Repository of Truth: Full and Unrestricted Access?

For many in the global north, inductive modes of reading biblical texts still hold their currency as guarantors of truth. Adopting this empirical gaze invariably means setting the reader’s line of sight toward positivist ends. Yet, this retrospective logic tends to generate an authority that is based primarily on access to special kinds of evidence.

The Rhetoric of Admissions Policies

Admissions policies for entering into a repository of truth—whether it be museums, archives, or libraries—are more complex than simple technical rules involving security and preservation. Although the stewardship of material culture is a genuine concern, all rules of admission contain social and political dimensions. By granting individuals access to materials of the highest historical value, admissions policies both confirm and confer social status.

In a recent research trip to Oxford University, I arranged in advance to consult several manuscripts held in Bodleian Library’s Department of Western Manuscripts. Accessing these materials required that I obtain a “Type A” reader’s card. As stated in the library’s admissions policy, “to consult manuscripts, special collections and rare books a full and unrestricted Bodleian reader’s card (Group A) is required.”  Hence, I began the process toward obtaining “full and unrestricted” access to the evidence.

Completing the one page application form for a Group A card, the requested information appeared neutral. Yet as a rhetorical close-reader of texts, the form clearly privileged the status of an employed academician. As reflected in this question in particular, “if you are not employed in an academic or research institution, are you making this application in pursuit of your employment?”

Of course, meeting this requirement for accessing rare materials was far less rigorous than the pre 20^th century policy for admitting external readers, which entailed receiving an ad eundem degree (provided that the recipient subscribed to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England). The issue of contention with the library’s admissions policy, however, was the interplay of social status and my access to evidence bearing on the truth of the Bible.  In the Derridian sense of rhetoricity, these words by J.B. Harley are fitting, “rhetoric may be concealed but it is always present, for there is no description without performance.” To be employed at the academic level assumes a particular social class different from working class status. Moreover, employed academic status in a Western context is measured against a particular standard of Euro-masculinity.

Regulating or Relegating?

At the entrance of the Special Collections Reading Room, I proudly showed my reader’s card to the library attendant. To my dismay, she informed me that my reader’s card was a “Type S”, which prohibited my admission. I kindly explained that the admissions officer assured me that my reader’s status was “Type A”, and that this was a clerical mistake. She called the admissions officer and confirmed my status. Though I was admitted, my provisional status was duly noted by each of the staff members. I was the non-“Type A” card holder. I admit that this liminal status was disappointing, especially in a context famed for its learning and scholarship. The next day I was anxious to rectify the matter. I finally received my “Type A” reader’s card. I was official.

Clearly not everyone can attain admission to places holding substantive evidence on the history of the Bible. Apart from library admissions policies, there is a complex system of professional authentication within the discipline that determines access to excavation sites or to spaces deciphering ancient manuscripts. In the end, non-specialists are relegated to secondary materials relying solely on the conclusions of those with full and unrestricted access to the evidence.

Lived Experience as Archive

As a biblical critic located 226 miles from the US-Mexican border, I observe a different system of biblical truth-making that lies outside the institutionalized version described above. For many working-class people on the border, the only repository of truth is their lived experience. Here, the Bible is read from the experiences of low-wage jobs, imprisonment, familial separation, immigration, violence, and militarization. In these borderlands, biblical interpretation happens through the lenses of various cultural productions like retablo paintings and border biblical ballads.

With full and unrestricted access to their own lived experiences, border readers discover a kinship with the counter-narratives of immigration, exile, deportation, and imprisonment in the biblical text. This kinship between narratives yields an archive of cultural productions that border communities are able to access freely. The songs, murals, and border fence art bespeak a value system that seeks to render the lived experience of the immigrant, border crosser, child asylum seekers as repositories of truth.

Persistent Disjunction

It is undeniable the persistent disjunction that exists between a critical sense of the Bible and the many alternative readings of the Bible. The dreams of universality implicit in scientific-based criticism often compel readers to reject readings that do not correspond to the discipline’s canon as mere contextual ravings.

In my view, this exclusionary impulse is no longer sustainable, particularly in a context such as my own. For, indeed, the current humanitarian crisis on the Texas border has me torn between the laws of criticism and the need for relevance. The voices of the unaccompanied children-asylum seekers on the border have begun to spill over into my critical readings of Genesis, Exodus, Songs of Ascents, and the exilic prophets. For to enter into this archive of lived experience all it requires of the critic is to listen.

Photo Credit: “El muro” by Daniel Lobo – CC by 2.0

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