What does it mean for the Bible to be authoritative? In this episode of The Bible for Normal People, Cameron B. R. Howard joins Pete and Jared to discuss how tradition has impacted the idea of authority of the biblical text, and how reading the Bible as a collection of multi-vocal testimonies can inspire a new outlook on its authority. Join them as they explore the following questions:
What does it mean for the Bible to be authoritative?
How could we view authority as relational instead of transactional?
How does acknowledging different genres in the Bible help us process what authority means?
What can Nehemiah 8 teach us about biblical authority?
How did ancient Israelites view the authority of Scripture prior to having access to the written Bible as we know it today?
Which parts of history reveal gatekeepers of the Bible who try to claim authority over the “right” interpretations of the Bible?
What does it mean for the Bible to be authoritative when it is a multi-vocal text?
How does the idea of Scripture as a collection of testimonies tie into the idea of its authority?
Cameron asserts that the biblical writers adapted to popular culture of their times. What implications does that have for understanding the Bible as an authoritative text?
In matters of things like ethics and morality, what role does the Bible play in our communities of faith?
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Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
At the heart of the issue of biblical authority is the question: How does the Bible matter for my life? What difference does it make in my life? Why should I care about the Bible? — Cameron B. R. Howard
How you define biblical authority is going to influence how you interpret scripture, but then how you interpret scripture is also going to influence how you define biblical authority. — Cameron B. R. Howard
You open up the Bible and there aren't a lot of rules in there. There are a lot of stories, there are poems, there's a love poem in it. There are so many different kinds of texts there and already it's not what we've maybe been taught to expect. — Cameron B. R. Howard
Even if we are to say that the Bible is God talking to us in some way, God is doing that talking through a lot of different literary forms, a lot of different voices from different time periods with different ideas. So, it's not just the sort of straightforward imparting of information. — Cameron B. R. Howard
In Scripture's account of the first public reading of the Torah—some version of the first five books of the Bible—it wasn't ever self-evident. It always needed interpretation.— Cameron B. R. Howard
The loss of the temple, I think, is one thing that starts to cultivate this sense of the text as the place to look for understanding God and the encounter with God. — Cameron B. R. Howard
If I read with my hermeneutic of generosity, I see that from this very first reading of the Torah, interpretation is a communal act. We need each other to read and understand. — Cameron B. R. Howard
I deeply believe that we do our best interpretation in community, listening to each other, hearing people interpret who are different from us, or who have different interpretations than we have. — Cameron B. R. Howard
If I read with a hermeneutic of suspicion, I'm more suspicious of the text. From the very first reading of the Torah, there are people with power who are trying to tell everybody the right way to interpret things.— Cameron B. R. Howard
I've really liked this category of thinking of Scripture as testimony. Rather than a kind of rule book, or rather than this centralized kind of inert authority, Scripture is a collection of testimonies. — Cameron B. R. Howard
A lot of the reason that we read the Bible and consider the Bible authoritative is because tradition has told us so. — Cameron B. R. Howard
I'm interested in taking the Bible as authoritative in its totality. Not just for the words on the page, not just for its content, but also for how it came together, how it exists as this multi-vocal set of testimonies, and to not be afraid of that. — Cameron B. R. Howard
We are not doing theology and religious practice in a vacuum, but we are always in a particular culture, and that's okay. The Bible was too, and that's okay. We share that across time and space with the voices of witness in Scripture. — Cameron B. R. Howard
Mentioned in This Episode
Books: The Old Testament for a Complex World by Cameron B. R. Howard
Join: The Society of Normal People community
Support: www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give
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Pete
You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete Enns.
Jared
And I'm Jared Byas.
[Intro music plays]
Pete
Hey, folks, before we get started today, we wanted to tell you about our next class called, "The Bible is Not a Sex Book." I thought maybe it was.
Jared
Yeah, I mean-
Pete
But it's not.
Jared
You're blowing my mind right now.
Pete
I know. The Bible is Not a Sex Book: A Survey of The Bible's Diverse and Sometimes Questionable Sexual Ethics and Where We Go From Here.
Jared
Wow. Well, it's going to be taught by our nerd in-residence, Anna Sieges-Beal, and it's happening live for one night only on April 25th. Put it in your calendars, April 25th, from 8-9:30pm, Eastern Time. But if you can't make it live, don't worry, you'll still get the recording to watch later. So go ahead and sign up.
Pete
And as is always the case, this class is pay-what-you-can, that is, until it's over and then it costs $25 for the recording. And for more information and to sign up, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/sexbook. That's one word—and if the internet blocks that URL, blame the marketing department.
Jared
[Laughs] And if you want access to all of our classes—maybe this is a safer way to get there—if you want access to all of our classes and ad-free podcast episodes, you can become a member of our community, The Society of Normal People for just $12 a month. You can go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/join, if you want to learn more about that.
Today, on this edition of The Bible for Normal People, our guest is Cameron B.R. Howard, and we are talking with her about: How is the Bible authoritative?
Pete
Yeah, which is a great question. Cameron is an associate professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary, and she's the author of this wonderful book called "The Old Testament for a Complex World." She's also a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church USA. That's the mainline Presbyterian Church.
Jared
Right. And she's also a regular contributor to WorkingPreacher.org.
Pete
Yeah. We had a great conversation, let's just get into it.
[Jaunty intro music]
Jared
Yeah.
Cameron
[Teaser clip of Cameron speaking plays over music] “If we're turning to the Bible for a model for how we live our lives, one of the things the Bible models is in this constant conversation with God, and each other, and tradition, and culture about what it means to live faithfully, to be willing to change our minds sometimes because the world around us changes. And so, our understanding is going to change.”
[Ad break]
Jared
Welcome, Cameron, to the podcast, it's great to have you.
Cameron
Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Jared
We're just gonna jump right in. Because I think there's a lot to talk about with this topic and really, the question is: What does it mean for the Bible to be authoritative? So, take that any way you want.
Cameron
Yeah. Well, to me, at the heart of the issue of biblical authority is the question: How does the Bible matter for my life? What difference does it make in my life? Why should I care about the Bible? And so, I think biblical authority has a kind of chicken and egg character to it as well. That is, how you define biblical authority is going to influence how you interpret scripture, but then how you interpret scripture is also going to influence how you define biblical authority. So it's tough to kind of get our minds around one just correct answer to that question, because I think it is about a give and take with biblical interpretation.
Pete
Yeah, and for many Christians, it's not so much a give and take is it? It's more like a top-down authority.
Cameron
Right.
Pete
So, you're thinking of authority—I mean, not to put words in your mouth—but you're thinking of authority more as a relational thing, almost.
Cameron
Yes, very much so, very much.
Pete
Yeah. Can you explain that a little, because I think that would be a really important concept for people to wrap their heads around, just a different way of relating to the Bible than sort of the sovereign on high looking down and battering us if we don't get it right.
Cameron
Right. Well, I think that's sort of the nature and character of the Bible. We come to it thinking that it's going to tell us what to do, and that God is the sort of grand author who is then going to impart all of this knowledge, and then it's our fault if we don't get it right and we'll never get it right, and all of this sort of thing. But you open up the Bible and first of all, it's not actually—there aren't a lot of rules in there. There aren't a lot of laws. There are also a lot of stories, there are poems, you know, there's a love poem in it. There are so many different kinds of texts there and so, already, it's not what we've maybe been taught to expect that, you know, when we read a poem, we should read it like it's a poem, not expecting it to tell us what to do, but to evoke feelings to help us feel something new.
Pete
I mean, that top-down way of thinking that—I personally don't think it works very well with any genre of the Bible—but it seems to be more in line with like a legal metaphor for the Bible. But it doesn't really help very much with things like Psalms or Song of Songs, like you're saying, or even, I think the Book of Proverbs where there's a little bit of more of a give and take. So, there are these different voices, I guess, in scripture and to talk about authority, we have to acknowledge the different genres of the Bible.
Cameron
Right. And so even if we are to say that the Bible is God talking to us in some way, God is doing that talking through a lot of different literary forms, a lot of different voices from different time periods with different ideas. So, it's not just the sort of straightforward imparting of information. And that's what I really love about the Bible, its diversity. There's so much to read, there are so many excellent stories, poems, as we've already said, and they're really, you know, if you put them in conversation with each other, you can see a lot of different perspectives on different ideas that, particularly, in the Old Testament, you can kind of chart through time a change in thinking theologically, you know, what does it mean for God to be present in the temple, and then there is no more temple. And so we have to rethink, where's God? I mean, there are questions like that, that you can trace throughout scripture.
Jared
I want to go back, because maybe I just want to dig a little bit further in. When we talked about the difference between maybe this top-down view of authority, I feel like that's pretty prominent in a lot of traditions, at least for mine growing up, so I know how that functions. Where, basically, the Bible is a stand in for God, and God's telling us what to do. God is the authority figure who has the power and control and is telling us what to do and if we do it, it's very—we might say, deuteronomic—like, if we do it, we will do well in our life and if we don't do it, we will get, you know, there'll be curses, or you know, depending on how you think of it, maybe, just the practical outworking won't be to our advantage. And so that's kind of the framework for authority and it was mentioned, like more relational authority, in what way can that be authoritative? I think I'm having a hard time understanding a different framework for authority with the Bible than the one where God is the top-down-
Pete
Other than authority.
Jared
Right [Laughs] Other than authoritative.
Pete
[Laughing] Right.
Cameron
Well, let me take us to a text and see if this helps. So, I want to look at Nehemiah 8, which is, I know, not a part of the Bible we necessarily go to every day in our traditional research…
Pete
No, that's not our first stop usually.
Jared
I mean... Frankly, I forget Nehemiah's in the Bible sometimes.
Pete
No you don't...
Jared
I do. So, whenever you say, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that's this one. Yeah, that's right."
Pete
Wow. Okay. That's embarrassing.
Jared
[Laughing] It's okay.
Pete
Okay, Nehemiah 8. Go ahead, Cameron, what will Nehemiah 8 tell us?
Cameron
It’s the first public reading of the Torah. And so you have Ezra, priest and scribe, brings this scroll, and he stands up on this platform and at verse 5 unrolls the scroll—you know, your translation probably says "opened the book," but we should remember it's before the codex, so you've got to picture unrolling a scroll—in front of all the people, and so he's standing up and the people all sort of spontaneously stand up themselves and then they say, "Amen, amen" to Ezra's prayer, and then they bow their heads, and they worship God with their faces to the ground.
And so, in that instance, before any words of the Torah are read aloud, there is something about the context that is already imbuing this scroll, this text, with authority, right? As you're standing high up, there's an occasion on which the whole community is gathered and there's this kind of worshipful atmosphere. So the Bible, even from its first public reading, right, there's context that sticks to it, that gives it authority even before we start talking about the words on the page. So, that's one moment of authority in this scene. And then Ezra starts to read from the Book of the Law. And what I love about this theme is that people, Levites and others and the elders in the community, are circulating among the people to help with the interpretations. So at Verse 8, they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading.
So in scripture's account of the first public reading of the Torah—so you know, some version of the first five books of the Bible—it wasn't ever self-evident. It always needed interpretation. It wasn't that the first time everybody who heard it was like, "Oh, that's exactly what that means and I know exactly what to do and I hear the voice of God clearly." There are these interpreters who are going around to help. So, I think that's really extraordinary and important to remember that interpretation is simply inherent to any text and so, therefore, to the Bible, and even—if we want to get a little bit circular about it—scripture itself testifies to that need for interpretation.
Pete
Yeah. So, this is the first time in the biblical story, right, where this sort of thing happens?
Cameron
Right.
Pete
And it's after the exile, so...Do you have any thoughts about how the—these are the ancient Judahites now—how we got to that place in Israel’s story? Because, like, they didn't have an authoritative Bible, right, until a certain point. So, can you talk a little bit about how we got to this point that's reflected in Nehemiah 8?
Cameron
Yeah, well, within the biblical narrative, you have, of course, in 586 BCE, the exile of the elites of Judah. So, there would have been a lot of scribes—people who would have been very useful in the Babylonian Empire—who then go into exile. And then, after the Persian Empire defeats Babylon, Cyrus the Great, at the beginning of Ezra—and Ezra and Nehemiah used to be one book (Ezra-Nehemiah) so it's part of that sort of continuous story—at the beginning of Ezra, Cyrus the Great of Persia has called for Jews who have been in exile to return to Judah, and rebuild the temple, and, in fact, get money offerings from people around them to do that. Which was a really good strategy on Cyrus's part, right? Just we shouldn't think him to have been too benevolent.
It was a Persian empire's way of organizing its empire was to sort of allow local flourishing, and then to develop a good sort of tribute or tax base there to win hearts and minds, etc. So you have this return, and you have this scribal class that's been in exile and we don't know exactly what was going on there, but it seems that the tradition of writing and preserving the texts, whatever texts there were of the Israelite tradition, flourished in exile. So you have Ezra coming back—now, this would have been many decades after the sort of initial call to come back—but still, Ezra comes back as a priest, and a scribe. So, not having had the temple to officiate in anymore, you have this sort of priestly role that develops and kind of merges with the scribe. Now, that's a sort of oversimplification, but the loss of the temple, I think, is one thing that starts to cultivate this sense of the text as the place to look for understanding God and the encounter with God.
Jared
So, then, maybe this concept—this is probably an anachronism—but would it be fair to say, in some sense then, this concept of authority travels in a similar way? That there is the...The temple was this way to practice or express our faith in a way that feels connected to the commands and instructions of God and that sort of brings us together in this way. That we're—by our obedience to these things we're sort of connected as a people, then when we don't have that, the Torah and reading Torah, and gathering to study Torah in these other places, becomes that authoritative practice. So, is it a way to say that, not only does it become the way that we express our faith, but it becomes more of an authoritative way that we express our faith?
Cameron
I think so. And I think one emphasis in Ezra and Nehemiah with the returnee community is on kind of forging or reforging what is then Judahite, but sort of emerging into Judaism as we know it today, you know, sort of early Judaism, like, this forming this identity that had been very much centered in the land and then after diaspora, there's a rethinking of what does it mean to be a worshiper of Yahweh? If the sort of conceptualization that's been present that we read about in other parts of Scripture, about the promises of land and the promises to David to be king there in Judah, like how do we rethink God's relationship with the people and what is that identity? So Ezra-Nehemiah is kind of working that out, as well.
[Ad break]
Pete
It's interesting how circumstances of the people played into notions of authority, right? Because, you know, with the loss of the temple and exile, they had to—if I'm hearing you right—they had to think almost on their feet, about how do we stay connected to this God of ours, which is a question of authority, I think, too. And then, I guess what you're saying is that the text sort of swept in—in a way as a necessity to account for the loss of temple and maybe even the loss of the prophetic word, which seems to be going downhill, you know, and you don't have active prophets in, like, the fifth century, the way they did in the, you know, the sixth or the seventh, so you had to find a way to connect.
Cameron
Right. And I also think there's some asserting of authority of, sort of, in the face of crisis and in the face of loss—that is, those returnees whose names are written in the book of genealogy as being priestly folks—come back, just sort of say, "Okay, now, we should be leaders in the community again." And of course, there have been people resettled in Judah, there are people who have never left. So, there are people who are worshiping the God of Israel there, and then you have the leadership who's been in exile, and their descendants come back, and they say, "Hey, look. Look in this book.” I mean, there are genealogies all through Ezra and Nehemiah. “See our name there, we should assert our authority to be the ones who are in charge of worship and sort of defining who's in and who's out." Which is very much, you know, a response to this great trauma that has been experienced by the community. But there's—in addition to sort of the authority of the text, there is also in Ezra-Nehemiah, this question of the authority of the people, the returnees, and who's really in charge in this community now.
Jared
That's an interesting interplay that I hadn't really thought through much before and—so this may be a sloppy way of thinking about it—but in some sense, without that central government, whenever there is a diaspora or an exile, normally, you know, the centralized place of authority is in is in the government or those systems of government. And so, in lieu of that, yeah, it's not just- It, like, seems like they go hand in hand, in terms of how do we have this religious authority, which now has moved from temple to the book in some ways, or some gathering or set of practices around the book. And then the people or the government still having to sort of figure out how we are authoritative in that sense and it doesn't seem like, whenever you have an exilic community or community that has been exiled, those sort of need to play off of each other to regain the sense of community and stability, where I'm getting my authority from the book, the book’s getting the authority from the community and sort of they are playing off of each other to reestablish this sense of stability for the community.
Cameron
Right. And in this scene, in Nehemiah 8, I think there are at least two very interesting conclusions to draw from it about authority. And so, the first one is, if I read with my hermeneutic of generosity, that is, if I'm giving the text, the benefit of the doubt and I'm looking for something positive there, I see that from this very first reading of the Torah, interpretation is a communal act. We need each other to read and understand. And I deeply believe that, that we do our best interpretation in community, listening to each other, hearing people interpret who are different from us, or who have different interpretations than we have. So, I think there's a wonderful testimony to that, here in this scripture. Also, if I read it with a hermeneutic of suspicion, I'm more suspicious of the text.
Pete
[Laughing]
Cameron
From the very first reading of the Torah, there are people with power, who are trying to tell everybody the right way to interpret things. So they circulate through the people to tell them the interpretation, so they can be sure that they're really getting it right and not drawing their own conclusions. And so, that's a way to assert power through the text, is saying, "You know, we'll we're the ones who really have the right answers about what this means and let me make sure that you don't think about that for yourself, but that you hear what I say." And I think both of those things are going on in that text and then I'm just going to hold them together like that, that those two things are both, I think, true in that particular text.
Jared
Do we see this same interplay—I'm kind of moving past that Nehemiah 8 context into the era of the New Testament and then even to the early church and so on—do we see that same interplay of communal interpretation? And yet, there's always this group who's trying to, not for, sort of, nefarious reasons or ill intent, but we got to have some sort of…
Pete
Gatekeepers.
Jared
Yeah, the gatekeepers that we got to, "No, I'm imbued with some unique authority to give the right way that we should be handling this text." Do we see that continuing throughout? I asked that because I don't know if we can get away from thinking about the authority of the Bible without also talking about these gatekeepers.
Cameron
Sure. I mean, I think, certainly, in the pre-Reformation era, the Bible is inspired, and it's the rule of faith in life for Christians, that's mediated through the church. And again, not always for nefarious purposes, partly out of practicality, right? At the time of Ezra, and then forward until the printing press, right. You have lower literacy levels, you have, not everybody has access to sacred texts. So, in order for people to experience the Bible, right, they're going to experience the Bible in the Christian tradition in church. And so, it's really, I think, at the Protestant Reformation, where that starts to change. But that doesn't mean that suddenly everybody's just sort of reading for themselves and deciding on their own what things mean. You still will always have gatekeepers, who just, through a different way, are going to say, "Well, let me point you in this direction, for this is what this says."
Pete
Yeah, we've noticed there are gatekeepers still, right. [Laughs] All over the place.
Can I—shifting a little bit here, but more of a segue. Okay, so the Bible is something that developed—I think we can probably agree here—in light of the realities of exile and the post-exilic situation, right? So it grew out of a need and yet, the Bible that was compiled is a book of diverse voices. So, can we discuss that a little bit, how you see the Bible that is a multivalent and a multi vocalic text? How can that be authoritative? What does it mean for it to be authoritative when it's shaped like that? It's not a 10 point pamphlet, you know, there are two very different histories of Israel, that kind of thing. So, how do you see that?
Cameron
[Laughing]
Cameron
Well, I think one of the remarkable characteristics of the Bible is that different ideas about theology, about God and God's relationship with God's people, have been allowed to stand over time and exactly why that was, we don't know. There's probably some impulse toward preservation, right? To make sure that you keep texts rather than throw them away, that impulse seems to be there. But the consequence of that is that scripture—which Christians through tradition understand to be authoritative—is this diverse text. And so, you have an example, we can often turn to, is Genesis 1 and 2. You have the creation in six days and rest on the seventh and then you have, in Genesis 2, this account of the first human, and God sort of making all of these animals and presenting them to the first human to look for the right companion for that human. But yet those are two different accounts of creation that are standing side by side.
But I think even more than the details of creation, one thing that's interesting to me is the way that those two texts testify to who God is and what God is like differently. So, in Genesis 1, God is kind of cosmic and big and speaking things into being and is very sort of ordered and symmetrical. And then you have this very intimate picture of God in Genesis 2 where God is, you know, creating with God's hands out of the dirt. I think it's remarkable that we have those two testimonies, and neither one is complete nor are they mutually exclusive. But I've really liked this category, as you can probably tell, of thinking of scripture as testimony. So, rather than a kind of rule book, or rather than this sort of centralized kind of inert authority, that Scripture is a collection of testimonies.
Jared
So, maybe we can put those—that's a great introduction to this concept of the Bible as testimony. And maybe, can you take us a step further to tie that to this concept of authority? Because I, those aren't two things that often go together in my brain of a testimony and then having that be authoritative in some way.
Cameron
Right. Well, I think a lot of the reason that we read the Bible, the Bible is important and we consider the Bible authoritative, is because tradition has told us so. [Laughs] So, there's a way in which, you know, the Bible is what we have and we have conceived of it throughout history and in different traditions, in different ways. Whether it's, you know, inspired—you have John Calvin talking about scripture as the spectacles that focus our knowledge of God, that sort of thing. But you know, I know it says in 2 Timothy, "All scripture is God breathed," and we often interpret that a bit anachronistically, to say, you know, that's referring to all scripture in the canon as we have it. But we wouldn't pick up just any book and say, you know, "Oh, this claims that God breathed, and it tells me so itself, so I'm going to believe that." [Laughing] Like, already, there's something outside of the Bible that is pushing the Bible towards us, that says we should read the Bible. And so given that the Bible is this text that we have, the text that the tradition has us read as a revelatory text, as a way toward knowledge of God, as a way toward understanding the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, then I think we should take the Bible as it is given to us and not try to kind of force it into other categories, or pretend it's something that it's not. And so, what it is, is a lot of difference put together under this title, "the Bible," and so I'm interested in taking the Bible as authoritative in its totality. And so, not just for the words on the page, not just for its content, but also for how it came together, how it exists as this multivocal set of testimonies, and to not be afraid of that.
Jared
It sounds like then, a couple of things come to mind. One is that the Bible's authority then is derived from the church's authority or church tradition as authoritative, since the church came first before the Bible. And so, the rule of faith is, sort of, that standard by which books were included or excluded and there is a process that we would call the church or church tradition that led to that, and even then, through the centuries, you said it, you know, mentioned the phrase “through tradition” that it's the tradition that sort of holds us to the Bible in some way. Is that a fair way to say that?
Cameron
Yeah, I think so. And I think when we're talking about the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, that's a tradition that values text as testimony, as revelation, as a theological record of God's relationship with Israel. And so, I guess I would say, in that sense, the importance of text predates the church [Laughs] in that way that we sort of enter into that, Christian tradition kind of enters into that stream, as well. But yeah, otherwise, I think so. I mean, I think the Bible is remarkable because of what it is and we pay attention to it, though, because it's what we have.
[Ad break]
Pete
Well, you know, in your book, your wonderful book, The Old Testament for a Complex World, you're working some of these things out and one thing you mentioned which I think is really interesting, and I think important for people to sort of wrestle with is, you talk about the how the biblical writers adapt to popular culture. So, could you explain what that means? And what are the implications of that for understanding the Bible as an authoritative text?
Cameron
Yeah, I think it means that the texts of the Bible are in conversation with, and developing from other Ancient Near Eastern traditions in the communities that surrounded ancient Israel. And so, for example, you know, this is well documented and thought out, the idea that the creation and flood myths in Genesis, and then—I mean myth there simply as, you know, big story—the creation and flood stories bear striking resemblances to other Mesopotamian creation and flood myths. And so, to me, that's a wonderful thing to chart out and to look at and to say, it turns out that the Bible is not about just sort of creating ideas about the human and divine out of nothing, but taking the particular unique thing that ancient Israel wants to say about their community and their God and borrowing from existing genres, or tropes, or storytelling ideas to forge connections, but also to say something that is then unique to ancient Israel to make claims about this god.
Well, and the other example that I use in the book is the Jewish court story, that in diaspora there are these stories that follow a particular pattern of a Jew in the court of a foreign king. So you have Daniel and his friends, you have Esther, and then you have the Joseph story, which very much follows that same pattern. And through some sort of either ability to interpret dreams, or some other sort of special gift that this person has, the saved themselves or their family or their people, maybe it's through their particular piety, right, refusing to bow down to a statue or refusing to bow down to Haman, in Esther, you have Mordecai doing that. So, there was a kind of story in circulation about being in the court of a foreign king, that—that genre resonated for, I imagine, a lot of reasons with diaspora Judaism. And so there are these texts and these stories that rise up in that pattern and that's drawing on a particular genre that was circulating throughout the ancient Near East, and again, adapting it to tell a particular story for Israel.
Pete
Yeah, you see, this is an important concept for me that you're articulating here, the "adapting popular culture." And this seems to be part of the character of the biblical text itself. And it seems that we never get beyond that. Like, we're always having to adapt... It's just what we do. We just adapt our religious life…
Jared
Right.
Pete
…according to the language that is being used around us.
Jared
Which, I think, the only thing I would want to maybe chime in is, for my tradition growing up, what makes this complicated is, the argument by which we hold the Bible as authoritative hinged on its uniqueness.
Jared
So, this was a threat.
Pete
Yeah.
Pete
Don't let culture affect anything that you think.
Jared
Right and-
Pete
Okay.
Jared
And, as an apologetic for why the Bible is different than other sacred books, because it gives this unique vantage point. And so, it's a threat when we identify other creation accounts or flood stories. This is a threat to the authority of the Bible, because we've tied the uniqueness to the authority. But what I'm hearing you say, Cameron, is it's not the Bible's uniqueness that makes it authoritative but it's our participation in the community and the tradition, and it's relational. It's not this top-down, but there's this mutual accountability, by which we have it as part of how we express our faith in community.
Cameron
Yes, and there is a lot about the Bible that is unique. I mean, part of the importance of comparing that to popular culture with the biblical text is not just to see where there are similarities, but to see where the story of the Old Testament’s starting to diverge and making a different claim. So, simple things first, like one god versus multiple gods, or the sort of cosmic reach of this particular god, that what you have in the God of Israel, this might be this particular people in this particular region's god, or this is a god who has control over all creation. And that's a theme that gets developed, you know, through the prophets and throughout biblical literature. And so, it's precisely by marking out the places that are shared that some of the things that are unique are then highlighted.
Pete
Yeah, it's a little bit of both, I suppose that's true for any religious tradition, right, with a book—that there's going to be distinctives. But you're gonna have the connection with the world around you and- I just, this is a really important point, I think, to really expand maybe a little bit more if we can, how notions of authority—I'm talking like, you know, Jared is talking about his church tradition and we know people listening to the podcast—but to be able to articulate a notion of biblical authority that doesn't rest on its absolute uniqueness and distinction and it's always distancing itself from culture.
The Bible...there's so much there that is just born up out of the atmosphere of the time and you know, when living today in our world, we're sometimes asked to do something that the Bible itself doesn't do, which is stay distant from the culture. So we have to interact with...It's not even a matter of having to, we invariably do think about things like, oh, I don't know, the Bible and evolution or something. You know, these are issues that we have to address and develop a theology that takes into account the culture and some of the realities of our existence, which is, in principle, that's the character of the Bible itself. It's doing that.
Cameron
Right, that we are and the Bible has been, and always is, embedded in culture, encountered in culture, we can't get outside of it. And so, I do think we should engage it in ways that say, maybe, this is something we need to lean into and over here is something we need to lean away from, but to sort of name that. That participation that we are not doing theology and religious practice in a vacuum, but we are always in a particular culture and that's okay and the Bible was too, and that's okay. We share that across time and space with the voices of witness in scripture.
Jared
If we can, maybe, in a little bit of a different direction, because I'm still trying to grab- I'm trying to put my arms around. There's a reason this comes up again and again, if we go back through the seasons of the Bible for Normal People, we haven't answered this once and for all because I think it's a slippery question of—I'm channeling a lot of our listeners who are used to the Bible being authoritative in that it's going to tell me what to do. And I mean that in a very specific moral and ethical way. If I have a decision I need to make, I go to the Bibleand it tells me how to make that decision.
Pete
Find the verse.
Jared
If I want to know what's right and wrong, I need to go to the Bible, and it's going to tell me what's right and wrong, even in contemporary moral dilemmas and challenges we face today. That's how I think a lot of people understand the Bible to be authoritative. So, if it's not that, I guess my question to you, do you think it is that? And if not, I still don't understand what authority means if it's not that, because I think my tradition, I was so baked into that way of thinking, I'm having a hard time swimming out of seeing authority—you know, I guess, authority means control. That's how I, like, think of the term authority. It means it controls, it tells you right from wrong. And if that's…
Pete
Like the priests running around Nehemiah 8 telling people…
Jared
Yeah, the interpretation is the authority. It's authoritative in its interpretation. So, if we're not talking about that, then what are we talking about? And I think maybe the way to simplify my question is, in matters of things like ethics and morality, what role does the Bible play in our communities of faith?
Cameron
Wow. I mean, that is the question, right? [Laughs] It is the ongoing question to me of what it means to be a life of faith. And so, I think I don't have a nice answer for you wrapped up in a bow because—
Pete
You don't have an authoritative answer for that.
Cameron
I don't [Laughs]
Pete
Okay, alright.
Cameron
Because I think that the Bible, because of the difference that's inherent in it is actually modeling that struggle, modeling that question. You know, you have, in this circumstance, take sacrificial worship in Leviticus, right, you have a very strong voice that says, "This is the way to have an encounter with God, through sacrifice, mediated by the priest, etc. And that should happen in the temple." And then you have this sort of Deuteronomic voice that says, "Well, what's more important, perhaps, is the place. That you only worship in the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name." And, you know, if you can't make it, you know, there are provisions. You don't want to sacrifice at Bethel, or Dan or somewhere, you got to come to Jerusalem, and that becomes the more important value. And you know, we can talk about the reasons for that under Josiah's reforms and whatnot. But ultimately, we're left with these different ideas about what it means to live faithfully. You have different laws, of course, I mean, ethical laws, and, maybe—trying to think about how to put that all together…
Pete
[Laughing]
Cameron
Because of course, you have the question of, then, the Old Testament and the New Testament, and how do you understand the relationship between those two—but I guess what I'd say is that ultimately, if we're turning to the Bible for a model for how we live our lives, one of the things the Bible models about how we live our life is in this constant conversation with God and each other and tradition and culture about what it means to live faithfully, and to have a willingness to listen and let stand other traditions beside our own, to be willing to change our minds sometimes because the world around us changes and so, our understanding is going to change.
Pete
Yeah, and that's a beautiful way I think of summing up what this whole discussion is about. When it comes to biblical authority, we can never escape the factors of things like community or tradition, and the very setting in which those people are living and the things that are coming about. And that's, I think that's a workable way, Jared, of thinking about an authoritative text without it becoming an authoritarian, bashing-head kind of text.
Jared
Right. No, I think that was well said, I think that helped tie some loose ends together.
Pete
Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Cameron, for being with us. We just had a wonderful time talking with you. You've thought a lot about this. And I'm really excited to be thinking more [Chuckles] about biblical authority but not in an authoritarian sense.
Cameron
It was fun. Thanks for having me on the podcast.
[Outro music begins]
Jared
Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give.
Pete
And if you want to support us and want a community, classes, and other great resources, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/join.
Jared
And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show.
Outro
You've just made it through another episode of the Bible for Normal People. Don't forget you can also catch the latest episode of our other show, Faith for Normal People, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People podcast team: Brittany Prescott, Savannah Locke, Stephanie Speight, Natalie Weyand, Stephen Henning, Tessa Stultz, Haley Warren, Nick Striegel, and Jessica Shao.
[Outro music continues]
[Beep to signal bloopers]
Jared
[In a serious tone] Welcome to this edition of the Bible for Normal People. Today, our guest is Cameron B. R. Howard…
Pete
[Interrupting] That sounded pretty serious.
Jared
I was trying to be serious! Let me do my thing!
Pete
Okay, go ahead.
Jared
Jeez...
Pete
Be serious...While I snicker.
[Beep signaling end of episode]
