Communicating the Message

We have defined ‘story’ earlier as, something that happened to someone, somewhere, sometime. From this definition and concluded that a story consists of a plot or intrigue (something happened), character(s) (someone), space or setting (somewhere) and time (sometime). We expanded Brink’s (1987) definition by adding the importance of the author and the audience. As we have concluded, all these elements play an integral and integrated part to make a good story.

To understand how this will help us understand stories we might have to start with asking ourselves how communication works. Put very simply, communication happens when a Sender wants to communicate a Message to a Receiver. In terms of a written text, we may distinguish between the Author, the Text and the Reader. For the Receiver to understand the Message, the Sender needs to encode the text in a code that the Receiver is able to decode. The code of the Old Testament would be Hebrew and Aramaic and the letters of the text would be the medium the Sender uses to encode the text – more specifically the Hebrew alphabet. For effective communication to take place, the Sender and Receiver should also have a shared context or frame of reference.

The above can be diagrammed as follows:

Basic Communication Model

(Deist, 1986, p. 17)

I will use the following example to explain the above. If I write a letter to a friend I will take the place of the sender and the friend the receiver. The letter will contain the message I want to communicate to my friend. If the friend speaks Afrikaans (my native language), I might start the letter with, “Goeie dag. Hoe gaan dit met jou en die familie”. What I did was to encode my message into a code that both my friend and I understand, Afrikaans. Because it is a letter, I used letters as a medium to encode the text.  Although most of you might be able to identify the letters (which is different in Hebrew and Aramaic) I used, you will probably not be able to decode the text because you do not understand Afrikaans. What is already clear is that communication cannot take place if you do not understand the code – language. English readers might be able to identify two words from this sentence, “die” and “familie”. So, I communicated something about a family who died. Although “familie” contains the same meaning than “family”, “die” got nothing to do with death. “Die” is actually the definite article (the) in Afrikaans.

Say I translate the sentence, “Good day. How are you and the family”, it will immediately be clear what I said or will it? The question is still whether you understand what I communicated to my friend. You might think it is clear-cut; he just started his letter in a cordial manner as is expected. But say my friend is involved in a family feud; he will understand it very different from just a cordial greeting. Alternatively, if the letter were directed to a friend with whose family I have a very close relationship, the content of what I communicate would be altogether different again. Each instance speaks of a different context that gives meaning to the content of a very simple sentence. Because my friend and I have a share frame of reference or context, it will be (in most instances) clear to him what I mean by my greeting.

As you can see, for effective communication to take place, we need to understand the world of the Sender and the reader. We also need to be able to understand the language and know the medium the sender used. Furthermore, we need to their contexts and the context under which the text were written. This is just the beginning of the complex act of communication. This very simple model does not even consider more complex issues like, nuance, word choice, idioms, things that distort communication and so on.

Deist, F. E. (1986). The Writer, His Text and His Audience, in: Deist, F. E. and Vorster, W. S. (Eds.), Words from afar, (pp. 17–38). The literature of the Old Testament. Cape Town: Tafelberg Publishers.

The Bible, stories and method

If stories invite and engage us, sometimes even unconsciously, do we really need to go through a whole process of interpreting the text? Can’t one just read the story and get to the message? Do we really need a method to understand biblical stories?

Maybe I should start by saying that there is no one method to interpret stories but multiple methods. For the beginner it might be best to come to grips with a (good) method to interpret a text. Once one is familiar with that method one can take on others and start to integrate different methods. We should also keep in mind that method is not the purpose but a means to a purpose – a tool to be used in order to understand a text.

Good methodology helps us to consider different aspects of a text and help us look at the text from different angles. Good methodology, well applied and used, safeguard the text and the reader from the honest reader’s presuppositions. By an honest reader, I mean a reader who knows and acknowledges his/her presuppositions and are willing to submit it to the text. An honest reader will allow the biblical text to change his/her presuppositions in the light of the text and not the other way round. An honest reader fine-tunes his ears to the message of the text. He/she will consider as many aspects of a text as necessary in order to let the text speak, putting aside, as far as possible, his/her own ideas of or about the text.

This becomes part of a process more than a method. Waltke (2001, p. 33) puts it well:

The task of the Bible student is to discern the rules employed in a biblical text as evidenced by that text. This task necessarily involves a heuristic spiral. One approaches the text with ideas about its techniques and principals, which the text then proves or disproves. Thus begins the dialogue with the text that leads the careful listener to learn how the text communicates.

Methods are the systemised way of understanding how things work and/or can be done. Literary methods, develop by scholars who studies literature in order to understand how it works, helps the reader to understand the rules by which different texts functions – how they work. Understanding how stories work and systematically working through different aspects of a story, enables the reader to come to a better understanding of the story at hand. By working through a story methodologically, we consider different aspects of what the story is about and how the author wanted to communicate his message.

As Walkte shows, it is not about methodologism but about a dialogue with a particular text. Different text functions differently. The student needs to establish which of the verity of tools in his toolbox would work best to understand a text. By carefully applying first this than that tool, knowing how to use each, he/she learn how to let the text speak and what the text wants to say – coming to know God’s voice and heart behind that of the author.

Waltke, B. K. (2001). Genesis: a Commentary. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan.

The Bible, stories and history

Another problem that comes to mind when we talk about stories and the Bible, is the relationship between story and history. We already dealt with the fact that story does not equal fiction. Aren’t we weakening the historicity of the Bible by referring to those parts that have traditionally being viewed as historical truth by referring to it as story? Can story and history go together especially if we believe that our faith is grounded in historical truth?

Henry (1987, p. 19) warns that:

The narrative approach therefore seems not fully befitting the historic Christian faith. . . . One discerns here an enchantment with the affective, a flight from history to the perspectival that enjoins no universal truth-claims, a reflection of the revolt against reason, a reliance on ‘symbolic truth’ and imagination, and an interest in earthly theatre more than revealed theology.

For him the fact that narratives appeals to the emotive and imaginative goes against the fact that we are dealing with revelation. Revelation is based on historical truth (as we see it from a modernistic worldview) and therefore the whole idea that parts of Scripture may be called ‘story’ or categorised as ‘narratives’ is actually devaluating our faith.

For Merrill (1999, p. 68), however:

The history of the OT is overwhelmingly narrative in expression. From beginning to end the dealings of God with humankind, their response to him, and their interrelationships at both individual and corporate levels appear in story form. [Emphasis Merrill's]

Thus, there need not be a chasm between story and history. Story may be just that, story (as in fiction) but it is also possible to communicate real events by means of a story. Truth told in narrative form does not diminish its factualness. If I tell you my ‘life story’, it is the history of my life in the form of a story. Using literary devises in order to make the story more interesting and to engage others in my story will not take anything away from the truth I’m telling. Tate (2008, p. 105) refer to it as “storicized history”.

Acknowledging that huge parts of both the Old and New Testament are written in story form does not take anything away from its historicity. Interpreting these text from a literary point of view does not take away anything of the truth it communicates. 

Henry, C. F. H. (1987). Narrative Theology: An Evangelical Appraisal. Trinity Journal, 8(1), 3–19.

Tate, W. R. (2008). Biblical Interpretation: An Integrated Approach. Hendrickson Pub.

Merrill, E. H. (1999). Old Testament History: A Theological perspective. In, VanGemeren, W. A. (Ed.). Old Testament History: A Theological Perspective, in: A guide to Old Testament theology and exegesis: an introductory articles from the New International dictionary of Old Testament theology and exegesis. Grand Rapids  Mich.: Zondervan.

The Bible, stories and inspiration

Another issue that came up in class (see my previous blog) is that of inspiration. How can we refer to stories in the Bible and use methods from secular sciences and at the same time hold to the Bible as the inspired Word of God? Or, are we not devaluating the Bible as Word of God by simply referring to large chunks of it as stories? What are the implication of the above for or view of the Bible as ‘inspired’?

We do not have the time and space to discuss inspiration theology here. What we should say is that the Bible did not fall out of heaven ready to go to print. It developed over thousands of years and many authors have been involved in its writing. In faith, we believe it to be the inspired word of God.

The interesting fact is, agreeing that the Bible is inspired by God, that God did not choose to communicate to us by means of a ‘flat’ abstract historical thesis. When one reads the Bible, it soon becomes obvious that the text, that we believe to be the inspired Word of God, is a multidimensional document. It uses narrative, poetry, parables and a range of other literary types (genres) to communicate to us.

We all know that one cannot read fiction, poetry, history or the newspaper in the same way. We need to understand the type of literature we are dealing with and interpret it according to that literature type’s rules. Not doing so, we might end up with a total wrong idea of what the text wants to communicate.

If God then, communicate to us by means of different genres, shouldn’t we take the trouble to understand his communication accordingly? If the inspired authors of the Bible used narratives to communicate God’s message, then we should take that serious and interpret it as such. Otherwise, we might end up with a totally wrong understanding of what God wants to communicate to us.

As Ryken (1990:9) correctly observes: “To view the Bible as literature does not require one to regard it as fictional or to compromise one’s view of its special religious authority.”

If God inspired the authors of the Bible to write huge parts of Scripture in story form, who are we to think that it is not fitting to read and interpret it as such?

The Bible, stories and fiction

For many people ‘story’ equals fiction. During a recent lecture on the interpretation of Genesis, I experience a lot of resistance to the approach I was putting forward. It was only towards the end of the class that I realised that students thought of stories as fiction. Thus, my references to the ‘stories’ in Genesis resulted in all sorts of questions. Is the lecturer implying that the Bible is fictious? Does he then believe the Bible not to be true but made up stories? What does he believe in regards with the inspiration of the Bible? Etc.

The first question we need to ask is whether ‘story’ necessarily equals fiction. Can stories also be true? Tate (2008:102) agrees that the idea the parts of the Bible may be read as literature seems to be foreign to many readers. Taking it a step further and study God as a character among other characters would be, for many Christians, inconceivable. To view and study God as “a character in a novel” (Clines 1995:190) stops short of profanity.

According to Ryken (1990a:7):

Fictionality, though common in literature, is not an essential ingredient of literature. The properties that make a text literary are unaffected by the historicity or fictionality of the material. A literary approach depends on a writer’s selectivity and molding of the material, regardless of whether the details actually happened or are made up.

It seems important that we distinguish between fiction and non-fiction when we talk about stories. Although a biography for example, is written in the form of a story, it is still a true representation of what happened in a person's life. The author may use of all the literary devices available to him to give 'colour' to the story and make it more interesting, it does not, however, take away anything of the fact that what is portrayed really happened.

Modern history on the other hand, endeavours to be “scientifically objective as possible” – “writing history for histories sake” and will not utilise formal narrative strategies as you would find in narratives (Tate 2008:104).

The Bible is, according to Tate (2008:105), “storicized history”. In other words, history written in the form of a story – history writing that makes use of all the literary devices available. Being “storicized history”, the Bible is also more than just history. “Storicized history” is more than just a representation of history. It reaches beyond the cold hard facts of history to “guide the reader into the discovery of some universal truth” (Tate 2008:105). The biblical narratives is about more than the stories itself. It wants to show us a God who really cares for his creation and a reality beyond the one we live in.

Thus, although the same principals are used to interpret fictious and non-fictious narrative, story (narrative) does not necessarily equals fiction. Even though we might refer to a passage in Scripture as a story, it does not necessarily imply fictionality. It is thus, not only, possible, but also vital, to read the biblical “stories according to their own rules and conventions”, without giving up on the high regard we hold towards Scripture.

God - as the author intended

If we want to understand a biblical story, we must first take seriously the effort to learn how stories are told, specifically how biblical stories are told (Berlin 2005:21).

Maybe we should start by asking, “What is a story?” Brink (1987) defines a story as, something that happened to someone, somewhere, sometime. From this definition, we may conclude that a story consists of a plot or intrigue (something happened), character(s) (someone), space or setting (somewhere) and time (sometime). We may add to this definition, “as told by someone (author) to someone else (audience)”. These are the basic elements to be considered in order to interpret a story. All these elements play an integral and integrated part to make a good story.

Should we want to come to a better understanding of whom and how God is, we will do a character study of the character, God. Because the author uses all the different elements of the story to shape his characters (and the characters, to shape the story), we will need to follow a holistic approach, considering the role of each element in shaping a character.

What is important is to establish how the author wanted his audience to perceive the character we want to study. For example, how did the author of Genesis sketch God to his audience so that they understood God in the way he wanted them to? It is of no use if we understand the story or the purpose of the story different from what the author intended. Neither will it serve any purpose to come to view God differently than the picture the author drew. As Bright (1991, pp.42&43) puts it:

We have… the task of exegesis – of reading from the text the meaning the author intended to convey. We are not permitted the luxury of eisegesis – of reading our own ideas into the text or finding there meanings which its author did not have in mind”.

Thus, we analyse and interpret stories with the purpose to understand what the original author intended his audience to understand. By applying this to the character, God, we might come to a better and deeper understanding of who and what kind of God he is. And, we agree with Gunn and Fewell (1993:89) that it is one of the Bibles great challenges to come to some understanding of the character of God.

Understanding stories - understanding God

We all (well I guess, most of us) like a good story. Even better, a good story told by a good storyteller. A good storyteller will use different strategies to draw you into the story’s world. They will endeavour to communicate the story in such a way that you would somehow see it play of in your mind's eye and sometimes even feel part of it - inviting you into the world of the story. Good stories well told also involve the listeners emotion. Thus, a joke told well will make you cry with laughter. A good love story will produce all sorts of emotions - empathy, sadness, happiness, excitement etc. Storytellers and writers employ different strategies to achieve this goal in order to communicate their message more effectively.

This is no different for the stories we find in Scripture. The original storytellers of the biblical stories were masters of their trade. They also wished to involve their audiences in their stories on different levels. They also used different literary strategies to communicate the all important message of God’s journey with his people. Bible stories are not cold hard facts told in a dull fashion. They were told around the family fire in such a way that the stories would not only be remember but also in a fashion that would make the children sit up and listen, knowing that these are stories about their ancestor’s journey with God – knowing that the stories will continue in and through them.

Now, these stories became part of our canon – God’s Word to us.

If God wished to communicate his message to us by means of different genres, shouldn’t we take the way narratives function serious as well – not only as stories that played of long long ago, but to understand them for how they are told and what they want to achieve? In other words, for us to understand God’s message better, we should take the means by which this message is communicated serious. By not doing it, we might only get half the message or even the wrong message.

I think that Long (1994:43) was right when he said that

an increased appreciation of the literary mechanisms of a text—how a story is told—often becomes the avenue of greater insight into the theological, religious and even historical significance of the text—what the story means.

Knowing how stories work, what they wish to achieve and how they wish to achieve it, might bring us to a better understanding of who and how God is.

Stories - God's medium for self-revelation

Fokkelman (1999:19), a specialist in the analysis of biblical narratives, notes that, “What we have to learn is to read these stories according to their own rules and conventions, in an attitude of respect, and maintaining an open mind as long as possible". A number of issues comes to light from his observation. It is all about how we need to approach Scripture.

In the first place, we need to consider the type of literature (genre) we are reading. If we are dealing with narratives, we need to read them as narratives. We need to establish the rules they are written by. You cannot understand (analyse) Rugby if you do not understand Rugby rules or by applying Soccer rules. The text should thus determine how we read it.

Another, very important issue, has to do with the attitude we approach the text with. We are dealing, after all, with God’s Word. Even if one does not share this believe it should still be dealt with honourably. Respect is also shown when one respect the rules and convention that governs the part of the Bible we are dealing with, allowing it to communicate its message. In other words, we should be careful that we do not read our ideas into the text. By not considering the genre and its rules and conventions, this can easily happen.

Lastly, contrary to common thinking, we need to approach the Bible with an open mind. If we truly respect the Bible as God’s Word, we cannot allow our preconceived ideas (or presuppositions) to override what the text wants to communicate. Sometimes the text communicates, as I have shown earlier, a different message than what we think is true. The question then is whether we will ‘override’ the text or whether we will let the text change our ideas. We all approach the Bible with our own presuppositions (we cannot escape it), but will we allow Scripture to question those ideas and make amendments when and where necessary?

It is interesting, though, that Fokkelman qualifies or limits the idea of an open mind. Having an open mind does not mean we accept everything or just go with the flow. No, we maintain an open mind as long as possible – as far as the Bible allows us.

The question, in terms of my thesis, is therefore, whether we have an option other than to deal with the text as literature. This means that when we get to the biblical narratives that we need to also deal with God in a literary way. Coming to think of it, about two thirds of the Bible consists of stories and God plays a huge part in most, if not all, of them. It then seems stories are God’s medium of choice to reveal himself to us. Maybe we should take them more serious for what they are and how they function.

God and Stories

When we think about the God of the Bible, we are confronted with at least two major issues (see my previous blogs): the one being the perceived contradiction between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. The other would be the conflict between the narrator’s portrayal of God and readers’ theology. These issues are not to be taken lightly, as the way God is perceived to be (the kind of God we believe in) not only have a huge influence on believers’ faith and practise, but believers might end up believing in an altogether different God than the one we meet in the Bible.

The reality is that the text of the Old Testament, at least, does not deal with God, or theology, in a systematic manner. The fact is that most of the Old Testament consists of narratives – stories. What we know about God and his actions (who and how he is), we derive from these stories. And, as Wenham (1987:144) says, “…theological systematization is hardly the concern of the biblical narrators”. The authors of the Old Testament narratives did not intend to write theology. They wrote down the stories about God’s journey with his people that were passed down from generation to generation.

When we read the paper, we read the front page in a different way than the cartoons or sport pages. When we read the Bible, we need to distinguish the different types of literature. We cannot read narratives in the same way we read the Psalms or Paul’s letters. Different genres have different rules by which they are written and by which they should be interpreted.

As Fokkelman (1999:19) says, “What we have to learn is to read these stories according to their own rules and conventions, in an attitude of respect, and maintaining an open mind as long as possible."