Abstract
There is, I believe, an underused expository tool, often disregarded perhaps because it costs nothing.
It has to do with how we inwardly hear and physically read scripture. For, as a lovely African-American woman once propounded in my hearing, the Bible is not first interpreted when it is preached; interpretation begins the moment it is read. This pertains both to the public proclamation of scripture in liturgy and the private reading of a believer.
Anyone who has even a casual acquaintance with the Hebrew and New Testament scriptures should be aware of this, because the full biblical canon confronts us with a range of literatures which require of the reader different registers of response. We do not normally read as many pages of poetry as we do of fiction. We do not give the same levels of concentration to irrelevant technicalities as we do to serious philosophical argument. We do not read personal letters with the same detachment as we might read ancient history.
It is therefore incumbent upon us as readers to allow the tenors of biblical discourse to be as present to our ears as we allow the tools of theology and linguistics to inform our minds. So, for example, when in the middle of the book of Exodus we move from detailed legislation to the personal complaints of Moses to God and vice-versa, accurate comprehension requires us to hear the new section exhibiting a different literary register.
But there’s more. One does not need to be proficient in Hebrew and Greek to notice that, as regard characters in the Gospels and how they speak, there is a glorious absence of adjectives and adverbs. We have no idea whether Matthew was a 50 year old hyper introvert with hoards of pilfered cash and a debilitating guilty conscience, or a 24 year old hunk who enjoyed his wealth and over whom women of all ages salivated. Nor do we know whether the woman at the well was a middle-aged, long-term victim of serial abuses by a range of short-term husbands, or whether she was a busty thirty-something who was, to use a vernacular expression, ‘man-daft.’
Is this a diversion of no account? Not at all. Depending on how we envisage Matthew, the call to discipleship might be either an act of salvation releasing him from a sin-laden existence, or a less welcome invitation to sacrifice status, popularity and the enjoyment of the good life. And depending on how we envisage the woman at the well, we either see Jesus as comforting a distressed and demeaned individual, or making it clear that there was a place for feisty women in the kingdom of heaven. Read John 4 (1-20) with either of these caricatures in mind to see how these verses can be interpreted pastorally as when caring for a victim, or ambiguously as when engaging with a would-be suitor.
What is this elusive expository tool which assists the intellect to expound the scriptures? It is none other than one of the finest attributes of God which, particularly in Calvinist traditions, has been viewed with suspicion - the imagination.