Eisegesis - the act of reading in to a text. The thing we are all guilty of when reading the Bible, especially the bits we know well and have heard since we were small.
Yesterday's Bible study - which was excellent - took us to the Samaritan woman at the well. The notes, which are basically good, led us down that familiar path that says she must have been morally suspect because after all she had had five husbands and now lived with a man who was 'not really her husband' (GNB). Here is classic eisegesis.
Had her five husbands died?
Had her five husbands each divorced her because she burned the tea (a legitimate excuse for divorce in those days I believe)
Had any of them loved her or had she been a mere chattel in various land-ownership deals?
And the man she now 'had' - did she choose him or did he choose her? Was she a concubine (something that in OT times had failed to cause the divine eyebrows to rise)?
It is hard to imagine how hard life would have been for someone who had, for example, been widowed five times or divorced (sent away as displeasing) five times. There is a danger that we read in to her status a sense that she had chosen not be married to this latest man, that somehow she was like a 21st century minor celeb in and out of divorce courts all too often.
So, I was a bit annoyed with the notes.
However, our leader had done a brilliant job and took us on in our thinking abour people who are despised because of who they are and/or what they. We were introduced (or I was, some already knew of these folk) to Mary Seacole and Josephine Butler, each of whom worked with people on the margins of society and risked ridicule and rejection herself. I found myself reminded of the BMS Night Light project in Thailand working with people trapped in the sex industry and of the risks that brings. It also served as a reminder that there are women who work the streets of Glasgow to put food on the table for their children.
Mysteriously my personal devotions (IBRA) had the exact same text set for yesterday. So to end here is the thing that struck me, it's not new, but it made me think. Jesus wanted a drink of water, the despised woman had a bucket; if he was to get a drink he needed to ask her for help. What does that say to me about pride, arrogance, independence and prejudice? What is it I need that someone I despise can offer me? Will I have the humility to ask?
Oh yes, a last thought... Jesus didn't say to the woman 'haste ye to the resgistry office and get ye wed' - how much do we impose our values/norms beyond what Jesus requires?
Comments
"Oh yes, a last thought... Jesus didn't say to the woman 'haste ye to the resgistry office and get ye wed' - how much do we impose our values/norms beyond what Jesus requires?"
And how much damage do we do to the individual and her/his perception of what it means to be a Christian as a result? Perhaps we need to adapt the slogan - less "WWJD" and more "WWHD" (What WOULDN'T He Do?)
A heretic's view...
What is wrong with eisegesis? Exogesis assumes that the text contains a fixed 'meaning' which can be recovered. Whereas it seems to me that I will read a story such as this one very differently to the way that you, as a woman, read it. We are both reading the story from a 3rd millennium perspective and can never recover the original author's intent.
So I will read my meaning into the text. The problem arises when I claim that my truth is THE TRUTH - ie, the only legitimate reading of the text.
Hmm. Well if what I type next is total nuttiness blame the drugs...
I think there is a difference between 'eisegesis' and a 'reader-response' though I'm prepared to concede the line is sometimes fine and inevitably blurry. It is the unthinking acceptance of someone else's reading that I think I'm questioning. Things like, Mary of Magdala as a woman of questionable morals, or Martha as cooking Jesus' dinner in the Luke story are but two examples of stuff, of varying import perhaps, that are blatantly not what it says. Or even the young Daniel in the lion den to go back a few months...
I'm also not convinced exegesis automatically means only one 'true' reading either if we have the audacity to claim that God's Spirit-wisdom emables us to hear God through the written word. I'm sure I was taught that exegesis is only one first tool/stage in working with a text. Some bloke back in the first century is recorded as saying "what does it say, how do you read it" which seems to put both 'tools' together. Or am I just hoist be my own petard?!
Maybe there's a Bible scholar out there who can put me right?
Thanks for making me think though - it de-mushes my mind a little.