Cultural Interpretation: Reorienting New Testament Criticism

Rating:
Summary: Read the Bible through the eyes of the oppressed
Review: For those who are interested in understanding how to read and use the Bible in ways that are neither limited by literalism nor disempowered by a cold higher criticism, this is a very helpful book.

Early on, this book includes a discussion of communication theories that is probably more complex and academic than most readers will find helpful. But, when he moves past this, Blount illustrates how the Bible is well deployed in popular settings like traditional "Negro spirituals," Ernesto Cardenal's work with the Nicaraguan peasants of Solentiname, and Tom Skinner's urban American revolutionary preaching.

Blount is certainly supportive of academic higher critical study of the Bible but he is also convinced that this is not the only way to use the Bible.

Blount argues that Scripture has many interpretations. Since, according to his theory of communications, the context of the interpreter is a legitimate aspect of the process of interpretation, our perception of what the text meant and means will change depending on our context as interpreters. "The text is multivalent," he writes. "It has no single meaning."

This, however, (and this is an absolutely critical point) does not mean that the interpreter is free to apply any meaning whatsoever to the text. The fact that there is "no single meaning" doesn't mean that just any subjective meaning we might want to apply to a text is acceptable. The text is multivalent but within a limited range of possible meanings.

Blount demonstrates that academic biblical scholarship, in spite of claims of scientific objectivity, is always biased by the scholar's culture, assumptions, historical time and methods. (Blount does not use the word "bias," but instead prefers more value-neutral terms like "the micro-interpersonal," a linguistic term, or "pre-understanding," a Bultmannian term.) Blount does not see bias or subjectivity as necessarily a negative thing. Instead bias is seen as an unavoidable condition of all interpretation because of the sociolinguistic nature of language.

The bias of the oppressed, Blount suggests, may even open windows to understand the meaning of Scripture in a way we might otherwise miss.

It is refreshing and rewarding to see a biblical scholar as sophisticated as Blount working so to help the academic world listen to the world's oppressed and marginalized peoples. Finally, they may be the ones who really understand what the Bible is all about.