The Return of Oral Hermeneutics: As Good Today as It Was for the Hebrew Bible and First-Century Christianity

311 Pages·2020·2.774 MB·English

by  Tom Steffen, William Bjoraker

The Return of Oral Hermeneutics
As Good Today as it Was for the Hebrew Bible and First-Century
Christianity
Tom Steffen William Bjoraker
AND
R. Daniel Shaw
FOREWORD BY

THE RETURN OF ORAL HERMENEUTICS
As Good Today as it Was for the Hebrew Bible and First-Century Christianity
Copyright © 2020 Tom Steffen and William Bjoraker. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or
reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write:
Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Wipf & Stock
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
PAPERBACK ISBN: 978-1-5326-8480-7
HARDCOVER ISBN: 978-1-5326-8481-4
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-5326-8482-1
Copyright © 2011 by the Common English Bible. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1998 by the Complete Jewish Bible: David H. Stern. Jewish New Testament Publications, Inc. Used by permission.
All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked “Darby” are taken from the Darby Translation Bible (Public Domain).
Copyright © 2001 by the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®): Crossway. Used by permission. All rights
reserved.
Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible (Public Domain).
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by The Message by Eugene H. Peterson: NavPress. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®:
The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1982 by the New King James Version®: Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by the New International Version®, NIV®: Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission. All rights
reserved.
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by the New Living Translation: Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission. All rights
reserved.
Copyright © 2014, 2016 by the Tree of Life Version: Tree of Life Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2012 by The Voice Bible: Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 08/16/22
Table of Contents
Title Page
Foreword
Preface
Abbreviations
Setting the Stage
Part 1: Demonstrations
Chapter 1: Elisha and the Widow’s Oil
Chapter 2: Reflections on the Elisha Story
Part 2: Propositions
Chapter 3: Orality’s Influence on Text and Teaching
Chapter 4: Oral Hermeneutics
Chapter 5: Hebrew Hermeneutics
Chapter 6: Character Theology
Chapter 7: Questioning Our Questions
Chapter 8: Reflections
Part 3: Echoes
Chapter 9: Elisha and General Naaman
Chapter 10: Reflections on the Elisha Story
Concluding Reflections
Glossary
Appendix A: Three Communication Eras
Appendix B: The Continuum between Reading and Listening
Appendix C: Alter’s Oral-Textual Parameters
Appendix D: The Quintessential Characters, Stories, and Texts of the Old
Testament
Appendix E: The Wise Counselor Story
Bibliography
“I welcome this provocative book. Steffen and Bjoraker rightly challenge Christians to embrace
a more balanced approach to interpreting the Bible and applying it faithfully to daily life. They
offer a lengthy defense of oral hermeneutics, of course, but they also show how to guide ordinary
men and women to use oral hermeneutical processes to dig deeply into God’s word and open
themselves to its transforming power.”
—Grant Lovejoy
, International Mission Board, SBC
“Whatever you’ve thought about understanding the Bible, think again. Whatever you said in
Bible studies, sermons, or wrote in commentaries, think again. Most of us were schooled only in
textual ways to read Scripture. But that’s a serious neglect of how to listen to God’s voice,
especially if we want to understand the Bible the way original hearers did. All of us need to enter
into the world of oral culture, and Steffen and Bjoraker do a masterful job of showing the way.
You owe it to yourself and to God to read this groundbreaking, hermeneutics-altering work.”
—D. Brent Sandy
, co-author of The Lost World of Scripture: Ancient Literary Culture and Biblical Authority
“Steffen and Bjoraker reestablish the place and power of experiencing the word in community.”
—Regina Manley
, author of StoryFire
“This book is a must-read for any Bible teacher who wants to understand how to effectively
teach the Bible because all Bible teachers engage in oral communication of the Bible message at
some point. Anyone interested in effective communication of the message of the Bible will
benefit greatly from learning how oral hermeneutics works. This book is engaging enough for
the scholar and yet accessible to the newcomer to this subject because of the ‘handles’ the
authors include in the book. Readers can actually see how this works. I highly recommend this
book to all Bible teachers and serious students of the Bible.”
—Bulus Y. Galadima
, Cook School of Intercultural Studies, Biola University
“Steffen and Bjoraker bravely go where few have dared to venture.”
—Larry W. Caldwell
, Sioux Falls Seminary
“Nearly erased or forgotten, oral hermeneutics is rediscovered, re-robed, and renewed. Steffen
and Bjoraker are passionate academicians with the heart and hands of experienced practitioners.
Elegantly written through storytelling, calmly articulated with a sense of urgency, compellingly
illuminating the vivid oral voices of communities, the authors propose and provide ways and
means forward. A must-read for anyone who is serious about the Bible and engagement in this
century.”
—Samuel E. Chiang
, The Wycliffe Seed Company
“Steffen and Bjoraker have written an important book that, used properly, can revitalize the use
of the Bible—bringing passion, life, and interaction. The book sets out a program for interaction
and transformation that can be very powerful in so many ways. It is important to note that an
ancient Hebraic way of thinking (not always the Greek influenced Rabbinic way) was based on
engaging truth on a personal level. This book shows how that way of approach to the Scriptures
can be made available to the modern reader—Jew and Gentile. . . . I hope that many small groups
embrace the methods provided here. It will revitalize all who desire to see the success of small
groups as essential to the life of congregations.”
—Daniel Juster
, Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations; Tikkun International
“Tom Steffen and William Bjoraker make a convincing case that interpreting the Bible orally has
been neglected too long, both in the West and the majority world. They not only lay out the
importance of oral hermeneutics, but they also illustrate it practically from their own extensive
experience. I only wish I had encountered this book when I began teaching the Bible. Carefully
researched and passionately argued, this book will help you see biblical narratives through a
fresh and exciting lens.”
—Dean Flemming
, MidAmerica Nazarene University
“May well lead to a counterrevolution in the way we read, witness, write, and share God’s
story!”
—John Cheong
, Asian Centre for Mission
“I have wanted a book like this to exist for a long time! Tom Steffen and William Bjoraker give
us a glimpse into what it could look like to interpret the Bible in light of its oral background.
Rather than merely identify the limitations to textual interpretation, they make a positive
contribution. The book weaves together insights from multiple disciplines. It draws from their
experience and the best of academic scholarship. The authors challenge readers to consider how
ancient oral practices can inform contemporary ministry strategies. This book deserves a slow,
careful read. I expect The Return of Oral Hermeneutics will have long-lasting influence among
missionaries as it should for anyone who cares about biblical interpretation.”
—Jackson Wu
, author of Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes
“Whatever we want to call walking through God’s great book with adults with limited formal
education or any adult who prefers a non-reading experience, we must find a learning approach
that works for this population—the majority of those on our planet. Like Steffen and Bjoraker, I
have lived through the failure of textual hermeneutics with my own national partners. Something
must change in the way Westerners attempt to do Bible study with the rest of the world—
especially with our non-reading friends. I pray and believe this resource and others sure to follow
will help along those lines.”
—Lynn Thigpen
, IMB missionary, Southeast Asia
“The early church’s authoritative sacred text was less about physical and material texts as it was
the stories they told from their respective memories of texts. Their disciples were hearers, for the
most part, and not readers. Passed on through worship services were oral stories and reflections
that contained memory of that which they held to be experientially sacred. In The Return of Oral
Hermeneutics, professors Steffen and Bjoraker introduce readers to the church’s ancient word as
it sounded in the ancient world, all the while speaking to, for, and about the essence and
substance of (re)discovering storytelling—to help us recover the lost art for our own. I commend
this book.”
—Jeffrey Seif
, King’s University-Houston
“A long overdue contribution for training pastors and teachers.”
—Chuck Madinger
, International Orality Network, Manila
Foreword
THE POWER OF STORY! I can recall good stories and their tellers: my granddad, eyes twinkling as he
told of homesteading in Prineville, Oregon; a Sunday school teacher who captivated my attention
as she narrated the story of Abraham taking his son up the mountain thinking he was about to
offer his “boy” to God; stories of cannibal raids told by aging Samo men deep in the jungles of
Papua New Guinea on a longhouse porch. I sat in awe of each one. But then I put away
“childish” things and became a “man,” got a PhD in anthropology, and became a professor at
Fuller Seminary—propositions, didactic teaching with a logical argument, and publishing
became the hallmarks of my existence. What happened to a good story? Is it a thing of the past or
are we rediscovering the power of story to move human beings to reflect on what they can learn
about God and about themselves as Tom Steffen and Bill Bjoraker maintain?
We give our grateful thanks to Moses, the prophets, the translators of the Septuagint, and even
the scribes who gave Jesus such a difficult time, for the long tradition of writing God’s word
down, and preserving what was an even longer oral tradition. I recall my awe in looking at
squiggles on papyrus a few years ago at the Dead Sea Scrolls expedition in Los Angeles. I
experienced the same wonder when looking at an original of the Gutenberg Bible when it came
to the Huntington Library. I felt like I was actually looking at history—wow. But that history,
despite its value for us who live with the power of the written word, is based on a much longer
oral tradition—stories passed from generation to generation, preserving over time the essence of
what God intended us to understand about himself. And that oral style was thankfully preserved
in the transcriptions of oral text, a close proximity of how the story was presented when the
amanuensis put the oral style into writing.
Often when we from the West read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, we get a bit bored
because stories are frequently repeated. That repetition reflects the oral style that cognitive
psychologists Robert McCauley and Thomas Lawson note enhances memory.1 A story told in
great detail, later in the context of another story and then referenced repeatedly thereafter, gives
credence to the impact of retelling on memory. Stories like the Israelites crossing the Jordan
River and setting up a monument of twelve stones at their camp that first night in the land God
was in the process of giving them. The stones, we are told, were a monument of remembrance
for that momentous river crossing. Later we learn that the monument also provided an
opportunity for people to tell the story in order to remind their children what happened there, and
later still the monument is incorporated into other stories as a reminder of God’s faithfulness to
Israel (Josh 3–5 and following). Oral repetition reinforces the message behind the story but also
provides opportunity for entertaining children, and an opportunity for reflection on fond
memories which are passed from one generation to the next. This is not boring text (what
McCauly and Lawson call the “tedium effect”2), rather it is a vibrant, culturally appropriate
communication style that ensures understanding, retention, and ongoing communication, what
Daniel Sperber and Deirdre Wilson considered the essence of “relevance theory.”3 The ancient
Hebrews and their kind down through the centuries wonderfully preserved their stories as
traditions, rituals, and meaningful acts that not only enhanced relevant presentation of stories, but
made them memorable and meaningful for audiences across the ages, and around the world
today.
In this book Steffen and Bjoraker set out to recapture the wonder of orality and its impact on
our thinking. They not only show us how to tell a good story and model what they call “0ral
hermeneutics” in part 1, they provide a rationale for applying orality to our contemporary
globalizing/digitizing existence. Through the well-argued part 2, they provide for orality what
has long been the case for literary/textual approaches. They develop an argument to structure our
thinking through the implications of using our aural factors rather than our tactile responses. And
in part 3 they “represent” (as Martin Noth called it)4 the past to make it new again in order to
reinforce the lesson in part 1. In short, the book models the authors’ intent to help nonoral
processors rediscover the art of storying on the one hand, and hearing God’s word on the other.
From his years with the Ifugao in the Philippines, Steffen illustrates his discovery of oral
processing, and how that rewired his brain. Bjoraker shows how his interaction with Jewish
people around the world enabled him to recognize how orality and textuality combine to help
him appreciate a long Talmudic tradition that values story and it’s telling in any form necessary
for effective communication. Similarly, I cannot communicate without presenting what I have
learned from the Samo of Papua New Guinea. That is now a fifty-year story of language and
culture learning, translating portions of the Bible, annual visits after we went to Fuller, and now
increasing time and ongoing relationships that include renewed efforts to ensure they have God’s
word in forms they can apply to their lives. Despite many well-schooled Samo engaged as
pastors, medical orderlies, and all manner of occupations and activities, they remain, at their
core, oral storytellers. For the Samo (as most peoples of this island nation) orality is their
primary mode of learning and experiencing life.
In the last several years, my wife and I and the Wycliffe team involved have encouraged the
Samo to use their own narrative stories and songs. When they realized that they are part of the
metanarrative of the entire canon, they put themselves into God’s big picture. Rather than
singing songs to petition ancestral spirits to intervene on their behalf, they began to sing
translated portions of the Bible that answered the questions of life. As life happened, they found
stories and experiences in the lives of biblical charterers that mirrored their own. Similarly, they
allowed the biblical message to transform their rituals and ceremonies to reflect their
understanding of incarnation, God’s word with them. They relied on the Holy Spirit to counter
the spiritual powers arrayed against them. All this looked very pagan and unbiblical for the
Western-trained national missionaries who brought a linear, logical mindset that mimicked their
well-meaning teachers and benefactors from Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas.
Gradually literary biblical texts took precedent over stories, and traditional approaches were put
aside as Christianity became a Sunday morning ritual rather than an approach to life.
Many questions ensued and the beginnings of revitalization had the Samo asking who they
were as a people standing before God’s throne with all those “dressed in white” (Rev 7:9 MSG).
How could these Samo believers, who carried the texts in their hearts, recapture their first love of
Jesus born from translated Scripture they had put to song? Well, they began to sing again—not
the pedantic church songs, but rather their traditional song style applied to singing Bible verses
that connected God to life.