Article 3/4. The first two articles in this series argued that Catholics should read pay attention to the Bible’s literary forms in order to understanding its meaning. The Church teaches this her in documents (Article 1), and the stories and poems of Scripture reward our attention to it (Article 2). Some faithful Catholics, however, have a legitimate anxiety about this way of approaching the sacred text, worrying that a critical reading will destroy its divine character. Many of these fears were my own until I realized that a critical interpretation does not have to disregard the Tradition within which it has always been received.
A Strong Objection
Once a reader grants that some books of the Bible are teaching stories, fables, or myths, and not historical, then nothing seems to stop him from saying the same regarding any passage of Scripture he finds unbelievable. The Pontifical Biblical Commission’s 2014 study calls the Book of Tobit “a popular religious fable with a didactic and edifying purpose” (ITSS 109). It calls the Book of Jonah “an imaginary composition with deep theological content” (ITSS 110). It says that the story of the conquest of Canaan should be read as “a sort of parable” (ITSS 127), and it says that the six days of Genesis 1 are not a timetable (ITSS 67).
If the Church’s own scholars can say these things, what keeps someone from saying that the virgin birth or the empty tomb is also just a story with a lesson? On this view, “literary form” is now an escape hatch that opens whenever a Bible verse becomes too inconvenient for modern ears.
Our objector can point to real examples of writers, speakers, professors, theologians, and pastors who go too far. Even William Creasy, the author whose guide to reading the Bible is written with clear faith, says that Scripture “is not history as we understand it in modern terms; rather, it is history reimagined” (Creasy, Reading the Bible, 127). He adds that this view does not “lessen the truth of God’s Word” (127), but the objector is not thereby reassured. Creasy also says that “Old Testament prophecy does not predict events in the New Testament” but instead “foreshadows” them (215).
Some scholars go much further. One brief example is when Sandra Huebenthal writes that, based on her method, “the Gospels would not provide information about who Jesus was but rather show who Jesus is for a particular memory group” (Huebenthal, “Memory Theory,” 351).
Is this where literary reading leads? If so, then Catholics would be safer reading every story in the Bible as a plain report of facts! The Church does, in fact, see this unmoored criticism as a real danger to faith. The 2014 study warns against “the danger, to be carefully avoided, that one concludes from this that everything in the Bible is invented, produced by human ideas and beliefs.” God reveals himself in history, it adds, through “deeds and words having an inner unity” (ITSS 136).
This article will attempt to answer this objection in four points.
First Answer: Evidence Decides the Form
A scholar’s judgment about the literary form of a passage is neither a guess nor a preference of the scholar. Its claims rest on and is tested against the evidence. Pope Pius XII taught that the ancient forms must be learned “only after a careful examination of the ancient literature of the East,” and not decided “in advance” (Divino Afflante Spiritu 36).
The same method that reaches one conclusion about Jonah reaches a very different conclusion about the Gospels, because the evidence in the two cases is different. In the case of the prophet Jonah, the 2014 study points to several signals: the great fish, the sudden conversion of the entire city of Nineveh, which Assyrian records never mention, and a city so large that its size reads like an intentional exaggeration (ITSS 110). The study also weighs the evidence on the other side: Jonah, after all, stands among the prophets, and Jesus speaks of “the sign of Jonah” (Matt 12:39–41). Still, Jesus’ use of the story does not require it to be actual history. A good teacher draws truth from those stories his hearers know well.
Unlike Jonah, the Gospels’ claims are based on a different category of evidence:
Luke tells his reader at the start that he writes from what was handed on by “eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” (Luke 1:2).
John’s Gospel rests its account on the testimony of one who “saw it” (John 19:35; 21:24).
Saint Paul stakes the whole faith on a real event: “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain” (1 Cor 15:14).
The Second Vatican Council “unhesitatingly asserts” the historical character of the Gospels (Dei Verbum 19). The Catechism calls the Resurrection “a real event, with manifestations that were historically verified, as the New Testament bears witness” (Catechism 639). Therefore, paying attention to the form a particular passage takes does not always attack historical veracity, but can also confirm it. Barton argues that the biblical writers had “as good an understanding as we have of the difference between fact and fiction” (Barton, Old Testament, 123).
When a writer like Luke tells his readers that he has checked his sources, the literary form he chose to employ shows that he is reporting what happened. A reader who avoids the hard work of discerning the correct form of a text and opts instead for a simple and flat method of reading, whether it is Jonah or the Resurrection, will reach different conclusions because the texts are different kinds of writing.
Second Answer: Every Part of Scripture Is True
Reading by form does not divide the Bible into true parts and untrue parts. During the Second Vatican Council, the bishops rejected wording that might have suggested that only the parts of Scripture “necessary for faith and morality” are true. The 2014 study explains that the books of Scripture, “with all their parts,” intend to communicate the truth “insofar as it relates to our salvation” (ITSS 63).
So the question that literary form answers is never “Which parts are true?” The question is “What is this part saying?” A parable is true as a parable, a psalm is true as a prayer, and a historical report is true as history. Thus, a reader who is attentive to the form of a text protects the truth of it by ensuring that he hears what the passage claims.
Third Answer: The Church Never Reads by Form Alone
The Church never asks Catholics to use literary study in isolation from other resources. This is why Dei Verbum 12 joins the study of literary forms to three other guides: “the content and unity of the whole of Scripture,” “the living tradition of the whole Church,” and “the harmony which exists between elements of the faith.”
An interpretation that changed the Resurrection into a mere symbol, or that Christ has risen only in the hearts of believes, would fail all three tests, no matter how clever its literary argument. The Church’s insistence on these three other guides also corrects writers like Creasy when they go too far. Creasy is right that Isaiah spoke to King Ahaz about a sign meant for Ahaz’s own day (Isa 7:10–16; Creasy, 214–215). The Church, however, also holds that God’s authorship is capable of more than what the human author’s could imagine. The 1993 Biblical Commission study uses Matthew’s reading of Isaiah 7:14 (Matt 1:23) as an example of “a deeper meaning of the text, intended by God but not clearly expressed by the human author” (Interpretation of the Bible in the Church II.B.3).
The Catechism teaches that “all other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal” (Catechism 116). The literal sense that literary study helps establish is the foundation. It does not replace the spiritual senses that have handed down to the Church for all time a fuller comprehension of the Bible.
Fourth Answer: Reading by Form Disciplines Itself
Literary reading has its own rules against excess, and they work in both directions. Some enthusiastic readers find hidden patterns in every chapter of the Bible. Barton warns that biblical texts may be “rather more accidental and unplanned” than some critics suppose (Barton, 146). The scholar Henry Schogt describes the same temptation in all literary study: the reader’s urge to “ascribe his own discoveries” to “a strategy of the author” (Schogt, Linguistics, Literary Analysis, and Literary Translation, 57–58). The skeptic who reduces an historical claim into mere symbol and the enthusiast who invents connections and sees patterns everywhere make the same basic mistake. They are both reading into the text what they hoped to find instead of out from the text what it is saying and how.
The solution is humble honesty. Barton says it this way: “A commentator must be able to say: I wish the text didn’t say the following, but it does” (Barton, 209). As a rule, it is a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. First, it forbids a reader to explain away a miracle he finds hard to believe, and, second, it forbids him to invent a pattern the writer never made. A pattern that was written into the text deserves the reader’s trust when it rests on the actual words of the text, when a listener could hear it, and when it changes what the passage means.
Where This Leaves the Reader
In summary, the objection is right that form critical reading and literary analysis can be abused. A skeptical biblical professor, of which there are many, can read his or her biases into the text, creating complicated theories to explain away the sacred author’s intended meaning. That said, on the other hand it is wrong to conclude that the safe course is to read every text or verse as a plain historical report. Such a naive approach brings its own errors, because it misreads the parables, poems, and figures of speech that God chose to use. The Church’s way is harder and more demanding, but it is also more fruitful in the academy and more faithful for those in the pews.
The Church asks her scholars, her exegetes, and every general reader of the Bible to weigh the evidence for each passage’s literary form, to hold that every part of Scripture is true, to read each part within the whole Bible and the Church’s Tradition, and to be honest and humble about what the text says and how it says it, whether it is a welcomed reading or not. A Catholic who reads and studies in this way will find that exploring and discerning literary forms can lead him toward its truth of God’s revelation to humanity.
The final article in this series turns these principles into a simple practice for reading and praying the Bible.