How to read the Bible and not to be a biblical conspiracy theorist.

Originally appeared on Medium

There are lots of ways to read the Bible. There shouldn’t be as many ways to make authoritative claims about the Bible.
What is the difference between:

• Reader-oriented and author-oriented approaches?

• Scholarly exegesis and personal inspiration or devotion?

We need to look at some of these different ways to read the Bible and which ones are best to make substantial, formative claims for Christianity as a whole that should be authoritative and not just what you prefer or think.

Overview:

1. Problems with certain approaches to the Bible — a source of moral authority, through special revelation, amongst finite and limited beings with epistemological setbacks.

2. Reader-Oriented and Author-Oriented approaches — and how they ought to be used and not used.

3. Five criteria for making claims — read the text, read the scope of the text, read from the perspective of the author, read the voices that have come before you, and offer claims without pretending like you have the final word.

How Ought We (Not) Read & Study the Bible?

Fortunately, the story of Jan van Leiden and Jan Matthys’ takeover of Munster, Germany in 1534 is gaining notoriety as “The Munster Rebellion.”

As the Reformation pulsated through Europe, radical strands of Anabaptism began circulating. In Munster, these self-proclaimed prophets ended up taking over the city and establishing a new order with rules including required marriage to the leaders as well as other social, economic, and sexual demands that we’d probably consider human rights violations today.

Imagine this — they justified this takeover and this new society using, of course, the Bible.

And no one could argue against them.

Because God had, in fact, specifically communicated this secret wisdom to them.

Anything they said, any interpretation of a Bible passage, and any ideas they proposed were, therefore, infallible.

In response, Martin Luther famously concluded that he regretted his adamancy to allow laypersons to read the Bible in their own language — because you end up with massacres and destruction like Munster.

While Luther’s disdain might not need to be carried out to such extremes, a lot of violence, division, animosity, and manipulation could have been avoided time and again if we just had better ways to make claims about the Bible.

Secularization Must’ve Failed

Many sociologists during the 20th century were quite certain that religious vitality was not only going to decline but disappear. They called it secularization.

One doesn’t have to look too far in almost any reach of the world to see that secularization hasn’t quite come to fruition. In fact, the world as a whole appears to be less secular and more religious as time has gone on.

Even in America.

I must admit, I myself have been surprised at how much religious content is circulated, especially Christian content. Religion, it seems, maintains its place at the top of our cultural mind.

Most specific to my current address, it seems that people still love talking about the Bible.

And while we haven’t quite had a situation such as Muenster, Germany in 1534, we occasionally come close.

More importantly, however, the same processes utilized by Jan van Leiden and Jan Matthys are unfortunately common.

Reading the Bible Poorly: Scholarship Versus Conspiracy Theories

Imagine you live during the mid-1800s. Slavery is a big deal and so is Christianity. Many a Christian will point to the role of Christianity in ending the slave trade. That’s wonderful.

What is necessary to recognize, however, is that the justification for the system of slavery in America came from, quite often, Christians.

As notoriously as ever, Christians did so by referring to an unquestionable source of moral authority — the Bible.

That purview of authority makes the Bible very powerful and it is a perspective shared amongst many cultures with their sacred texts. When you have a source of moral authority that results from special revelation, determining the ensuing outcomes for how that gets translated to real space and time can be tricky.

The setup is tough — finite human beings making claims for objective truths, laws, and perspectives is an art in the impossible. This has always been a critique of special revelation and has also been a critique of deontology as a method for moral reasoning.

Someone can come along and say,

“I heard from God, this is what we are supposed to do.”

Or, they might say,

“I actually figured out the answer. It’s complicated to explain, but if you want to actually know what this means, just listen to me because I cracked the code.”

Knowledge is power, they say.

Especially when that knowledge is claimed as transcendent.

Yet, even from the beginning of Christianity — and as has been true throughout most of Jewish tradition — there were standards in place to substantiate claims and keep epistemological abuses from happening. Just look at the process of ancient Jewish rabbinic dialogue or the expansive commentaries of the Mishnah or Talmud to see their hesitancy to assert objective claims versus attempting to faithfully be in dialogue.

For early Christianity, they utilized the apostolic tradition while also understanding that they were obligated, based on their Jewish heritage, to continue the conversation of both belief and praxis in their social locations.

Eastern Orthodoxy established their own bend toward this problem where only the first councils held authority and everything else was up for debate. Catholicism created an entire episcopal process for anything to be determinative. Or, one of my favorites, John Wesley discussed four interdependent sources for making decisions — Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience — all of which were meant to be utilized collectively, not individually.

Making a claim had to be affirmed by a larger, connected community with accountability.

Can you imagine that? That’s practically heresy among certain Christian monoliths.

The Philosophical Quandary of American Culture

The problem is actually quite similar to the bulk of contemporary culture’s reasoning and argumentation (at least, in America). This tendency to interact with the Bible poorly does seem to be a human problem.

Seriously, our culture has a hell of a time navigating basic issues such as:

• Opinion versus fact (both of which, by the way, are valid for the human person, but do not carry equal usage and are valid for different purposes)

• Logical reasoning versus empirical observation

• Understanding the different forms of persuasion (logos, ethos, and pathos) and that they, too, have different uses.

• We don’t seem to understand the issue of epistemology and how it implicates a limited, finite perspective with any human being (making objective truth quite tricky).

It should be no surprise that we have a cultural ethos that is so inclined toward the conspiracy theory.

Having an oversimplified answer to complex problems is seductive — yet, in neglecting the complex terrain of collective human experience, such approaches are highly unlikely to produce healthy versions of society, philosophy, or spirituality.

Such lack of consideration also paves the way for manipulation.

Munster, Germany is but one example.

Playing fast and loose with the Bible as a source of reality is both scarier and more common than we realize.

And when it is used to justify ulterior motives, such an approach is downright dangerous.

Unfortunately, Christians tend to use this same process of logic and reasoning as a method for determining truth that is the same structure used for conspiracy theories pervading modern society.

With no criteria or standards, there is no check or counter in place to hold us accountable to the larger ethos of human history and we become victims of our inchoate ideologies disguised as Biblical truth or, even, the specific revelation of a transcendent being that just so happened to provide you with an all-knowing answer.

What ought we do?

Should we just abandon the project?

Or, like those early faith communities, is there a healthier way to approach such an immense possibility?

It should not surprise us that basic tactics like peer review, literature review, substantiating claims with agreed-upon qualifications, not mistaking correlation with causation, utilizing various modes of reasoning, and establishing credence for particular data — all components of both rationalist philosophy and empirical science throughout history — are the beckoning invitation to solve such a situation.

Which are what Christians, for the most part, did for a majority of their original escapade.

There are answers to reclaim such a possibility.

A Tale of Two Approaches: Reader-Oriented Versus Author-Oriented

Despite the apparent verbosity and complexity, there is an actual name for what often occurs in most examples of this problem.

Usually, what is happening is that someone is using a reader-oriented approach to make a general claim that should be attributable as authoritative to all people — moral absolutism mixed with subjective truth disguised as objective truth, if you will.

This is but one take on Biblical interpretation (or hermeneutics, if you please) — a field that you could spend years studying and still not know everything. Specifically, this conversation does implicate a discussion on how the Bible ought to be authoritative; a perspective that has several proposals, but of which none will be covered here. Aside from all the depth of Biblical hermeneutics, I’d like to ask a different question.

What is the important distinction between these two approaches that seem to be the most obvious issue in Biblical interpretation?

Both approaches are ways to arrive at meaning in a text. No text or object has meaning itself — it can only come from sentient persons who impart meaning on it.

One approach is used to provide substance and meaning to the immediate experience of the person interacting with the text in question.

The other is meant to provide substantial claims for participants in the particular tradition as a whole based on any meaning generated from the origin of the text.

Reader-Oriented Approach

This approach is not bad — it can still provide meaning for the reader. Essentially, as the reader approaches a text, they look for what the text appears to mean to them from their current position and perspective. The text, therefore, is a simple medium to help a reader make sense of their world.

This does not mean that ensuing interpretations are invalid or wrong — it simply means that any truth is limited to the experience and inspiration of the specific reader.

There are no rules to a reader-oriented approach.

It is like listening to a song and interpreting what that song means to you based on your perspective, circumstance, and knowledge of the art form. Any conclusions do not determine any objective meaning of the song; it’s just what the listener got out of the song.

And just because you don’t like the song doesn’t mean it is bad art. That is a conflation of categories. Oh wait, we do that all the time, too. Even with the Bible.

Let’s move on.

Author-Oriented Approach

In contrast, the author-oriented approach places the communicative emphasis on the author. The reader simply receives the meaning from the author via the text.

Immediately, there is a concern here — one cannot help corrupting the author’s intentions with their own experience. There is no unbiased reader. All communication must be interpreted.

The author-oriented approach, however, simply seeks to eliminate as much bias as possible by attempting to start with the author, their perspective, their cultural context, and any direct meaning that is explicitly stated.

It approaches the song based on what the author was trying to say as opposed to what the listener privately hears.

This is an ideal, for sure. You may hear complicated words like exegesis (to take out or ‘exit’ from a text) versus eisegesis (to put into a text) thrown around when it comes to the Bible. Well, the author-oriented approach seeks to always do exegesis from the perspective of the author as a critical explanation or interpretation based on history, literature, et cetera. A reader-oriented approach seeks to do exegesis from the perspective of the reader.

However, while eisegesis is more likely to occur in the reader-oriented approach, it is an unavoidable reality of any approach.

You cannot avoid interpreting.

You cannot take yourself out of the equation.

But you can certainly do your best to eliminate as much eisegesical shrapnel as possible.

Which Approach Should You Use?

Either approach is fine — as long as you utilize it appropriately. They have different uses and neither is good or bad in and of itself.

The issue, as we have seen, is that making overarching claims without agreeable credibility or substantiation and then asserting that those claims ought to be imperatives for everyone else is convoluted if you do so through a reader-oriented approach; because that isn’t how the approach is intended to be utilized.

That is an improper use of the reader-oriented approach.

This does not mean the reader-oriented approach is bad.

It just has specific uses which therefore have certain limitations.

The reader-oriented approach is quite valuable for inspiration and imagination. On one hand, it honors that the Bible is not a static encyclopedia of information that simply needs to be decoded and of which there is only one correct answer. As a literary art form, there is a vastness being offered that this approach awakens.

What it isn’t good at is giving objectivity and general meaning beyond the specific reader.

The problem is that reader-oriented is the normal approach and, if we are honest, it is almost an exclusively used approach — even by clergy. Please, use this approach, just don’t pose it as scholarship or truth or fact because ascribing meaning from any text based on your limited experience quite literally implies that meaning is only yours.

More importantly, this could go poorly because this approach allows you — in fact, it encourages you — to make up whatever you want.

Pushing that as truth is, at least, annoying and, at worst, dangerous.

But then we simply chalk it up to faith, special revelation, or some secret, gnostic wisdom that you happened to stumble upon that everyone else, including the author of the text, seemed to miss.

I just don’t think this is very helpful.

Certainly, it is lazy.

Especially when utilized by pastors, this can be downright manipulative.

This is also not just a critique of religious fanaticism often associated with theological conservative or fundamental perspectives. I see this by the supposedly “progressive” perspective in Christianity just as much (if not more); especially when the person is trying to discredit some concept or push a radical portrayal of ethics or culture using the Bible.

A preposterous controversy that ascribes to someone’s predetermined agenda sells.

Scholarship, obviously, doesn’t.

There’s a reason the Da Vince Code was so enthralling popular — it was controversial and appeared to offer secret, unfounded knowledge. It never, by the way, purported to be scholarship. Because it was a reader-oriented approach. But we love that stuff.

A new reading that no one saw? It makes us feel as if we have access to enlightened intelligence, unsurpassed in human history; that you — even if there is an obvious lack of informed research supporting your claims — have uncovered when everyone else failed to.

You know, it was probably because the cabal hid that information, interpretation, or perspective because they were trying to control the masses.

I’m not sure if you are seeing the connections with conspiracy theories, but Christianity is on the verge of being completely defined by conspiratorial scholarship.

Soon, all of Christian interpretation will be speculative conjecture that happens to conflate with some other ideological infatuation — of course, however, pleasantly presented as facts or logic or scholarship or truth without noticing that the epistemological modes of reasoning utilized don’t actually equate to facts and the methodology is anything but scholarly.

But now I’m venting.

Yet, when proposals and assertions with no peer review or qualification (known as theories in other fields; or just mere approximations) get haphazardly proposed as certainty, I can only imagine thousands of years of scholars, scientists, and intelligent pursuers of wisdom vomiting in their mouth.

Especially when folks do it with such uninformed confidence. I’m looking at you Jordan Peterson (you know, the citing of scholars to build credibility and then making interpretative jumps that anyone who exists within the realm of Biblical scholarship recognizes as faulty, but that he knows will build his brand while no one checks the validity. Whatever you gotta do to make a point that plays to your audience, right?).

Disguising anecdotal presuppositions and personal conjecture as scholarly facts is both sordid and manipulative (and, again, lazy).

In contrast, you could come to verifiable conclusions by attempting the author-oriented approach and appealing to a wide range of scholarly methods that don’t allow you to just say whatever you want.

Your claims might also be great, but if they are unfounded, if they are not in collaboration with accountability, then you are using the same rationalization and methodology as the churches justifying slavery in 19th century America or the Anabaptist radicals in Muenster, Germany.

If it is okay for you to use that approach to make claims, then you have to be okay with them using it, too.

Again, you can use the reader-oriented approach — just don’t try to pass it as scholarship. Simply state, “When I read this…” or, “My perspective on this text is…” That’s fine. Just don’t make claims that would not pass as credible in any other field.

Christianity needs to do better.

These five criteria may help.

Five Criteria for Making Biblical Claims

Fortunately, there are some standards that have been utilized in both Judaism and Christianity that don’t need to be made up, only rediscovered and reemphasized.

1 — Actually Read the Text

Seems obvious, but there is a proclivity of passionate voices making heavy claims while using texts that they didn’t seem to read. Christianity might be the worst book club ever.

How many interpretations could be more easily dealt with or more appropriately refined if we actually knew what we were referring to?

Consider a passage like Genesis 3 — you know, where the first humans sinned. Original sin (by Augustine, one of the first purveyors of the reader-oriented approach who made drastic claims about a text that he did not appear to read; or, at least, read well) exists as a general statement because of this. Except Genesis 3 does not include the word sin.

I’m just saying, we should probably emphasize actually reading the text we are discussing.

It would save us a lot of time, in the end.

This goes for people criticizing the Bible, as well. It’s hard to argue against something that you haven’t taken the time to understand the contents of. For those who know the Bible, it’s very obvious when you are debating something you heard someone else say rather than what the text says.

Pay attention to what the Bible actually says and understand that it takes time. You are reading texts that are thousands of years old, from cultures very different from your own, that has gone through multiple iterations of translation, and are quite complicated as literary features go. Anyone who says the Bible is simple should not be trusted. In fact, that might be blatant blasphemy (if you’re into that kind of thing).

2 — Read the Text Within the Scope of the Text

Again, this should be simple. If you’re reading a parable such as The Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke, you should probably read it in the context of the whole writing. Yet, the classic reader-oriented tendency is the devotional style — we read one little bit at a time.

I think we forget that an epistle or a gospel or a Hebrew scroll didn’t get written down with verse numbers, chapter numbers, and section headings included. Devotionals are like taking one line of a movie and using it on its own. You can do it. But it no longer represents the whole of the film.

First, then, you should allow the text to be informed by the larger work it is a part of.

The Good Samaritan is not only not about roadside assistance or ‘doing the right thing’ as some abstract generality because (if we are using the first criteria and actually reading the text) we see that the whole positioning of the parable deals with a debate on Leviticus 19 and Israel’s covenantal restoration and who should be included. Further, if we actually read the whole Gospel of Luke, we would see that Luke has given a theme of radical inclusion — that Israel’s covenantal restoration will include the ends of the earth.

Which means Samaritans are neighbors, too.

Second, however, is what is referred to as intertextual reading.

Again, reading the Good Samaritan makes a whole lot more sense when you realize the author is referring to Isaiah 61.

If we don’t do this, we end up having to make stuff up. How many people read about Jesus’ baptism and then have to wonder at what all this is about when they could just read Genesis and see the depiction of Jesus’ baptism as a new creation because Matthew, for example, is straight-up using Genesis 1 and Genesis 6–9? Often, the interpretive keys to a text are already there.

3 — Read the Text from the World of the Text

The difficulty begins to increase here; as does the emphasis on an author-oriented approach.

Quite literally, in order to make a claim that can be both normative and functional for religious purposes, it needs to have a basis outside of the reader alone and needs to be based on observation and interpretation that attempts to relate the meaning of the text’s origin.

When people say that the book of Revelation is written about the very events we saw during the election or when they wonder if the new interstate called I-22 is a reference to Isaiah 22 or Isaiah 2:2, we suppose that the author must’ve written in some trance and passed on secret knowledge or code that wouldn’t make sense until this very moment.

It isn’t just whacky interpretations either. I’ve seen people actually use this same processing to try and make serious, ethical claims.

Take, for example, Genesis 19 (Sodom and Gomorrah). It’s about homosexuality, right? Well, again, if we follow these criteria, we see that the situation is about hospitality versus humiliation. More than a theory on human sexuality, the story is about hospitality code and the most destructive antonym of hospitality that was often used to humiliate defeated kings. On the other end, I’ve seen the same methodology used to say that certain characters in the Bible were bisexual or homosexual (and, apparently, no one knew it, even the character, until some 21st century woke person figured it out).

Both of these examples are imparting contemporary perspectives onto an ancient text as if the ancient context saw the world the same way as us and understand the same information as us (spoiler alert: they didn’t).

Honestly, it’s quite egocentric or, at least, ethnocentric. We just go along reading documents from different historical settings and different cultures assuming that we are the basis for understanding. If it is normal to us, it must be normal to them. As an intercultural communication technique, this is about as abhorrent as it gets.

You have to start, first, with why this story or text what written down.

Then, you have to consider why it was preserved.

As a sort of act in empathy, this allows us to attempt to inhabit the mind of the initial context as much as is possible and consider what the original audience would’ve understood.

At which point transposing those conclusions to our present-day setting is possible.

If you start with yourself and work backward, it ain’t gonna make much sense and you’ll end up making weird stuff up.

If you start with them and work to the present, you might actually have something to work with.

This method, however, takes a lot more work. Making stuff up is much easier.

4 — Consider What Else Has Been Said

Technically, this is a literature review. Anytime you desire to propose a claim (i.e., a theory), you are entering a vast conversation. You should know what the other folks in the conversation have said (even if you ultimately disagree with them. For example, Augustine).

Particularly, there is a sort of modern exceptionalism where anyone from ‘the past’ is barbaric or primitive and just didn’t have the capability that we have. Ultimately, the past becomes a two-dimensional object that we might utilize, but will probably just cast aside.

Don’t think you are so special.

Another way I’ve seen people not give credit to the past is that tradition has been plagued with inequality and injustice and does not deserve credence. Quite a blanket statement and, though accurate of some tradition, a pretty uninformed perspective on tradition overall, but I appreciate the noble heroism(#staywoke).

Or, certain readings were hidden by corrupt leaders (again, the whole cabal thing). Maybe they’ve played too much Assassin's Creed. Maybe they’re actually a part of some secret, gnostic sect that has maintained this information and this person has been chosen to reveal it. I suppose that is possible.

Yet, it is also possible that if you think that this was all hidden until you, the hero(ine) came along and finally uncovered the truth, then the world does not have enough room to hold your ego. I tend to think that people throughout history weren’t too different from me and, as I am but an ordinary human with a pretty average life, I should probably give them at least the same credence I give myself.

And, if I want to have my voice honored, I might want to start with the precedent that the voices before me should be honored.

If we don’t create a standard where those before us are not neglected, then there is a good chance that anything you say will be neglected by those who come after you. This is why John Wesley's four categories are actually helpful — because he emphasized that conclusions could only be made if they were made together. No one person or group gets to control the conversation, and that includes the voices of the past.

Pay attention to the voices before you.

Take the time to understand what has been said.

It will help you know what ought to be said, today.

5 — Don’t Think You Will Finish the Conversation

You are but a blip on this journey. Just as we tend toward this illusion of modern exceptionalism, we also tend to have a pretty limited sense of proportion concerning our own lives.

You aren’t going to solve the Bible.

Have a little humility.

You are a part of a process and the best-case scenario is that someone else will use what you have added to the conversation to make it better and take the conversation further. Anyone who claims otherwise is probably not worth listening to.

You won’t fill out the map, but you can help give a better map to those who come after you.

Put yourself in your proper place when you make a claim — and realize that you might give an interesting theory, but it ain’t a law.

Honestly, you probably won’t even say anything new. If you ever feel like you have finally cracked a code or came up with something no one else saw — it probably just means you haven’t read enough to realize that it’s already been said.

Instead, make it your prerogative to do such good work that whoever comes after you has that much more to work with to help take the journey forward.

Don’t offer a final word.

Offer a constructive word.

And let the conversation continue.

Then, once you’ve done all of that, by all means, please tell us what you think.