Context: A False God

"Context" is one of the false gods of biblical studies, biblical studies referring not exclusively to what happens in the academy, but also in the church.

Context is especially praised at the level of translation. Just like in English, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Aramaic have words with many meanings. How do we determine which meaning to use in a given situation? Omniscient Context tells us.

The Ever-Blessed Context also receives much praise in hermeneutics (of which "translation" could be a subcategory, depending on how you look at it). Preachers and academics alike will tell you certain words, passages, and pericopes are misinterpreted, because they are taken out of Context's loving hands.

Take the Hebrew word dowd. It is translated "beloved" many times in the Song of Songs. Dowd is the same word used in describing how Esther and Mordecai know each other: she is the daughter of Mordecai's dowd, generally understood to be his uncle. How do we know that "dowd" refers to a lover in the Song of Songs and to an uncle in Esther and other places?

Thanks be to Context.

But Context isn't exactly clear here. Love in ancient Israel included a lot of relationships understood as taboo in current, US-American culture. Would it really have been that unheard of for Mordecai to have catamite or some other sort of male lover? Pederasty and homosexuality was not unheard of in ancient times and although Mordecai seems very traditionally Hebrew in this story, we cannot be sure how much he may have acclimated to Persian culture at this point in the exile.

But now I've gone outside of Context's realm. Context in translation is immediate context, not levitical laws, cultural mores, and, of course, the heterosexual bias of the majority of biblical translators and readers. By immediate context alone, we cannot translate the dowd of Esther or the Song of Songs definitively as uncle or lover.

However, Context is wider than just a single book. Although the Christian or Hebrew Bible is not immediate context for Esther--the book was written independently of any canon--it is an Israelite book and therefore has Israelite stories in its background, including levitical laws.

But levitical laws do not change the scandals that go on many places in the Bible. Sometimes God's decrees are neither obeyed nor condemned in the Bible. Famously, Hewbrew midwives in Egypt refused to obey Pharaoh when told to kill all baby boys born to Hebrew women. The midwives simply don't do it, but they concoct a story for Pharaoh. That is, they lie, breaking one of the Ten Commandments God later gives the Hebrew people. What is God's response to these lies? "So God was kind to the midwives" (Exodus 1:20). Mordecai could be a Sodomite and God might not care. Apparently God doesn't always care when you're a liar.

Where will Context lead us next? Or more precisely, where does Context end?

"Il n'y a pas de hors-texte."
--Jacques Derrida

There is nothing outside the text (or: there is no outside to the text). To state it positively: everything is context.

No matter how much we use the name of Context, it is in vain. If I argued well, you now see how Context (at least immediate context) cannot show us if Mordecai's relationship to Ahihail was lover or nephew. Neither do we know if the relationship in the Song of Songs is purely sexual or if it is sexual and familial. But we can still have more to consider in the name of Context, because we, too, are part of the Context.

The Hebrew scriptures did not "close" with the writing of the last book. Neither did it "close" with canonization. Interpretations came afterwards and people still cite how early Rabbis (famously, the Mishnah) and commentators understood those texts. They became part of the text the moment they read it, the moment they entered into it, learning it intimately, becoming dowd, both family and lover--becoming one.

Or, if you don't appreciate my blend of text- and reader-oriented theory, imagine, then, how some get from Context being the Hebrew scriptures to Context including the New Testament. Then how Context begins to include language: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English. For that matter, translation context includes many different versions of the texts we know as the individual books of the Bible. Finally, translation necessarily includes the translator as part of the context, because translation is interpretation. Then the subsequent interpreters have their own contexts that begin to swirl around in the amorphous context that influences the interpretations of other interpreters.

You may trust that God has aided translation to be accurate. Even so, you have again entered the context, because your interpretation includes your beliefs, what many hermeneuticians would prefer to call your "pretext." But, "il n'y a pas de hors-texte." It is all context.

You are context. I am context. Our histories, backgrounds, and cultures are context. Context is not omniscient in the sense that it knows all. However, perhaps Context is omniscient in the sense that it knows everything known, since everything is Context. We--everything--are the body of Context. When we die, we enter more completely (in the sense of being finished) into the relationship of the trinity of Context (author, text, and reader).

Perhaps Context isn't that false of a god after all, just not in the traditional understanding of a god.

Agape Isn't Love: Translation & Loving God

Ancient Greek doesn't have a word for love.

Your Greek textbook and a zillion preachers will disagree, but despite the odds, I stand firm: Greek doesn't have a word for love.

Certainly, Greek has a number of words we translate as love, but none of them are words for love. Greek existed well before any form of English. How foolish to say Greek would have any words "for love," as if a group of people sat around inventing the language and decided to create a number of words "for love."

As English speakers, it is easy to understand "love" as one complex emotion, no matter how often we differentiate between different sorts of love. The vast permutations of love are just that: variations on a theme, not different emotions.

I cannot imagine the Ancient Greeks had any concept of what we call "love," which is not to say the didn't love, they just didn't understand what we call love. They had concepts of agape, philia, eros, and sturge. They may have even sensed similarities between these emotions, much in the way we understand similarities between like, love, passion, and hate. At the end of the Gospel According to John, Jesus asks Peter, "Do you agape me more than these?" (I'm not conjugating these verbs, for simplicity's sake).

Peter answers, "Yes, Lord, you know I philia you."

Jesus asks the question again, but differently. "Do you agape me?" Peter answers the same.

Then a third time Jesus asks the question, except not the same question. This time Jesus asks, "Do you philia me?" When Peter responds, he still uses the word philia.

Some connection exists here between philia and agape, a connection preachers make much ado over. Perhaps some of the ado is warranted, perhaps some of it isn't. I'm not concerned so much with what preachers make of this passage.

I'm concerned with us thinking Jesus and Peter were talking about two different kinds of love. John didn't simply switch between words "for love" for variety's sake. When you write, do you sometimes switch between the phrase "he fell" and "he has fallen," since both are phrases for the word "nafal" in Hebrew? I know I often use the following phrases nearly interchangeably when making subtle points like John 21: "He will remember," "He remembers," and "He used to remember." After all, they are all phrases for "yizcor" in Hebrew.

I'm not just making some unnecessary point. OK, you understand how self-centered our language regarding translation is, which is great. Precision is a good aim in communication, no matter how impossible it is.

Marva Dawn mentions a few words in Greek we translate as "love." The last word she lists is agape. "This last love, of course, is the richest of all." But agape isn't love. To adapt a saying from Dr. Gerald Keown, "Agape is agape." Agape is not love, because it is nothing else but agape. We misunderstand the biblical authors if we think they had a hierarchy of love with agape at the top and eros or some other love at the bottom.

We misunderstand love and agape if we think the Greek language outshines English because it has multiple nuances "for love." The point is getting closer, my friends. In our station, living thousands of years after the Greeks, we are blessed to enrich our understanding of the overarching concept of love. For us, love does encompass agape, philia, eros, and storge. Love is not agape, because agape is too narrow. However, we understand agape is a part of love. It is love as much as philia and eros are love.

Instead of picking up on the many differences between them, we can love doritos, love pets, love justice, love family, love friends, love through sex, love neighbor, love earth, and love God. Instead of focusing on the differences, our language helps us focus on the similarities. Sometimes we even confuse ourselves, replacing a desire for sexual love with a love for doritos, a desire for familial love with an unholy love for sex (which is different than love through sex).

Sometimes, we can purposefully and beautifully confuse these loves, expressing our love for God through our love for food in Eucharist, through our love of our neighbors, through our love of our families, through our love for God's creation, through our love of sexual language, through our love of humor, through our love for ourselves.

When we spend too much time on permutating love, we think we can only love God by some abstract concept of "agape-ing" God: through singing praises to God, through thanking God for things, through praying to God, through attending events centered on talking about God, through attending Christian schools, through going to church.

Certainly, the Greeks have aided us with the beauty of their language and their different words for what we call love. The concept of agape is also a great gift. It is a word I treasure, but not in the isolated (non)sense listed above where we forsake love for the sake of a mistaken agape.

Let us not forget the beauty of our own language. Let us love God by loving, something no biblical author could communicate, because of the limitations of their language. If we get too wrapped up in "agape-ing" God, we don't love God. If we intend to love God, we need to do it through loving everyone and everything else, too.