I apologize that my footnotes didn't copy; let me know if you're interested in my source for something and I'll point you towards a book or two)
Dancing out of the Margins: Creative Possibilities for Liberative Interpretation
My suburban, middle-class parents have always put a very high value on education, so they pulled together enough money to send me and my sister to a private Quaker school, which was a fantastic education both in academics and in social privilege. We were not poor, by any means, but compared to 95% of the families at Friends, the fact that I could not shop at Abercrombie and was not given my own Porsche (or any car) on my 16th birthday put me squarely at the bottom of the heap. I saw most of my classmates living without any knowledge of what the rest of the world was like, while I could see fairly clearly how lucky I had gotten, even compared to my public school friends. So, while I was set a bit apart anyway, for those ephemeral reasons kids are left out by their classmates, I chose (consciously and unconsciously) to set myself apart even more from these insanely wealthy families who for the most part were completely blind to their own privilege and social position. My awareness of my own luck and privilege has left me with a strong consciousness of economic injustice, which is something that for the last several years I have committed myself to working against.
My other most significant social position is in relation to my sexuality and gender identity. Ever since I could figure out what it meant, I have identified as some flavor of queer-see above about me being a pretty marginal kid. As my sexuality has evolved and I ended up in a relationship with a man, I have become more comfortable articulating that I am not only “queer” because of who I am attracted to, but “queer” because I don’t define myself as either particularly female or male. When forced to choose, my gender identity is something along the lines of “9-year-old boy” or “faggy punk-rock kid”; but at the same time I am perfectly comfortable with my female body and have no interest in changing it. (Except for my biceps. But who doesn’t want better biceps?) I don’t feel included in terms like “girls” or “women,” so while I am committed to feminist struggles-because I get hit with misogyny as much as anyone else-I am deeply uncomfortable with dualistic language that pits “women” against “men.” Where does my experience fit into that binary?
Most “traditional” biblical interpretation, then, leaves me a little cold. Regardless of whatever the original intent might have been, the Bible has overwhelmingly been used to support the status quo of economic, racial, and sexual inequality in binary, absolutist terms. While even the texts we have represent an incredible diversity of perspectives and opinions, single verses or phrases are often pulled out of context to justify almost any reading; “the poor will always be with you,” “women, obey your husbands,” “blessed are the poor.” Even though a holistic look at the New Testament, taking into account Jesus’ own economically marginalized position and his intense collegial relationship with Mary Magdalene and other women, leaves an overall impression of commitment to economic and social justice and to queering the rigid social structures of the time, such phrases are used to support continued inequality, injustice, and even sometimes romanticized views of poverty.
The way I see such biblical passages used to support any and all perspectives makes me wary of any one rigid theological reading. Even non-traditional theologies like Liberation theology and Feminist theology often imply that there is one correct reading of a text-different from the oppressive interpretive tradition, certainly, but there is a sense that Liberation theology, for example, has revealed the “true” meaning of the Exodus story which was obscured by previous readings. While I think such re-readings are absolutely necessary in the process of making and re-making meaning from a text, to latch on to any one reading as “gospel” is to miss out on the vast array of interpretational possibilities for different times, contexts, or interpreters. When a text and its interpretation become set in stone, it is almost impossible for vast numbers of people to feel any connection to the text because the classical interpretation might not make sense for them in their own contexts.
Because of what I see as the dynamic, unfixed nature of any text, the category of Postmodern readings seems to come close to capturing my own interpretational theory, insofar as “postmodern” can be said to “capture” anything. In its broadest sense, Postmodernism refers to the reinterpretation of “meaning” itself, and the process of “radically calling into question the apparently stable foundations of meaning on which traditional interpretation is situated” by recognizing that any meaning taken from a text is unique to the interpreter, affected by their own social location, history, and experiences. This perspective recognizes that there are as many different readings as there are readers, and that no one interpretation can claim to be true for anyone beyond its own author.
An embrace of postmodern thinking has been necessary in order for me to define my own identity, even for myself. In our traditional framework, a person is born with either a female body or a male one, and these imply a female or a male identity, respectively. With the rise of feminist thinking, we have been able to broaden our ideas of what a female identity can look like, but while our range of “valid” identities has widened, we still place them into two discrete categories. With increased acceptance of transsexual identities has come a slight challenge to the idea that a female body necessarily implies female identity (and vice versa), but the discourse here is couched in the traditional binary terms: a transman is really a man born with the “wrong” body. To suggest that a female body might not necessarily imply a female identity, or that “female” and “male” are not the only categories into which identity might fall, requires a postmodern leap. My body is a text for which I reject the traditional interpretations, saying instead, as I sometimes do, that “my gender is a matrix in seven dimensions”; it is interpreted differently by everyone who sees me and by myself depending on the day, and cannot be described by simplistic schemas in one or two dimensions.
This postmodern questioning, this rejection of absolutes, is necessarily carried over into my New Testament interpretation. To me, there is no reason that Jesus has to be any one way, or that Paul must be read as saying any one thing, even if these readings are necessary to support a particular Christian doctrine. Because any interpretation will be informed by the legacy of different uses and interpretations of a given text, it is essential for me to understand those and account for them, but once that is done I have no problem throwing out problematic interpretations or doctrines in favor of new, imaginative readings that can speak to my own patched-together-with-bits-of-string homemade identity and the marginal identities of those who are socially excluded: the queers, trannies, freaks, and homeless folks to whom I am accountable.
This accountability is of primary importance to me, surpassing whatever accountability I might feel to Christian institutions or tradition. I feel no inherent attachment to most Christian doctrines, except as they can be reappropriated for liberative or empowering purposes. Ivone Gebara’s communitarian interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity is one such example, as she takes the symbol of multiplicity-in-unity as a powerful metaphor for the human experience of the tension between diversity and interconnection. Most of these doctrines were originally created, whether explicitly or not, squarely within the patriarchal tradition and contribute to its maintenance. The language of Sonship and Fatherhood used to describe Jesus’ relationship with the Creator reflects very little aside from its traditional, power-laden uses in human terms. The christological debates in the 4th century that began to shape the doctrine of the Trinity centered around nothing more than this language; for how can anyone be equal to a Father?
I have been incredibly excited to learn about the Roman imperial context of the New Testament writings and the counter-empirical interpretations. Not only do they make sense textually, as in the case of the Gerasene demonaic story, but the possibility that major parts of the New Testament were actually written in resistance to the status quo makes me feel powerfully connected to these texts in a way I have not been before. This connection gives me liberty, then, to take what I read and imagine new writers, new subtexts, new contexts that speak to my own experiences and to those I am in solidarity with. For me, these historical intentions do not represent the absolute meaning of a text-I am skeptical that a text could even have an absolute meaning-but rather that knowing the historical context and possible intentions provides a springboard for contemporary identification with and reimagining of these historical characters and situations.
As an example, a historical-critical look at the New Testament suggests a reading of Jesus as a socially marginalized person. He is poor, uneducated, the wrong ethnic background, from the wrong part of town. Because of this historically-based reading, James Cone is able to propose the not-necessarily-historical reading of Jesus as Black . Jesus’ social position in his own time can be seen as very much parallel to the marginalized position of a Black man in contemporary American society, so while Cone’s reading is necessarily based on a thorough historical analysis, it is also unabashedly contemporary and imaginative. In my own interpretation, the historical-critical background is essential insofar as it allows me to make new, creative leaps like Cone’s while staying rooted in the text itself. A historical-critical reading is fascinating and necessary, but cannot be an end in itself. There has been too much interpretation done in the meantime-and physical or spiritual violence based on that interpretation-to make a simple return to the “original” meaning of a text useful for the majority of people.
Just as a solely-historical interpretation is not satisfactory, neither is an exclusively contemporary one. Any interpretation must stay somewhat rooted in the text and its background not because of the inherent superiority of history, but because to divorce ourselves totally from the history of a text presents even more potential to make it say whatever we want it to say to support our present argument. A technique of interpretation like prayer, squarely based in the contemporary context, can be a valuable one, but when used irresponsibly can serve to reinforce the legacy of Biblical interpretation in its oppressive or non-liberative forms. If a community is asked to pray on a text without any other interpretive work, their interpretations, while certainly unique in some ways, will be dominated by the traditional interpretation and will not realize all of the creative possibilities of prayer.
If, for example, a group of slaves was asked to pray on a passage like “slaves, obey your masters,” which had been used only to keep them “in their place,” while they would certainly have their own readings, without any other more-academic study their readings would most likely be overwhelmingly negative and dominated by the violent history of that passage in their own lives. If, on the other hand, they had been able to first examine some of the history of Roman slavery, the persecuted context in which it was written, as well as its juxtaposition with passages such as “there is no... slave nor free,” their prayerful interpretation would be incredibly rich and complex.
Prayer-as-interpretational-method has incredible possibility for my own interpretation. It allows the imagination to take a passage and run with it, giving it new, unique meaning for each individual interpreter. Before the imagination can have its way, though, it must be set free from the shackles of traditional interpretation. So many people have been told that there is one correct interpretation, only one meaning to any given passage, that to simply say “what do you think?” will be to get a more-or-less parroted rehearsal of this orthodox reading. The reader must first be given license to do what they want with a text, and then a prayerful interpretation can bear fruit in some incredible ways. This method will certainly provide a reading that will make real sense to each interpreter, that will be consistent with their own experience. It allows an interpreter to imagine Jesus and the apostles in situations they know from their own life, which explicitly creates the ongoing interpretive process that is necessary for a text to remain relevant to large numbers of people.
As we create our own interpretations of New Testament texts in prayer, the lenses through which we understand the world are necessarily brought to the forefront. For me, one of those constantly-present lenses is my own perspective of queerness and queer theory, as presented by Davina Lopez and others. While “queer theory” is nearly as broad a category of interpretation as “postmodernism,” it is the most appropriate classification for my own theory, if only because queerness is the language that comes first to my mind. This focus on queerness does not imply digging through the text for “clues” to the unspoken presence of “gay or lesbian” characters-queer theory recognizes the constructed and constantly-shifting definitions of sexuality, including the fact that “gay” and “lesbian” are not only modern terms, but completely modern identity categories as well. While there have certainly always been non-mainstream sexual practices and proclivities, the ability to define oneself entirely in relationship to one’s non-normative sexual orientation is a product of the 20th century with its social movements and the rise of identity politics.
Queer theory, on the other hand, defines “queerness” simply as something outside the traditional heterosexual, binary-gendered marriage-oriented culture. This, too, is culturally specific, however: what is queer or unusual in one situation may be completely normative in another. Perhaps it makes more sense, then, to speak of queerness as something opposed to its own mainstream. If it is standard cultural practice, for example, for men to have sex with boys, while it may be considered “gay” in our modern sense, it is not particularly queer except when put into cross-cultural dialogue. This implies, too, that we must begin to look at what is “normal” with the critical eye it usually escapes: the greatest privilege associated with normality is freedom from the critical gaze, yet the qualities that make up “normal” are the standard by which “abnormal” is measured. Thus we have a giant yellow ruler measuring each of us and declaring all of us “normal” or queer, yet like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, as a society we have agreed not to ask why this ruler is there or whether its decisions are in any way valid. Queer theorists have begun to point out this normative ruler; we are speaking up and demanding to know the criteria by which we are excluded from the mainstream, and challenging the existence of such criteria in the first place.
A queer reading of the New Testament, then, must start by looking at the “normal” of the early Christian era. As Davina Lopez has outlined, “normal” meant Roman domination and Roman definitions. In the Roman context, masculinity and its associated values were all that mattered. Masculinity meant power, freedom, wealth, divinity, dominance, penetration. Roman conquests, even, were depicted as sexualized violence; the powerful masculinity of Rome subduing, “penetrating” the battered and wounded female nation. Interestingly, their more difficult conquests were represented by a woman in soldier’s drag-this was a nation that fought back in a masculine way, but it was eventually vanquished and feminized. The New Testament writers, in setting themselves against the Roman power structure, were implicitly setting themselves against this gendered dynamic as well. Even the fact of worshiping Jesus-a man crucified, humiliated, tortured, emasculated, possibly raped -is an explicit challenge to the gendered dynamics set up by the Romans. It is a consciously queer statement against the status quo, siding with the oppressed, marginalized, humiliated against those who have declared them worthless.
Queer readings can help to identify these situations-where the social position of certain figures is opposed to or marginalized by the dominant discourse-and claim them as sources of power. What might it mean, for example, to a person coping with sexual abuse to know that Jesus suffered many of the same things? Or for someone struggling with a marginalized gender identity to see Paul explicitly claiming a gender not quite in line with the Roman ideal of masculinity? Just as James Cone saw a Jesus marginalized by racial/ethnic identity and could then imagine a Black Jesus, recognizing that Jesus’ gendered sexual position was a devalued one can allow any number of imaginative readings based on Jesus’ solidarity with the outsiders, freaks, and queers.
My own reading is clearly dominated by queer-flavored perspectives, as this is currently an incredibly salient part of my life, but I also do not see this as somehow divorced from my class background. In the modern American society of which I am a product, poverty and class issues are equally significant dimensions on which people are marginalized. To be homeless or poor in this society is to be invisible, worthless, excluded. I am constantly making the choice to side with those who are silenced based on their gender or sexuality, and I see the silence around class issues as working in much the same way. To be poor in academia or other privileged contexts is to be erased, to pass; I know a similar pain when I pass as straight, as female, even as lesbian. My queer reading, then, is not just queer with respect to gender and sexuality, but also queer around issues of class, race, occupation, and no doubt many more things I have forgotten or am not yet conscious of.
Jesus’ identity was certainly marginalized by ethnicity and gender as I have mentioned, but also inextricably tied with those was class and occupation. Jesus and his followers were not wealthy, in fact they were on the margins of society in every respect. To side with this motley, homeless bunch is undoubtedly a queer position, in opposition to the dominant assumptions and values. This group certainly included prostitutes and other women, marginalized simply by the fact of their sex. The fact that Mary Magdalene was central to the Jesus movement, and quite possibly one of the closest confidants of Jesus himself-and yet in an apostle’s role rather than a sexual one-represents an incredibly transgressive move by all parties involved.
The queerness of my own interpretation, therefore, must recognize that Jesus and his followers went against society’s expectations in any number of ways, and remain accountable to all those who are on the fringes of modern society. Recognizing Jesus’ homelessness, his radical counter-imperial teachings, and his associations with prostitutes and tax collectors can allow for new, creative counter-mainstream readings that speak to the poor, the sex workers, the anarchists, and anyone else who is on the margins whether by choice, by bad luck, or by human greed and blindness.
While staying accountable to those at the fringes, it is interesting to recall that “history is written by the victor”: the texts we have as orthodox today represent the opinions of those who won. The framework of the Christian canon is therefore interesting in that it provides clues into the doctrinal debates of the 1st and 2nd centuries. Those groups or writings deemed heretical were excluded, while those declared orthodox were accepted and passed on. The differences we see in non-canonical texts represent ideas that were suppressed or marginal, which can suggest alternate interpretations of canonical texts, apart from the centuries of doctrine and official interpretation. Since I have very clearly placed myself on the side of the marginalized in other respects, it seems only logical to include those dismissed as heretical. Why did they espouse this different belief, and why was it threatening enough to be called heretical? The answers to these questions might speak strongly to me and to others who have been marginalized in modern society, since there are obvious parallels between any kind of social exclusion and the constructed nature of “heresy”.
I have found value in each of the interpretational theories we have studied in New Testament 101, if for no other reason than they represent perspectives that have been valuable to a group of people at a certain time. The process of interpretation, for me, involves playing around with an array of different readings, no matter how absurd they might seem. Some will make more sense to me than others, in light of my own study and experience, and yet it is important to me to also understand the readings that make less sense. While the latter readings will not feature explicitly in my own interpretations, I hold them in a kind of dynamic tension with my own rather than dismissing them out of hand. It is essential that my interpretation not become solidified; just as it will not be useful to someone else without them putting their own spin on it, I do not claim that an interpretation that is powerful for me now will remain powerful in exactly the same form. Any reading of my own must stay dynamic; it must be able to change to account for shifts in my life and situation.
My own process of interpretation seems to be characterized best by ideas like creativity, dynamism, freedom, and play. While starting out rooted in a solid understanding of history and tradition, I find the most possibility in the New Testament when I am permitted to explore, to try out ideas and see how they fit. My interpretations are not necessarily “true,” even from my own perspective, but my favorite interpretations present possibilities that allow my mind to explore-what if Jesus were Black? What if we read the New Testament as a dream? What if Mary (the mother of Jesus) were an underage rape victim in Buenos Aires? What if Paul were gay, whatever that might mean in his context? These aren’t things I particularly believe as historical facts, but they present exciting new interpretational possibilities.
For instance, we don’t actually know what Paul means when he refers to the “thorn in his side.” We can’t ever know for sure, but imaginative situations like Paul being gay, while an entirely ahistorical speculation, provides us with new possibilities to consider. For those of us who know what it feels like to come out as something other than straight, this is a vehicle to identify with Paul and imagine what he could possibly be referring to. He is almost certainly not referring to closeted homosexuality in the way we know it today, but by drawing this parallel, we can identify with the feeling of secrecy, of hiding something deep and “shameful” even from one’s friends, and of the resulting internal conflict. Is it too much, perhaps, to connect Paul’s inconsistent statements about women’s role to his conflicted opinion of himself resulting from this secret he keeps? Again, we cannot know for certain, but to entertain this possibility among others provides an interpretation that is not set in stone, which can accommodate the shifting and interrogation necessary for it to make sense to a broad range of people.
Therefore while I have taken something of value from many of the theories we have studied, what is truly valuable to me is the breadth of diverse methods in itself. For me, to study this range of interpretive possibilities is not to be given a list of methods from which I must choose, but to be told that there is no one right way; different passages and different situations require a different combination of interpretive theories, some of which probably haven’t even been codified yet. This interpretive play must at least begin with a historical understanding of the political context, genre, or social structures, and so on, but with these factors in mind, the imagination can take over. This creative imagination, then, provides the opportunity for any given text to be incredibly powerful to people who may have felt alienated or even oppressed by traditional interpretations. Biblical texts have endured for this long because they have been reinterpreted and reshaped to speak powerfully to people in countless different situations, often socially or economically perilous ones, over the years. We must allow ourselves to continue this process.