Seminarium

The Elements of Great Teaching

Contextualization as an Ethical Practice: Part 1—The Socialized Body of the Biblical Scholar

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It was the first day of class. I opened my lecture with the question: “Can method exhaust meaning?” For several students, remedy this was their first graduate level Hebrew exegesis course. Hence my opening question was not an exercise in the obvious. Rather than expand on the concept of polysemy, I moved the discussion toward methods of interpretation.

In previous years, my teaching approach to biblical exegesis has been to provide students with the basic principles and aims of various interpretive methods. My lecture content on reading strategies often reflected the handbook approach prevalent in the introductory literature.

Indeed showing students the inner workings of a particular interpretive method has its value. Yet to my dismay, focusing on dominant methods like historical criticism often rendered contemporary issues of gender, ‘race’, sexuality, disability and social class as peripheral. For students training to be pastors, engaging critically contemporary sociopolitical realities is paramount to their ministry success.

Historical Distance=Trivialization?

One way to avoid this predicament was to front load in the class readings scholars employing various ideological critical methods. For texts like Hosea I had little difficulty finding feminist critical readings. As for the Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120-134) students were primarily limited to historical or literary readings. Whereas, in my Hosea exegesis course feminist critical readings kept at the fore both ancient and contemporary issues of gender and sexuality. Nevertheless, entry into these social concerns from the outset of an exegesis course is not always evident or hospitable—depending on your location. Clearly, not every biblical book has received the kind of diverse exegetical treatment that one encounters with books like Hosea or Genesis.

Is it simply that historical critical methods provide a more viable reading of the biblical text? I admit that reconstructing a text’s historical context is a worthy and necessary pursuit in biblical exegesis—especially for students required to take ordination exams. Yet for seminary students, lingering too long in the ancient historical distance can lead them to trivialize the text’s contemporary social relevance. Hence, how do we encourage and sustain discussions about pressing social issues alongside lessons on scientific biblical interpretive methods?

The Scholar as a ‘Sovereign Thinker’

Visual illustrations of ancient material cultural have an inexorable appeal to the imagination. Teaching the Hezekiah narrative (2 Kings: 18-20) with a virtual walk through the Lachish Reliefs in the British Museum always seems to elicit enthusiastic responses from my students. Subtending students’ high appraisal of modes of reading that posit universality and objectivity is rooted in the Cartesian idea of the disengaged monological observer. This value system is as Rajeev Bhargava describes, “only the mind that is already so disconnected and independent can take absolute or an objective view of things, can disengage itself, and see things purely as an observer.” (1992, 208)

Like all value systems however, the beliefs intrinsic to any interpretative method, whether historical or ideological, are dependent upon a social context. Indeed, social context affects the ways in which an interpretive method is individually appropriated and employed. Rather than some inanimate method yielding a text’s meaning, the interpretive enterprise involves human subjects who inhabit a specific context with collectively held beliefs and practices. Hence to teach students about method is incomplete without addressing the social context of the method’s practitioner.

Contextualization of the Biblical Scholar

Recently, I designed a group writing assignment in which students worked in groups of three or four in order to contextualize a biblical critic covered in the class readings. For this writing exercise, group members were to understand how social context informs how biblical critics read and interpret the Bible. In their analysis, they were to address the following questions:

  1. What is the biblical critic’s social location? (i.e. educational background, racial-ethnicity, religion/denomination, class, gender, activism, geographical location,  political loyalties, and preferred interpretive method)
  2. How does the biblical critic’s approach to scripture differ from earlier modern biblical approaches?
  3. What does the biblical critic’s method of interpretation reveal about his or her social, religious, or political beliefs?
  4. In what ways does the biblical critic’s method of biblical interpretation reinforce and challenge your own beliefs?
  5. What are the social and religious implications for appropriating the biblical critic’s method of biblical interpretation?

Accompanying each group’s paper submission was an oral presentation. One group response in particular stood out,

This enriched reading was also a catalyst for enriched class discussion after our presentation. Instead of thinking inside the box of scholarship as a function of institutional identity, our class was able to ask new questions. Questions arose like “what does it mean to operate in a public realm?” or “are we writing our scholarship with an awareness of how public we are?” Rich questions of voice arose, which made us conscious to the agency we already have in shaping our public selves.

By contextualizing the biblical critic, students uncovered the socialized person behind the interpretive method. They understood that regardless of the method employed biblical scholars cannot remove themselves from their social location. Hence, operating in conjunction with the reconstructed ancient world is an ethics of interpretation that begins with the understanding that the scholar is a socialized body.

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Gregory Lee Cuéllar is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Dr. Cuéllar has a wide range of teaching experience, both as a professor and a pastor. Prior to entering the classroom, he was Curator of The Colonial Mexican Imprint Collection at Cushing Memorial Library and Archives at Texas A&M University. As a scholar, Dr. Cuéllar has had international exposure from Latin America to Europe with his research focusing on the intersections of biblical interpretation, postcolonial theory, museum studies, archival theory and collection studies. His religious work and academic research primarily focus on the undocumented and unaccompanied immigration experience, especially as it pertains to the US-Mexico Borderlands.

As a result of the recent increase in undocumented juvenile immigrants from Central America, he has directed much of his advocacy and research toward meeting this humanitarian need. At the juxtaposition of his interest in art and immigrant advocacy, he is currently working on an archival project, Arte de Lágrimas: Refugee Artwork Project, to portray, through artwork, the journey and homeland stories of child refugees crossing over the Texas-Mexico border. The intention is to focus on spiritual visions and religious motifs to moderate the effects of the violence and victimization experienced by these children. He is author of Voices of Marginality: Exile and Return In Second Isaiah and the Mexican Immigrant Experience (2008). His forthcoming book is titled, The British Museum and the Bible: the Indexes of Subjectivity in Modern Biblical Criticism.

Comments

  1. Hi Dr. Cuellar,

    Are you interested in a conversation about a different approach to assessing the Old Testament?  My conversations revolve around the father/son dynamics of biblical characters (when information is available) along with the severe effects of psychological trauma during the formative years of a child’s life and the escape mechanisms that predictably ensue.  These dynamics appear to be readily evident throughout the works of Moses, for example, and the theological repercussions of modern child psychology on the mere validity of the biblical deity could be tremendous.  One of my biggest concerns is whether or not those that are both devoutly religious and simultaneously dependent on scientific evidence is prepared to handle such an analysis.

    I also look for high stress indicators in the ancient Jewish society and other intriguing processes such as the Cinematic Effect of Theology, Assumptive Transfer Mechanisms, Sensory Transfer Mechanisms, etc. that also seem readily evident as each subsequent generation continues to read the same stories.   The deleterious effects that a dependence on miracles seems to have on cognitive processing abilities is also a great concern, as it seems to short circuit the need for adaptive response mechanisms required by any species in order to survive.

    I would enjoy engaging with you on these topics if you were at all interested.

    Respectfully,

    Adam J. Read

  2. Adam,

    I appreciate your response to my blog post. Trauma Studies and Postraumatic Stress Disorder are ripe discourses for reading the biblical text, especially violent texts.  Attention to traumatic factors at work in contexts of exile, warfare, conquest may allow for a more nuanced understanding of the violence portrayed in the biblical text. Those with PTSD possess a lived experiences that are grounded in a context of physical/material crisis, trauma, alienation, or victimization. These are realms that a traditional historical reading of the biblical text is often incapable of fully capturing.

  3. Actually, Greg, it’s not at all impossible to capture, but unless we give ourselves permission to question the origins of the personality of the God of Moses, you won’t ever see just how many signatures there are of trauma in the writings of Moses himself.

    If you have ever done any personal expository writing, or know of people who have, this is the easiest way to tell people your personal story indirectly without having to disclose your own details specifically.  If you watched the movie The Life of Pi, towards the end of the story, he retells the entire incident of his time lost at sea with entirely different characters, yet the secondary storyline is a mirror image of the first.  This is what I can see in the context of Genesis.

    One of the signatures of the severe trauma of Moses is in Genesis 21 in the story of Hagar and Ishmael.  Here is a quote:

    “The angel of the Lord also said to her:

    “You are now pregnant
    and you will give birth to a son.
    You shall name him Ishmael,
    for the Lord has heard of your misery.
    12 He will be a wild donkey of a man;
    his hand will be against everyone
    and everyone’s hand against him,
    and he will live in hostility
    toward all his brothers.”

    Long before we should have ever given this story the badge of divine inspiration, we should have looked at verse 12 much more closely.  Here, I believe Moses is telling his own story, as he was the one that felt like he was an “ass” that couldn’t please anyone.

    The details surrounding the events of how he came to live in the home of Pharaoh should be a billboard pointing to trauma.  The reason Moses was in the basket in the Nile to begin with was that Pharaoh was drowning all the Jewish boys his age.  Growing up in Pharaoh’s home, there would have been no hiding the fact that the same man who was, for all intents and purposes, his “dad” was the very man who had murdered the infant boys of his people.   As he grew, there would have been also no doubt that he was in an extremely unique position:  He was the closest that any Jew would have been to the man that enslaved these people, which made him by far the only candidate capable of doing anything for them.

    But Moses had no power or influence whatsoever over Pharaoh, no leverage to speak of at all.  He was surrounded by Egyptians, and for all intents and purposes he was more of a psychological prisoner of war than anything else.  He may have appeared to be free to move around with some degree of freedom, but undoubtedly, Pharaoh had him on a very tight leash.  Why else do you think he had to bring Aaron to speak to him?  Moses was trying to outsmart the man that terrified him since he was an infant.  The father/son relationship between them is something the church doesn’t ever explore, nor do they ever explore the fact that creating a storyline that united the Jews was the only way he could out-wit this dictator/father.

    Until Moses could figure out how to get the Jews out of Egypt, he was undoubtedly thought of as a worthless man by his own people.  In their minds, he should have easily been influential enough to get them out of there, and until he did, his identity as one who could step up and “be a man” would have been eternally in question.  Yet if he were to let on to the Egyptians that he was planning this escape, they would have more than likely killed him or at minimum hated him.  Trusting anyone would have been incredibly risky.  This would be tantamount to having all the black slaves earlier in our nation’s history walk out on their jobs at once and disappear down to Mexico or Cuba or have all the Latino work force in our modern industries do the same.  It would have brought every industry that used the Jews as a labor force to a standstill, and the Egyptians would bear an enormous insult, as they would have to start doing their own work for themselves.

    Since the church can’t ever admit that this deity is anything other than real, they will never see the universe of stories that are waiting to be told between the lines here.  And because they aren’t given permission within the Text to ever question the authority of this alleged deity, they will never understand the level of desperation Moses had come to in order to prove his own manhood and get his people out of slavery.  What the church also doesn’t understand is that he would have had to shoulder the combined responsibility of Abraham Lincoln, Caesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King, Jr. simultaneously and package it in a theological narrative that no one could question.

    He was absolutely brilliant at what he did, but the Jews (and now the Christians) have been a victim of their own unquestionable story line ever since, as it doesn’t give them permission to step away from this God of terror.  In fact, these stories have convinced billions of people that he is warm, loving, and kind, which gives this character a dual personality similar to Jekyl and Hyde, which is why we all know it is bad to “act like God,” yet good to “become godly.”

    This is why I had to create the safety net of a larger narrative about the missing Eternal Mother of the Children of God.  It is a personality that will be critically necessary to soften the enormous blow of realizing that the Father isn’t nearly as perfect as he thinks he is.  What I am attempting…and what I have been trying to explain to you through our emails… is a theological intervention on a global scale to try and prevent Christians from walking themselves into their own pre-scripted Holocaust as described in Revelations.  It is a self-destruct sequence that was written by the Apostle John with the same logic as a suicide bomber.  No way out….only the End of the World.

    “Mom” has a much better plan.

  4. Hi Greg,

    I have just concluded (for the most part) a month-long online discussion/debate on an uncensored Christian v. Atheist website.  Between mostly one other gentleman from South Africa and I, we laid down about 85 pages of conversations bringing up topics I have never heard much of in church before.  Most of it is an overlay of the basic principles of developmental psychology onto the character of God and others in the Biblical narrative, and I really think this is something the church needs to take a look at.

    As such, I have contacted Dr. James Dobson and Dr. John Trent (of the Smalley and Trent books) to see if they would be interested in a copy of this debate, as I would like it to be peer-reviewed by the church.  If you are interested, please contact me, and I can send it to you in either a .docx format or .pdf format.

    Thanks,

    Adam J. Read

    sapphirecc@verizon.net