Experience Has Ways of Boiling Over: Pursuing a Pragmatic Pedagogy of Bible

Abstract

This article builds on Greenstein's (this issue) advocacy of a “pragmatic pedagogy of Bible” by pursuing four issues. First, do we select among methodological approaches to Bible according to our desired interpretive outcome but not according to any internal criteria? Is it merely a matter of “choice”? Second, in what sense are interpretive approaches usefully compared to equipment like x-rays or ultrasounds? Third, what does it mean for a methodology to generate a solution that “works”? Works for whom and for what? Fourth, what are the questions that educators ought to consider, in constructing a “pragmatic pedagogy”?

Notes

¹This idea, about the preconceptions (or “prejudices”) with which we inevitably approach the work of interpretation, is a central thesis in Gadamer (1960/1989). Much of what follows is influenced by this seminal text of philosophical hermeneutics.

²In A Theologico-Political Treatise (1670/1951, ch. 7), Spinoza argued that one ought to avoid extraneous influences (such as any interpretive traditions that one might have received) to order to confront the text directly—at which point one would see what he sees. Unfortunately, this is impossible, both in reading texts and in observing nature.

³Krister Stendahl tries this move, in his claim (Stendhal, 1984, ch. 1) to distinguish a realm of personal religious meaning (“what the Bible means”) from descriptive historical meaning (“what the Bible meant”). E. D. Hirsch (1967) famously attempts a variation of this, as well, in proposing that interpretation encompasses both meaning (i.e., what the author meant, which is fixed and determinate) and significance (i.e., the later accretions of association and impact, which is inevitably fluid). Neither can be maintained as epistemologically significant distinctions.

⁴There is a set of literature, diverse in methodology and genre, that is united by a common emphasis on raising methodological pluralism to the consciousness of educators, in the belief that awareness of methodological choices ought to contribute to the improvement of pedagogy. (We might call this the Hypothesis of the Practical Efficacy of the Awareness of Choice.) In addition to Holtz, this category includes contributions such as Cohen (1999), Hartman-Halbertal (2000), Rosenak (1995), Shkedi and Horenczyk (1995), and my discussion of orientations to the teaching of rabbinic literature (Levisohn, forthcoming). In general education, we might also cite Grossman (1991) and Wineburg and Wilson (1988/2001). The hypothesis itself deserves a patient, critical examination.

⁵The example requires a bit more precision. An x-ray is a diagnostic tool for testing an hypothesis about a symptom (either “the pain is caused by a broken arm” or more loosely “the pain is caused by something that will show up on an x-ray”). The negative result undermines the hypothesis (“this pain cannot be attributed to a broken arm”), even as it assumes the integrity of the diagnostic process (we assume that the x-ray works, otherwise why accept the negative results in this case). In such a case, we proceed by taking up some other diagnostic tool to disclose the cause of the problem. Similarly, we can understand source critical analysis as an analytical tool for testing a textual hypothesis about a fissure in the text (“this discrepancy is caused by the incomplete synthesis of two or more sources”). A negative result would undermine the hypothesis (“this discrepancy cannot be attributed to the incomplete synthesis of two or more sources”), even as it assumes the integrity of the analysis (we assume that source criticism “works,” that the analysis can affirm an attribution of a fissure to the presence of multiple sources in cases where there really are multiple sources, otherwise why accept the negative results in this case). In such a case, we presumably would proceed by taking up some other analytic tool to disclose the cause—or the meaning—of the textual discrepancy. Thus, in addition to emphasizing the point that an interpretive methodology ought to be able to yield negative results, it is also important to see that if that happens—if the results are negative and the textual problem remains unresolved—we then ought to turn elsewhere for help. We ought to turn to other interpretive methodologies, because to refrain from doing so would seem to entail a preference for methodological purity over genuine inquiry. One might say that we would be choosing to be technicians of the tool rather than diagnosticians of the patient.

⁶A few pages after the passage just quoted, James (1907/1975, p. 112) approvingly quotes F. C. S. Schiller as saying “the true is that which ‘works’,” before going on to criticize those who misinterpret him.

⁷See the discussion by “Moshe” of this text in Levisohn, 2008, p. 65.

⁸I owe this interpretive point to Hilary Putnam's reading of James (Putnam, 1997, pp. 179–180).

⁹This is fundamental to any disciplined inquiry. In fact, we can think about disciplined inquiry as the effort to create and accelerate the conditions that obtain “in the long run and on the whole,” mechanically (in a lab) or conceptually.

¹⁰But if it is true that no interpretation can encompass all the data, that there will always be unaccounted-for aspects of the text, doesn't this undermine the point? Why should it bother us that some data remains unencompassed by the interpretation, if indeed that is inevitable anyway? This is a complicated question that cuts to the heart of what it means to interpret a text, but for the present, perhaps it is sufficient to suggest the following. In some cases, outlying data, once acknowledged, are sufficient to undermine our confidence in the interpretation. In other cases, on the other hand, we take note that outlying data but are comfortable saying, “Well, yes, no text means only one thing, and only a hypothetical perfect text would have one and only one interpretation, but on balance, this interpretation of this text still works.”

¹¹This is not to say that the failure of a source-critical analysis to explain a particular textual incongruity disproves source criticism in general. As others have noted, it is important to distinguish between the global Documentary Hypothesis—the general claim that the fissures in the biblical text are attributable to the diversity of its sources—and a particular explanatory hypothesis about a particular textual problem. And, as I argued above, the failure of a particular source critical analysis does not itself undermine source criticism as an analytical tool. On the other hand, the persistent failure of source critical analysis would indeed provoke a re-examination of the larger claim. If x-rays continually failed to reveal fractures in cases where all other indicators pointed in that diagnostic direction, we would eventually have to re-examine the diagnostic tool itself.

But is it, in fact, correct say that a source critical analysis will sometimes fail? The comparison with an x-ray suggests that this ought to be the case. However, Greenstein (personal correspondence, June 1, 2009) maintains that it never fails: “if you apply source critical analysis to a text of any significant size, you're going to find more than one source or layer or tradition.” Nor is this only the case with source criticism, but rather applies equally to other interpretive methodologies (he mentions structuralist analysis and deconstruction). The tool to which we ought to compare methodologies, he argues, is not actually the x-ray but rather the scalpel. So, is an interpretive methodology like an x-ray, sometimes yielding negative results, or is it like a scalpel, always succeeding to cut what it encounters? It seems to me that there are four relevant points to make in response. First, even a scalpel encounters that which it cannot cut—metal or rock, for example—and fails in its task. Thus, changing the metaphor does not appreciably alter our understanding of the epistemic situation. Second, while I would never second-guess Greenstein's assessment of the field of biblical interpretation as a matter of empirical reality, what really concerns us in this context is not the empirical question (whether source critics ever do admit failure to explain a particular fissure in the text) but the normative question (whether they ought to). Third, it may well be that our capacity for creative interpretation outstrips our sensitivity to interpretive obstacles. So while, in principle, our interpretive methodologies ought to function like x-rays, regularly yielding negative results, in practice, they function more like hardened diamond-tipped drills (?), rarely or perhaps even never failing to cut. But fourth, we ought to be wary of basing our assessments of an interpretation on too narrow a context. As James recommended, we want to know whether they work “in the long run.” So the right question is not, “Are you (the biblical scholar) going to find more than one source in a particular text?” Instead, the right question is, “Will the solution that you put forward persist over time?” Here one might think about the finer and finer grained distinctions that source critics continually generate. The ultimate judgment of whether those distinctions are good and correct solutions to textual problems is not based on whether the scholar believes they work, and not even whether the scholarship gets published in a peer-reviewed journal. The judgment, rather, is based on whether the solutions work “in the long run and on the whole.”

¹²My use of the qualifiers “prima facie” and “apparent” here is an attempt to avoid making an interpretive claim about which interpretation is really the plain sense of the text. This is particularly important in light of Greenstein's (personal correspondence, June 1, 2009) claim that Rashi genuinely believes that he is presenting the peshat of the verse, with which I have no reason to disagree.

¹³In response, a reader might say that one can “accept” the midrash not as interpretation but as historical truth: the midrash is telling us what actually happened, a truth that we would not know from the plain sense of the text. There are surely some—not Rashi himself, who selected among midrashim according to his own interpretive criteria, but some contemporary readers—who understand midrash in exactly this way. This is not the place to explore that ideological–religious stance and its problems (not least of which is the tendency for the midrash to present multiple competing interpretations, not all of which can be historically true), but in any case, I do not think that it helps Greenstein's argument. Consider that the operative preconception with which those readers approach the text of Exodus 19 and 20 is not “women must be included in the covenant, and therefore I will find the reading of the text that conforms to that imperative” but rather, more simply, “whatever the midrash says is true.”

¹⁴This is not to say that the interpretive strategies are identical. But as solutions to this particular problem, they both accomplish the same goal of including women in the covenant. One might say that the midrash historicizes the biblical text, in effect, by rereading it. One might also say that the “historicist” in this case offers a creative midrash on the biblical text, preserving key elements of it (the fact of an enduring covenant!) while rereading other elements of it.

¹⁵There is one way to avoid this solution: to accept the plain sense of the text but to affirm that plain sense as inerrant. In other words, one could notice the problem in the text and ask, “Are women not included in the covenant?” One would then answer, “Yes, that is correct: the text says that women are not included in the covenant, and the text is inerrant, so women are not included in the covenant.” When faced with an unavoidable tension between one core assumption (that women are participants in the covenant, which as we recall is necessary to generate the original question) and a second core assumption (that the plain sense of the text is inerrant), the second one trumps the first. Setting aside the coherence of this position or lack thereof, it hardly needs to be said that, in general, this is not the way that rabbinic Judaism reads its texts.

¹⁶See the discussion of being “pulled up short” by the text—a phrase from Gadamer (1960/1989)—and the implications for potential individual development in Kerdeman (2003).

¹⁷This article is based on ideas originally presented as a response to a paper by Edward L. Greenstein, delivered at the conference on Teaching Bible: Bridging Scholarship and Pedagogy at Brandeis University, January 30, 2005. A version of that response was made available on-line by the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University.