Q.
Why are there so many completely different interpretations?
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The result of these multiple interpretations of passages is precisely why
there is so much division among Christians and Jews—all of whom base their
faith on the same texts.Nadia Bolz-Weber
A.
There are so many different interpretations of the same scripture
passages precisely because there are so many communities inter-
preting these passages in so many times and cultural contexts. The
Bible is a living word that breathes meaning into every community that does
the work of digging into it. To calcify a biblical text into one single meaning for
all time and place is to suck the life out of it.
For instance, in Literary Encounters with the Reign of God by Sharon H.
Ringe and Hyun Chul Paul Kim, biblical scholar Mark Allan Powell describes
an experiment in which people pair off and read a biblical story together, then
they close the Bible and retell it as best they can and note what they added or
left out. When Americans were tested using the parable of the prodigal son,
almost none of them mentioned that there had been a famine in the land. To
them, personal immorality, and not famine, was the only factor causing the
trouble of the younger son.
But when Powell replicated this test with a Russian group, almost all the
subjects retelling the prodigal son story included that there had been a famine
in the land. A national food shortage and the behavior it causes are simply
more of a reality in the former Soviet Union than in the States.
Can we possibly conclude that one of these interpretations of scripture
is right and one is wrong? Perhaps not, because the biblical text speaks truth
into the community and context in which it is being interpreted. It is, indeed, a
living Word.Scriptural References
Luke 15:11–32; 2 Timothy 2:15; 2 Peter 3:16Suggested Additional Sources for Reading
- Walter C. Kaiser Jr. and Moises Silva, Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics:
The Search for Meaning (Zondervan, 2007). - Sharon H. Ringe and Hyun Chul Paul Kim, Literary Encounters with the
Reign of God (T & T Clark, 2004).