Episode 256: Barbara Leung Lai - The Inner Life of Biblical Characters
Nerd alert—we’re diving into biblical studies in this episode of The Bible for Normal People as Pete and Jared talk with Barbara Leung Lai about her work studying the inner life of characters in the Hebrew Bible. Combining psychological exegesis, perspectives of personality, and Bakhtinian views of polyphony and dialogism, Barbara helps give Bible readers insight into what biblical characters might have thought and felt. Join them as they explore the following questions:
Why is this study of the inner life of biblical characters important?
Who is Bhaktin?
What is the I-window? Why is it important?
Why is it important to recognize a character talking to himself or herself as dialogue?
What does Bakhtin mean by polyphony and dialogism?
What are some other resources for seeing the biblical text in a new way through this I-window approach?
How does polyphony help us find the meaning of any given text?
Tweetables
Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
Whenever a person speaks in the first person "I" voice, it gives us a window to look into some dimension of his inner thoughts, his feelings, and also emotions. — Barbara Leung Lai @theb4np
When a person thinks, or when a person speaks, in a first person singular “I”—that is the most genuine, the inner “I.” — Barbara Leung Lai @theb4np
The I-window opens up the highway and also byway into the characterization of Old Testament characters. — Barbara Leung Lai @theb4np
There's always one more voice, the interpretive voice of the reader, if we are able to arrive at that level of self-engagement. — Barbara Leung Lai @theb4np
The truth or the message of a passage are [discovered] through the dialogic interaction within the text, and also the text within the text, and also the reader. — Barbara Leung Lai @theb4np
Mentioned in This Episode
Class: September Class “The S Word”
Books: Through the I-Window: The Inner Life of Characters in the Hebrew Bibleby Dr. Barbara M. Leung Lai
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
[Intro music begins]
Pete
Hey everybody, before we get started today, we wanted to let you know this the last call to sign up for our September class, called “The S Word” happening this week. This is a one-night class and it’s taking place on September 27th from 8-9:30pm Eastern Time.
Jared
And it’s with Dr. Matthew Croasmun, who will explore Paul’s uses of sin language. Who doesn’t want to talk about sin? Exploring Paul’s use of sin language in Romans 5-8 and how we might see the effects of sin at play in our world today.
Pete
Yeah. And when you sign up for the class you get the live class, a live Q&A session, downloadable class slides, and a link to the class recording in case you can’t make it live and/or want to watch it at another time.
Jared
And of course it’s Pay-what-you-can until the class ends and then it costs $25 to download. But you can get all of our classes for just $12 a month by becoming a member of the Society of Normal People. So for more information and to sign up, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/sin.
Pete
On today's episode, we're talking about the inner life of biblical characters with Barbara Leung Lei. Now she is a professor of Old Testament and the director for the Pastoral and Chinese Ministry program at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, Canada. And she is a sought after consultant in the area of teaching and appropriating the Old Testament in postmodern times.
Intro
Yeah, and she's written a book, we'll get into it in the episode. It came out about 12 years ago, it's called Through the I-Window: The Inner Life of Characters in the Hebrew Bible. Part of this conversation is going to introduce you all to some of the things that are going on in Biblical Studies and so there may be concepts and ideas that you might need to Google. And I think that's an important part of this process. But one of the things that she mentions over and over again, is the work of Mikhail Bakhtin—or Bakhtin—a Russian literary critic. And so if you want to Google him, as you hear it, it's B-A-K-H-T-I-N, if you wanted to look him up. And I think it's an important concept, it's helpful, it opens up lots of things to think about and talk about in terms of how we read our Bibles, and that's just the groundswell or what's underneath a lot of what we talked about today. Although she specifically talks about this inner life of characters in the Hebrew Bible, she has a lot of bigger picture items that I think would be, you know, helpful for people to look into if they want to get nerdy. This is a nerdy episode. Alright, let's get into it.
Barbara
[Music plays over clip of Barbara speaking] “So you ask why the I-window is so important. Because whenever a person speaks in the first person I voice, gives us a window to look into some dimension of his inner thoughts, his feelings, and also emotion. When a person speaks in a first person singular ‘I’, that is the most genuine—the inner ‘I’.”
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Pete
Barbara, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here.
Barbara
Thank you for the invitation.
Pete
Oh, absolutely. Well, you know, you do work in the inner life of characters in the Bible and that seems like it might be an obvious thing—but just define what you mean by that, and why you think it's important, and really what led you to this, what got you interested in this whole topic to begin with?
Barbara
Okay, what I mean by inner life, or other words, you know, internal profiling, or interiority of some Old Testament characters, actually is an advanced step towards the characterization of Hebrew characters. So, traditionally, we look at the—we work on the narrative texts of the Old Testament, and we do characterization using the idea of whether a certain character is a flat or a round character. So in a way, focusing on the inner life of the characters would be an advanced step towards characterization of the Old Testament, and of course of the whole Bible. So by means of an advanced step, we focus on things that are normally, we can refer to non-cognitive elements of a character, for example, emotions and feelings. So, traditionally, it has a long-standing belief that the inner life or the non-cognitive elements of a certain character is not accessible to readers. Or maybe quoting an example, like the statement that is, "they are virtually absent," you know, in the Old Testament Bible.
So what led me to that study of, or undertaking such a project—which I continue on in my own research and writing. So the book, the "I-Window" book came out 12 years ago. I started the whole project about 15 years ago from now. So back then, there were four major factors that truly motivated, they became the impetus, for me to undertaking such a project. The first is Bakhtin, it's the postmodern notion of the self—selfhood, and also the flowering of the emotion studies, in biblical studies. Like, the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, about the same time 15 years ago, or 12 years ago, the section on emotion and the Bible was launched back then. And then secondly, it’s my discomfort over the long-held position that I just mentioned, that the inner life of Old Testament characters are not accessible to us Bible readers, and also that they are virtually absent in the Old Testament. And then thirdly, I am a Bakhtin reader, I have found that incorporating the Bakhtinian notion of theories on polyphony and dialogism have proven to be very promising and illuminating, to undertake such a project on the inner life of the Old Testament characters. And fourthly, it was my intent to further push the terrain of biblical study. So interdisciplinary or integrated methodology, in my case, is to have a brand new, integrated methodology, it's very much in demand in the field of Biblical studies.
Jared
So one of the things that I think is important is this idea, even the book itself talks about the "I-Window," and so maybe before we jump into Bakhtin and these ideas that can really take us deep, maybe we can talk for a minute about this I-window. And so we're talking about people's emotions, can we access the characters in the Hebrew Bibles, emotions, and feelings? And you talk about, we can access them through this I-window. So can you talk more about what is that? And why is that important as a method that helped to overturn this long term position within Biblical studies that the inner self isn't accessible?
Barbara
You can look at it as a limit. I work with "I" texts in the Old Testament only, by means of "I" passages, are those passages where the characters or the character speaks in the first person "I" voice, first person "I" voice. So that's why, you know, within the cover in my book are the 15 identifiable "I" passages from the book of Isaiah, and also the second half of the book of Daniel, from chapter 7-12. Basically, like the character Daniel, he speaks in the first person "I," emphatic I voice, actually it's, "I, Daniel," in those chapters. And also I have identified three chapters that we can discern as God’s first person "I" text in Isaiah chapter five, Hosea 11, and also Jeremiah chapter 8, those are all in the prophetic literature. And Daniel, of course, is apocalyptic. So you ask why the I-window is so important? Because whenever a person speaks in the first person "I" voice, it gives us a window to look into some dimension of his inner thoughts, his feelings, and also emotions.
So for example, Genesis chapter 17 and 18, those are the narrative texts, so the narrator is talking about some of the acts of Abraham and also Sarah. But in Genesis 17:17, the narrator zooms in to some of the inner thoughts of Abraham. In that verse, Abraham speaks in the first person "I" voice. It says, "Abraham fell facedown, he laughed and he said to himself, 'Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old?'" So in this inner thought, he said to himself, laughed and said to himself, so in the first person, singular “I.”
And then the next chapter, now, Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. So verse 12, it says, "So Sarah laughed to herself, and she thought, 'After I'm worn out and my Lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?'" So both in the "I" voice. So in a narrative text, the narrator in the third person telling about Abraham and also Sarah. But with this tool, I-window, when they said to himself—when Sarah thought in her own heart—and then we have an I-window. Knowing the status of the faith, upon the first time, upon God appeared to them through the angels, and also announced the promise of descendants to both Abraham and Sarah.
So the I-window, the inner thought is so important. So in a way, reading those verses in Genesis 17 and 18, if we zoom in, focus on the first person "I" in their thought, inner thought, and what they said to himself, what he's saying to himself inner thoughts, creating a dialogue between Abraham, himself, and also his inner self. So we have the window to look into the status of their faith upon the receipt of God's promise of descendants at that time. So I see the I-window when a person thinks, or when a person speaks in a first person singular “I” that is the most genuine, the inner I.
Jared
I think this is a little bit of a bridge for us to talk about Bakhtin and this reading strategy, but I want to maybe mention something that you said. And that's the word dialogue. Because when we're talking about the I-window or speaking to ourselves, we don't think about that as a dialogue, but I think—I want to bring out what you said, which is—when we have I statements, so when, when Abraham is saying "I, this" or Daniel, Isaiah, Hosea are talking about, talking to themselves, that is a dialogue. And I think we can all relate to that idea that it's the self and the inner self. When we're talking to ourselves, we're talking to someone and that is a dialogue. And why is that important to think about, or to acknowledge when we're reading the biblical texts, especially in these passages?
Barbara
This is a very good question. When I make adaptations, you know, my adaptation of the Bakhtin theories on dialogism and also polyphonic discourse, it's firmly based in what has been established in social sciences and also humanities. So, in terms of monologue and dialogue there are two very famous names, [?] and Sternberg, in humanities and also in biblical study, it is a firmly established theory, that we should not make any distinction between dialogues and monologues. In a way there are pockets of monologue within dialogue, and they are imaginary dialogues within monologues. So, in a way, we can collapse the difference between dialogue and monologue.
Going back to the Bakhtinian theory on dialogics. So, every utterance, every inner thought, if we say something to ourselves, so, in a way, we are breaking ourselves into two halves to create a space for us to dialogue. So, every utterance to Bakhtin is a reply to, or a response to, something already said, already there. So, in a way, if we are monologuing, so, in terms of dilemma, we are breaking into two halves, and then we create a space for us to dialogue with ourselves. But if we are doing dialogic, you know, if we are making dialogue with a text with our reader response, then we are in a way dialoguing with the text and also with something already been said, something already there. So, in a way, it's more complex, it's quite sophisticated.
But in real life situations, we are of a two car family. When I'm driving, maybe after school or driving here and there, I do a monologue all times. I am monologuing. But during my monologue, inner thoughts, in essence I'm creating a space for my inner self and myself, my thoughts to create a very safe space to dialogue. And then many times it's very therapeutic. But in the texts that we are dealing with, those are "I" voice. Like Daniel is in his "I" voice. So it gives Daniel himself an avenue to voice out his dilemma, where he is functioning as an aspiring sage during the daytime, and also at night, at the same time, he lay ill for several days, he couldn't sleep, he couldn't eat. Becoming like, becoming a dysfunctional seer. So that kind of thing is only through the I-window. Whenever Daniel is saying like "I, Daniel," sharing on the surface his visionary experience, but in essence, he is letting out his emotion, the real state of his inner self.
Jared
What I hear you talking about is the idea of dialogue, and we think about that as two people. But within, you know, literary criticism and other social sciences and humanities, we've been able to sort of break down this binary of either a monologue or a dialogue. Where, when we're talking about a monologue, there's a sense in which every monologue is a dialogue. An example that comes to mind when you said that was Hamlet, whenever he's saying "To be or not to be." It's sort of like he's wrestling with himself. There are two players here, there is himself and himself, and he's trying to figure it out. And I think we can all relate to that when we're trying to make a decision. There's like a part of us that agrees, a part of us that disagrees. And in that way, a monologue, to say that out loud, is a dialogue. And vice versa, that when we're having a conversation with somebody, in some sense, we're also just having a monologue. We're also sort of processing for ourselves out loud. And so there's these advances where we realize there's not really a clear line between a monologue and a dialogue. And that opens up a lot of windows and possibilities now, when we're trying to figure out the inner life of characters in the Bible. Is that a fair summary?
Barbara
Yes.
Jared
Okay. Good.
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Pete
When you say something like, you know, Daniel's "I" and getting to know Daniel's interiority, so to speak, I mean, I assume that what you mean by that is, we're getting to the author's characterization of Daniel and not so much Daniel himself as a person?
Barbara
Yes. Yeah. Right. Yes.
Pete
Yeah.
Barbara
And also it’s more on the being of Daniel, not his ability to interpret dreams and visions, but the being. Like, if we are talking about, like prophetic books like Isaiah. On the one hand, you talk about the characterization of Isaiah, the best, like before, the best we can advance would be so-called “the prophetic consciousness”. The degree of consciousness that they are God's mouthpiece, they are the messenger of God. But if I am able to identify the 15 "I" passages in the book of Isaiah, so we can give more depth to the answer, what men of men are the prophets? Like in Isaiah, the whole spectrum, wide range of emotion, could be uncovered through those 15 "I" passages. Love, intimacy, laments, being constrained by God, doubt, and despair, and then so on.
So I think in a way, it is an advancement towards, like, if we focus on the I-window, as a port of entry, not only a point of entry, as a port of entry to the characterization of Old Testament characters, which is not accessible to us previously. At best we can speak on prophetic consciousness. We focus more on the corporate than on the individual, right? But now we can focus on the individual Isaiah, the individual Jeremiah, if we focus on the so-called confession of Jeremiah. And also we can focus of the sage, Daniel. So it is previously, we weren't there. Because without the I-window, we weren’t there. We won’t have enough biblical material for us to go into the area of investigation. So I think the I-window is, to me, it opens up highway and also byway into the characterization of Old Testament characters.
Pete
Yeah. And the other question, this goes back to something that you said earlier. Again, this is for clarification and to flesh things out a bit. Your book came out years ago, and part of a movement in the Society of Biblical Literature, which is the academic meetings that we have yearly, a movement away from, well, the opposite of what you're saying. That we can't really know the interiority of anything. Is that really—
Barbara
“Virtually absent.” Yeah.
Pete
Yeah, “virtually absent.” That reminded me of something in my own graduate training, which I think is exactly what you're probably reacting against is something like Erich Auerbach wrote an article in the 1950s, "Odysseus' Scar."
Barbara
[Hums]
Pete
And the point was that, you know, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" go into a lot of interiority, but the biblical text tends not to.
Barbara
Yes.
Pete
And I forget the example that he uses, but this even comes up very practically in my classes, and I'm asking the question so maybe I can do a better job teaching. But you know, my students, we'll be looking at the Binding of Isaac, the Akedah, right, in Genesis 22. And they'll say, "What was Abraham feeling when he was going up the mountain with Isaac?"
Barbara
[Hums in agreement]
Pete
And I say, "I haven't the slightest idea what he was feeling because the text isn’t interested in telling us those things." So I wonder if there is a both-and here, that there is a lot less interiority that we're dealing with than in some other texts. But there's also overlooked interiority like Isaiah, Daniel, and you're mentioning Hosea, Jeremiah, and places like that.
Barbara
Yes, we focus on the corporate, even if we have a lot of the previous centuries. We focus a lot of our efforts on the prophetic consciousness. But we always focus on the corporate, and undermine the individual right? Or individuality. Like in the case of Isaiah and then Jeremiah, and so on. But with the confession of Jeremiah. We have a host of research I've done on the book of Jeremiah. But we never focus on Isaiah. How about Jonah, Jonah? And how about Habakkuk? They are "I" texts, "I" passages in those passages. I am now completing a commentary on the Ecclesiastes—and thank you, I also consulted your book for Sheffield Phoenix Press—so for Ecclesiastes, the emotion, the inner life of the Kohelet is explosive. Well, basically Ecclesiastes is a polyphony, a multi-voice text. And also, it is full of a lot of emotion. A new approach, a reading strategy, I also look at it as a memoir. Because you need something very heavily loaded, emotive stuff in a book of Ecclesiastes.
So, in a way, when we look at the book of Ecclesiastes, previously in tons of commentaries, they focus more on the coherence and then so on. We never put any real focus on the, it is a polyphony. It's a multi-voice. I identify, including the voice of the reader, the interpretive voice of the reader, there are at least five voices in the book of Ecclesiastes. So the Bakhtinian theory of polyphony, and also dialogism comes in at this point. So if we look at it, as you know, the five—including the reader’s own interpretive voice here—so, the five voices are dialoguing vibrantly, and that is the way that we can see what is the truth, the dialogic truth? What is the message of the book of Ecclesiastes? I think we miss a lot, you know, if we only focus on the traditional way of finding some coherency from the 12 chapters of Ecclesiastes.
Pete
And do you feel also that, you know, the psalter is very amenable to your approach?
Barbara
Yes, I think so.
Pete
Because of all the "I" psalms and the inner anguish of the psalmist.
Barbara
Yes, right.
Pete
Yeah.
Barbara
Yes, right.
Jared
Right. I think that's a great segue, if we can, you know, you've mentioned this Bakhtinian polyphony, dialogism. Underneath it—I think this is going to get kind of a little nerdy and a little heady for folks but I think it's really important. You know, you've mentioned coherence and how within Biblical studies, scholars—not just in Biblical Studies, and not just scholars, I would say, kind of the Western world over the last 500 years or so—has privileged coherence over diversity and multiplicity. So can you just give us a baseline understanding or definition in, you know, a couple of minutes on what you mean and what Bakhtin would mean by polyphony and dialogism.
Barbara
Okay. Even though I'm a Bakhtin reader, but Bakhtin, he has never written anything on the Bible. Maybe a few sentences about the book of Job to the best of my understanding. The Bakhtinian theories and ideas are so dense, okay, I could never identify myself as a, even though I am a Bakhtin reader, or I'm an expert of the theories, the literary theories. The best I can do is—my methodology, on the one hand is [?], but is strongly based on what has been established in social sciences, such as, for example, our emotions are the markers of the construction of the self, right. And also something that is as well established in humanities, like what we have learned from Luis Schökel and Sternberg about the monologue and dialogue. What I have borrowed, or adopted, by making the adaptation of the Bakhtinian theories on dialogism and also polyphony or polyphonic discourse. So, to the best of my understanding, it is hard for me to give a definition of what is the Bkahtinian theory on dialogism or polyphony, polyphonic discourse. But what I can say is I adapted to the dynamics, the process or the phenomenon, whenever there is a—if this is a polyphonic text. So, we are dealing with polyphonic discourse. Like in Isaiah chapter 21, an Oracle—towards the end, an Oracle about Dumah, in the silent question and answer, it is a dialogue, but there are several levels of this dialogue.
So, in other words, when we look at the polyphonic discourse within Isaiah 21, there is only a few verses. So, someone from [see] asking Isaiah, the watchman, "what is of the night, what of the night?" and in answer, "morning will come, but there is also the night" and then so on. It is a silent question and answer. So, to apply the Bakhtinian theory on polyphonic discourse here. So, with a silent question and answer. And then also within Isaiah, he himself you know in this inner thought or putting together. Only through this dialogue, the dynamic of this dialogue, we see that the kind of despair, the kind of helplessness, that kind of feeling felt within the Prophet himself to the extent he used the third person projection of his first person view. He is projecting himself as the watchman, as the third person watchman being asked a question. It is a very silent question and answer. So I'm able to give a definition of the Bakhtinian theory of polyphonic discourse of dialogism in form of statements.
But what I have adopted the Bakhtinian way of reading a biblical text is the dynamic of this polyphonic discourse. And also, the dialogism. It's—The dynamic is the phenomenon leading to the way, when I'm working on God's "I" voice from the three chosen texts. So basically, in that instance, leading to, because of this dialogic dynamic, leading to the unfinalized—that is, of course, Bakhtin’s books are translation written first in Russian—so is the dialogic, unfinalized—On the one hand it's a dialogic truth. The truth or the message of a passage are through the dialogic interaction within the text, and also the text within the text, and also the reader.
So at the same time, when I'm constructing the inner life of Isaiah, I am also constructing my own inner life. That is the kind of impact. Particularly when we hear God’s "I" voice. So in a way, we call it the dialogic truth. Through this dialogue, within the text, and also between the text and the reader, we are arriving at, so called, the truth—maybe we shouldn't use—a “truth" of the message. And also this truth is unfinalized. Because if we come up with any outcome, any idea, any message, you know, from this kind of reading, it is still unfinalized. I'm not talking about John 3:16, you know? I'm talking about the whole passage. In a way, the unfinal, or the unfinalizability of certain texts. So, keep on working, keep on dialoguing with the text, back and forth. That is also called the hermeneutical cycle from Thiselton. The hermeneutical cycle, going back and forth, back and forth, cross and reaching so in a way but never exhaust. Even though they are advancement, you know, call it advancement, we identify more of God's "I" voice passages, but could never exhaust the meaning significance of any text to the reader.
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Jared
Whenever we're talking about things like polyphony and dialogism, in some ways, it resists definition because it's kind of part of the process. So I'm going to maybe try to summarize a little bit and maybe integrate some of what I, you know, have learned of Bakhtin over the years. But I think it's important because at the root of this, you know, what I think is exciting about this approach of looking at the "I" language, when we read it in our Bibles, to see it as an invitation to join in the meaning making of the text, which is I think important. And you've mentioned reader response or the idea…we—you know, we had David Lambert who, I think is at North Carolina Chapel Hill who talked about the community reading the text is actually a part of the process of meaning making of the text. And I think that's a really important part. And so, again, I think one of the reasons that this is hard to talk about is because it is a paradigm shift from four or five hundred years of reading the Bible as, you know—the opposite of polyphonic is uniphonic (monophonic). The idea that one voice, there's one—or you know, we often talk about uni-vocal or univocal—so that there's this one voice and all scholarship is trying to do is find the one meaning that is universal, and it is abstract, and it is once for all time, once we know it, we don't need to do any more work. It is done. It's sort of like two plus two equals four. Done. We just close that book and we move on.
But the idea of human language and meaning and significance is so diverse, and it's so much more malleable than that. And so this idea of polyphony is that in order to come at the truth, we need as many voices as possible. We need as many interpretations as we can get. We need a diversity of consciousness and you know, that multiple consciousnesses and many different perspectives are important when we're trying to grasp at this truth. And so that's kind of part of this process of polyphony, is many voices help us to understand the truth. And you know, we talk about on the podcast here, we talk quite a bit about “all theology has an adjective.” And what this is, is taking the next step to say, we need as many adjectives as we can get to fully understand the truth, because the truth is actually much bigger than we can imagine and so we need, you know, African-American communities, Asian-American communities, Eastern communities, Western communities, Northern communities, we need as many communities because the truth is way more diverse than we originally imagined.
Which again, I think you mentioned this at the very beginning, is this, you know, it's more of a postmodern—it's coming out of this modernistic understanding that we have this once for all time, universally valid understanding of truth. And so when you talk about “unfinalized,” for me, that's really exciting, saying we're never finished with it. There are unending opportunities to use this text for good and for love and for grace and for forgiveness and for all these things, once we understand that it's useful for those things, and not just for, we close the book, it's this abstract idea of truth, and we can close it and we're done with it. So my sermon is done. But is that—
Pete
[Laughing]
Jared
Is that a good summary?
Barbara
Yeah, very good summary. I just want to maybe add on to one thing. There are two dimensions of the polyphony. So, we need the polyphony of interpretive voices, right, you mentioned about Asian voices and also so-called marginalized voices and African voices and then so on. But I think the...since I think Francis Landy and then—so in recent years, we focus a lot on the polyphony of the biblical texts. Actually, in a lot of texts that I study and maybe work on then, and also later on publish, there are many biblical texts that are multi-voiced, which was previously ignored, you know, that multi-voice. Besides the book of Ecclesiastes. For example, like Daniel chapter three. So, Daniel chapter 3, Daniel was not even here. What is the message of Daniel chapter three? As a polyphony, it's very loud, that particular chapter. You know, different kinds of musical instruments, the voice saying, you know, "bow down and worship and then bow down and worship," and also the voice of the King, the voice of the three friends, and then so on. So, a lot of the biblical text in itself is polyphony.
So, if we look at the different voices using this dynamic of Bakhtin, you know, so to speak, dialoguing together. So, we can ask at the end, when we come out of the chapter with that level of engagement, identify several, you know, the multi-voice included in the text. Then, at the end of the reading, we ask, what is the central message about the text? I think with the polyphony, that kind of polyphonic dynamic, the message of that chapter is: who is the sovereign? Who's the sovereign? Because that is all the voices are to us, you know? Where did the sovereign is God? Or because we end up with Daniel's three friends, jumping into the furnace at the end of the chapter. So who is a sovereign? We can get the answer. The Lord is the sovereign, God is the sovereign. And not Nebuchadnezzar.
So multi-voice, multi-interpretive voice is very much in demand. I think in the field of biblical study, in the past 10 years or so, we are doing pretty good in terms of the inclusiveness of different interpretive voices. But we are not doing too good in terms of identifying the multi-voice texts included in the Old Testament. Actually, I think that is a window towards finding a meaning, the meaning significance, or the message of any given text.
Jared
Yeah, I'm glad that you clarified that because I—well, you know, kind of my little rant went more toward our readers, you know, as we read the text, infusing it, but we find it in the text itself. And so I think that's what you're also getting at is, if we just read closely, we see this many-voices polyphony within the texts themselves. If we just look, we see the many voices already there. And we just need to recognize that.
Barbara
And there's always one more voice, the interpretive voice of the reader, if we are able to arrive at that level of self-engagement.
Pete
Yes, well, you know, Barbara, as we're coming really to the close of our time here, but I have one final question to ask. And I'm thinking of, again, our listeners for whom this is very new. This is a new topic for many people and it's also, it can be a bit complex and there are philosophical elements to this. And you mentioned Bakhtin a lot and he's a very important voice in this. But do you have any practical advice for interested people in how to understand this method a little bit better? Feel free to recommend your own book.
Barbara
So I have written a book, you know, 12 years ago, right? On the I-window. And subsequently, I published quite a few peer reviewed journals using maybe polyphony, and also the idea of the I-window. I want to encourage the audience, be self-engaged, because meaning is context bound. But context is boundless. Where I'm coming from, you know, my ethnicity, and then so on my training, and then so on, we are all different. So context is boundless. But in my teaching, even though at this age, you know, we cannot set a boundary to the reader perspective, but I would like to use the threefold reader perspective. As a reader, you have to be Bible believing, God fearing always with a divine fear that you and I may not be able to capture or to interpret the Word of God correctly, also faith seeking understanding.
If you and I acquire these three kinds of reader perspective, and be self-engaging, you know, get into the text to find and dig out the meaning significance. So the whole truth is boundless, is opened up for us so we can still find the meaning significance of any given text in the Old Testament. In a way, my book, the I-Window book, the results that I can offer, they are only of brick quality, and what I'm hoping is that it may generate something better of jade extravagance. You know, that is my ultimate hope of the book.
Jared
Well thank you so much, Barbara, for jumping on with us. Your passion for this is palpable and I think that's really important as we look toward the future. I think it takes not just articulation, but also passion as we find new ways to engage the biblical text. So thank you again for jumping on. We really appreciate it.
Barbara
Thank you again for the invitation and the opportunity to learn from both of you. Thank you.
Pete
Thank you.
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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 www.TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give.
Pete
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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. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode by emailing us at info@TheBibleForNormalPeople.com.
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, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Prescott, Stephen Henning, Wesley Duckworth, Savannah Locke, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Natalie Weyand, Jessica Shao, and Lauren O'Connell.
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