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.