William Tyndale made the famous statement, “I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the scripture than thou doest!”
Perhaps I ought to correct that to the formerly-famous statement, back in the days when we knew something about our own history. I was once discussing the Salmon Rushdie Satanic Verses furore with a senior examiner: one with high responsibility for the transmission of our country’s literary heritage to our country’s young. She did not believe in God, but had a deep faith in education. I did not believe in God, at that point in time, but had little faith in education either, in view of some of its practitioners and end products. I commented that anyone prepared to confront a powerful religion head on should be prepared to take the consequences, and I cited Tyndale as an example. My astonishment that she had never heard of Tyndale was matched by her astonishment on hearing what had become of him. Why would anyone be put to death just for translating the Bible? Her ignorance of key forces that have shaped our culture did nothing to enhance my confidence in education. But I digress...
Being given the words is only half the story. To have access to the words need not give access to the meaning.
Let us consider the incident of the Fig Tree in Mark 11: 12 -22. Jesus is hungry, and notices a fig tree in leaf. He examines it, but it is not the season for figs. He curses it: “May no one ever again eat fruit from you.” The next morning, the disciples notice that the tree has withered from the roots up. What on earth is the point of the story?
In his essay ‘Why I am not a Christian’ Bertrand Russell had great fun with it. If it wasn’t the season for figs, then you couldn’t blame the tree. Just Christ in a fit of pique; in line with his petulance when dealing with opponents, or his pleasure at the thought of the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It is why Russell rates Socrates, Buddha and Confucius higher than Christ. By implication, thank God (if God existed) that the man in question didn’t really have any miraculous powers. Imagine the harm that could have been done with that sort of temperament!
Russell had the words before him. How could a man of his intelligence have got it so utterly wrong? Because the words alone are not enough; he didn’t have the necessary contextual background.
Mark’s method, it must be conceded, is rather cryptic. He likes to make his audience search for the answers. The mood of his gospel is of things coming slowly into focus; of a progression from initial bafflement to gradual clarification. Christ’s question “Do you still not understand?” (8:21) sets the tone. But it may also be that some things puzzling to modern urbanites were so obvious to ancient country dwellers as not to need saying
Christ is hungry, and that focuses his attention on the fig tree. No problem with interpretation there. But as someone reared in a rural environment, Christ would have known the season for figs as well as anyone. What he is looking for is evidence of the little green figs that will ripen in due course. He finds none. The tree is all leaves and no fruit; all show, and no substance. Christ often uses various plants – the mustard seed, the vine, the fig tree – to illustrate various spiritual truths. He does so now, by cursing the tree. The tree is like the backsliding nation of Israel
I confess to working out none of this by myself. When I first read the episode - while still an atheist - I took the same view of it that Russell did. Russell’s essay, in fact, was one of the sources that fed my atheism. The Bible is a difficult book, written in contexts very different from our own. I do not believe that you can understand it simply by picking it up and reading it without awareness of the background. Russell is a case in point.
It may be argued that God’s word brings its own clarity with it, that the Holy Spirit can illuminate us and enable us to see the Bible in its own light, without the need for an external human interpreter. This was the view of the Swiss reformer, Zwingli. (It would not, needless to say, have been applicable in the case of Russell). In some circumstances – when no other sources are available, for instance – I have no doubt that this does happen. Zwingli, however, found that other honest, earnest, Spirit-led believers came to interpretations that differed from his own.
This might not, of itself, be any bad thing. Argument – conducted in a spirit of mutual discovery – might be one of God’s methods for preventing his word from ossifying. As Oscar Wilde said – albeit of a very different sort of book – “Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital”. Lack of controversy about it proves that the thing is trivial.
At the other end of the scale is the view that the laity should not bother themselves with the Bible. Leave it to the priests to interpret it for them. There is a lot to be said for this view, and for some of the laity it may very well be the right solution.
For myself, I will keep my Bible that Tyndale died to give me.
But beside it, I will keep a couple of commentaries.
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