interpretation

Sometimes I wonder if the primary tool of literary or Biblical analysis is superstition, creating meaning out of what may be entirely coincidental, and creating patterns of cause and effect where they don't actually exist.

I'm becoming more and more suspicious of cause/effect theories. Why am I becoming this way? Jeffrey Sachs and his idea of differential diagnosis, the idea that poverty (or anything, maybe) has a multitude of causes, rather than one all encompassing explanation.

That was a joke. But it's probably also true, in the sense that Sachs pushes me along that way.

Anyway, here's another way I'm suspicious. Last night I was thinking about how I'm grateful that I grew up in the trans-sexual capital of the world. At the time, I wanted to say that that experience had a lot to do with me not being a homophobe. At the same time, I realized that that's not enough. Talking to my friends who have had similar experiences, I don't think they would have the same level of comfort as I do. It's simplistic to say that I'm not a homophobe just because I grew up in a country that embraced homosexuality and trasvestitism.

More about meaning in stories. I was reflecting in class today on the idea that there is no inherent meaning in stories, that meaning is essentially invented. In a lot of ways, that makes sense to me. Every story has a point of view, but point of view is just the rhetorical strategy that is telling people how they should interpret it. That's not the same thing as inherent meaning, because the rhetoric and point of view also has to be interpreted, and so the rhetoric itself cannot define what a story means.

Example: I could tell a story about how I used to always eat rotten cherries, then one day I got really sick from eating rotten cherries, so I stopped doing it. My intent? Probably to show the risk in eating bad fruit. But that doesn't mean the meaning of the story is that eating rotten fruit is bad. Someone else might hear the story and think the meaning is that there's a relatively low chance of getting sick from eating bad fruit, and so it's okay to do. And that would be a perfectly valid reading, not based on what I intended, but based on what the story is actually saying.

Here's an equation I'm also uncomfortable with:

authorial intent = meaning

I think that most people would be uncomfortable with the idea that stories have no inherent meaning, especially followers of various religious traditions who are trying to find out how to interpret the stories within their scripture. That's a question I'm not sure how to answer yet.

I do know, however, that I am deeply uncomfortable with the idea that there is one monolithic and authoritative interpretation of scripture. Especially because I would have trouble not scoffing at anyone who believes that they know what this monolithic interpretation is. This is why I have trouble with a lot of sermons. It's not that I disagree with the conclusions that a preacher comes to, I just often think their whole method of interpretation is invalid.

Back to that equation: Biblical interpretation should be informed by authorial intent, but it should not be contained by it. That's more to do with the stories in scripture, though, and not something like the epistles.

An early lesson I learned in English classes is that it's basically nonsense to try to speak about what so-and-so meant when they wrote something. For one thing, it's impossible to know what anyone intended. For another thing, no one owns a story. If I tell a story, I don't own the meaning of that story (my rhetorical strategy here is obviously repetition). Context is more important.

Also, I wonder if people miss the point of interpretation. I was sitting here thinking about Leviticus, and how people argue over whether they're supposed to follow the laws in Leviticus or not, and which ones they're supposed to follow. But maybe that's missing the point. I don't think it matters which laws we're supposed to follow, or that it bears anything good to try to figure that out. Maybe the picture of God in the book of Leviticus is more important: a God that is deeply concerned with how his people live, down to the minute details of their lives, and and who is deeply concerned with the health and well-being of his people.

I've been so caught up with trying to understand how to read the Bible that it's hard for me to actually read it. Hmmm.