Methodology
processes of investigating biblical texts
Performance Criticism: An Emerging Methodology in Biblical Studies
Summary: This paper argues for the centrality of performance in the life of the early church, a point that traditional scholarship has not addressed. In light of some emerging trends, it proposes that we establish “performance criticism” as a discrete discipline to analyze the performance event as the site of interpretation, including the dynamics of performance, the influence of place and circumstance, and the experience of an audience. Performance criticism could draw upon resources from many disciplines of biblical scholarship: historical criticism, narrative criticism, reader-response criticism, rhetorical criticism, orality criticism, social science criticism, speech-act theory, discourse analysis, and ideological criticism. In turn, performance criticism has the potential to transform all these methodologies in fresh ways. Performance criticism could also draw upon the modern fields of oral interpretation of literature and theater studies. A discipline of performance criticism would enable us to construct performance scenarios of the early church. Equally important, it would inform our understanding of the meaning and rhetoric of the New Testament writings. Such a discipline might also engage the interpreter in the actual performing of texts in Greek and English. Finally, performance would breathe new life into biblical studies and into the experience of the Bible in the modern world...
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Biblical Storytelling and Biblical Scholarship
This paper is a further development of a paper written for a session of the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media Group at SBL in 2002. It was the response to this paper that generated the idea of having this conference. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the major differences that biblical storytelling has made in my understanding of the meaning and function of the four Gospels in their original historical context. While there are implications for all biblical stories, I will focus attention here on the canonical Gospels.
The need to establish storytelling as a methodology for the study of biblical narrative was made clear in a conversation several years ago with Bob Tannehill. In response to my argument about the importance of storytelling, he said, “Why does storytelling make any difference? Whether I tell it or read it, it’s all the same narrative.” This is a response to Bob’s question...
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Paper for the Seminar on Biblical Storytelling and Scholarship
I am a biblical storyteller. Operationalized, this means that I make my living at telling the stories of the Old and New Testaments in performances that are very close to the words of the text in which they have been traditioned in English translation.
Most people have no inkling what this means until they have experienced it. A few thousand years of hearing scriptures as ink on paper has rendered audiences, both within the church (where most of my work is done) and without the church, to regard these texts as dusty, dull and dead. When, as a Presbyterian parish minister, I first “told” the passion narrative from Mark’s gospel in a worship service 24 years ago, the congregation greeted me enthusiastically after the service, pumping my hand with excitement and saying, “That was great! I have never heard anything like that! Where did you get that script?!”
For me the difficulty of communicating what exactly biblical storytelling is constitutes more than intellectual exercise; it is as well a formidable marketing challenge as well. I define biblical storytelling as a spiritual discipline which entails the lively interpretation, expression and animation of a narrative text of the Old or New Testaments which has first been deeply internalized and is then remembranced, embodied, breathed and voiced by a teller/performer as a sacred event in community with an audience/ congregation...
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Reflection on the Value of Performing for Interpretation
Contemporary performance of biblical texts in translation has revolutionized my way of interpreting a text. When I begin to research a biblical writing, e. g. I Peter, I begin by making a (working) translation, memorize it, and begin looking for venue to perform it to an audience. By this means, I come to know the text thoroughly. I have a distinctive take on the interpretations of each line, because I have to determine how I will say it. I am aware of the text’s sequential development. I sense the progressive emotions the text seeks to evoke. I grasp what the speaker wishes the hearer to become or to do as a result of experiencing the narrative. I am profoundly in touch with the communal dimensions of the text. In short, I engage layers and dimensions of the text that I would not likely engage simply as a scholar reading the text privately and silently.
Meanwhile, my research into primary and secondary literature continues to shape and inform the translation and the performance. In the end, my goal is to have a holistic interpretation of the writing and its rhetorical impact. Obviously, none of this guarantees a more faithful interpretation. Nevertheless, for myself, I cannot any longer imagine studying a biblical work without first memorizing and performing part or all of it. I would like to persuade other scholars to pick up on this technique of interpretation...
