The Bible and the location of meaning (1)

When we look at narrative texts, the communication structure is similar to the Basic Communication Model. The sender (author) wants to communicate a message (story) to someone else (reader/audience). He does that by telling or writing down his message.

The question now is, “Where will we find the meaning of the message?” Does the meaning of the story lie with the author (what he/she intended), in the text itself or with the reader? (See diagram below) My vote is with the author; he is after all the one who have the message and knows what he wants to communicate. Furthermore, in terms of the Bible, he is the ‘inspired’ author of God’s message. If I want to study God as a character in a story, my purpose would be to come to an understanding of how the author intended the reader to understand who God is and what he is like. Unfortunately, we do not have the author with us to verify whether we understand what he meant when he wrote his story neither do we have a commentary (written by the author) to explain exactly what he meant.

Another way to go is to ask, “What did the original readers of the text understood the message to be?” After all, besides the author, they would have understood the story best as the message was intended for them. They best understood the code the author used to communicate his message with and shared a common frame of reference (context) with the author. Unfortunately, once again, we do not have the readers of the text with us to explain what they would have understood the message to be. Furthermore, we do not have any guarantee that they understood perfectly what the author intended.

Although we do want to understand what the author intended with his writing and it would be great to understand what the original receivers understood the message to be, the only ‘thing’ we have is the text. The problem with the text is that, because we are so distanced from its origins (few can read it in its original language and most have nothing more than a vague, if any, understanding of the ancient world), we can easily misunderstand the message and the author’s intention. In addition, it is too easy for us to hear from the text the message that we would like to hear. As Long (1999, p. 88) observes, “In this day and age, it would be the height of hermeneutical naïveté to deny or ignore the fact that one’s background beliefs have a significant impact on how one processes and assesses data.”

Still, that is what we are left with, the text – God’s Word – and, should we want to understand its (his) message to us, we need to go about it in a responsible manner. “What we must do is identify elements in the text that plausibly ground our interpretations” (Walsh, 2009, p. 5) [author’s emphasis]. Thus, we need to make every effort to understand the text for what it is and what it wants to communicate. 

Long, V. P. (1999). Old Testament History: A Hermeneutical Perspective, in: VanGemeren, W. A. (Ed.), A guide to Old Testament theology and exegesis: an introductory articles from the New International dictionary of Old Testament theology and exegesis, (pp. 83–99). Grand Rapids  Mich.: Zondervan.

Walsh, J. T. (2009). Old Testament Narrative: a Guide to Interpretation. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press.