Letras Inglesas

Seminario de Literarura

Biblical Literature

Sebastian Novoa Gam

Dra. Emma Julieta Barreiro

An Instrumental Reading: The Bible as Contact Zone and Historical Engine of Transformation

Throughout Western history, the Bible’s historic assemblage has suffered a multitude of changes

that lead it to be one of the most authoritative texts ever written. A text that explained the origin

of the human race, its developments, and its migrations, the laws and morals that govern them.

Our beginning and our end. From its very definition as the book of books, the Bible responds to a

dialogical structure between many genres such as prose, poetry, history, prophecy, etc.; in a few

words, the text forms ways of knowing and of being. How the Bible came to be recognized as a

method in which the human race could gain a deeper understanding of meaning itself? If we

understand politics as a vast tread of ties that bind individuals with each other with specific aims

for transformation, then, is it not the Bible –and its dialogical structure– one of the greatest books

on how politics are made by members of our species? It is for this very reason that in the

following lines, I want to explain how is that the hermeneutical sites in which the Bible was

uttered were deeply connected to a political agenda. I also want to trace the potency contained

inside the political usage of the Bible in the 17th century by authors such as John Donne and John

Milton and finally how, by means of homilies, the public interpretation of the text has profound

consequences in its listeners, that is, the acknowledging of an immanent power for liberation or

for submission.
 In order to display my line of thought, let us begin with a statement: even before its

congregation in the books that formed the Septuagint in the third century BCE, the texts that

would form the Bible were political texts1. Why? Let us remember that before it gained the

preeminence as one of the most authoritative texts ever written by members of our species, the

texts that formed the Tanakh talked about the history of an oppressed people and their road to

liberation:

8 Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. 9 And he said

unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than

we: 10 Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass,

that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against

us, and so get them up out of the land. (Ex. 1: 8-10)

Five centuries later, the doctors of the faith enlarged the text and a new religious branch appeared

and was also caught in the wheel of violence. Oppression found its figure now anchored in the

teachings urged in the New Testament: the Christian Martyr. How is it that the process that the

text suffered moved it from its liberating stage to an authoritarian voice that contained

everything? If we take into consideration that the hermeneutical sites in which a text is studied

and interpreted deeply affect the general understanding of the final hermeneutical product, it is

the work of translation, the commentary to it, and the exegesis of the text itself, what in turn can

help us to understand the political implications of this movement to the authoritative voice.

The first hermeneutical site for this kind of approach is the work of translation. We have

to remember that “…the language in which we customarily read the Bible is the fourth language

from the original. If the original language of the scripture that Christians call the “Old

1
For the benefit of this argument, it would be helpful to take into consideration that the assemblage of the Septuagint
was made in a political exile.
Testament” and Jews call Tanakh (or Hebrew Bible) was Hebrew, then between them and us

there remain two additional languages: namely, Greek, and Latin” (Goddhart18). If we follow the

definition of politics presented above, then “what happens when the intervening cultures [of the

translation in question] are not relative ‘transparencies’ for such transmissions… but maintain

strong and distinctive perspectives or investments of their own?” (19). We may have to

understand that the investments of a culture inside a translation are what in turn move it from one

place to the other. In order to understand the development of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the

way in which we receive this tradition in a specific format of translation –that is the English

versions that will be mentioned here– I want to underline two questions proposed by Goodhart:

“Does Greek culture have an investment in Platonic or Aristotelian thinking? Does Roman

culture have an investment in empire –in laws and roads? And have we ever known a culture with

strong investments that do not show up in its daily language?” (19). These questions pave the

way to place us in a second instrumental movement, that is, the series of commentaries present in

the Geneva Bible, its critique to the sovereign powers in England and to their political agenda.

Historically, we have approached to the word heresy as a strong theoretical challenge to a

fixed set of beliefs in a religious establishment. From the beginning, Protestantism arises as

heresy. If we understand the liberating potential of this word as a collective process that begins

with a self-critical attitude towards oneself and later to the set of beliefs that one is following, and

ultimately leads to a collective process of taking of consciousness, then, is it not the very

definition of heresy the first stage of a direct questioning of the instances of the power? In the

17th century, this kind of questioning became quite radical when it began to review the actions of

the ruler. Since this type of questioning had a radical format, it was the hermeneutical field that

the Bible opened –in a society where most people who attended congregations had developed a

deep personal relationship with the texts contained within the book– what in turn helped the
interpreters to codify the message of liberation within a common core: “In the censored society of

sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England those who most wished to communicate, to discuss,

were those who knew their Bible best” (Hill 37). According to Christopher Hill, “Warning

examples from the Old Testament were regularly quoted as the powers and responsibilities of the

monarchy came increasingly to be questioned” (47). In relationship with this statement, we find

the commentaries of the Geneva Bible. “The Geneva Bible came from a closely knit group of

Marian exiles, including Laurence Tomson, who were prominent in the radical wing of the

Puritan movement under Elizabeth, and who nevertheless had powerful protectors in the

aristocracy” (41). The notes commented on the passages of the Bible with such political

implications that the king James I2 thought of it as the worst translation for its “very partial,

untrue, seditious, and savoring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits..." (43). The

commentary displayed by the Geneva Bible became such a strong political factor that the

authority to interpret the text itself became a “battle-field. For those who knew it well, judicious

selection could turn up the desired answers to most problems. You could find defences of the

status quo — ‘the powers that be are ordained of God’ (Romans XIII.1); but you could also find

severe criticism of kings, defences of the rights of the poor, attacks on usury.[202]” (39). The text

was closely knit to the Calvinist protestant movement that was anchored in Geneva. We have to

remember that “Since Calvin lived in a republic he was free to express more seditious sentiments

than English divines could do” (41). The political impact of a commentary on the sacred text

contrasted the method followed in a republic with that of the sovereign rule enforced in England.

The direct critique did not exempt the king. In the Calvinist program, the ruler was just another of

God’s vassals and not a direct vessel.

2
In order to take it out of circulation inside the realm, James I ordered the fabrication of a new Authorized Version.
This is why we call the version he ordered as King James Version.
 …the fear of God must go before, that kings may obtain their authority...Earthly princes

deprive themselves of all authority when they rise up against God, yea, they are

unworthy to be counted amongst the company of men. We ought rather to spit in their

faces than to obey them when they...spoil God of his right’…‘nothing more pernicious

than a corrupt and wicked prince, who spreadeth abroad his corruptions over all the

body’… (Calvin qtd. in Hill 41,43).

From these interventions, we can start to appreciate the installment of a transit in which the

translations and the commentary play a crucial role in England’s historical context of 17th century

and all the political turmoil that surrounded it. The exploration of the different political agendas

(that of the republic, or that of the monarchy), retranslated the religious practices as political

dictum that found its echo in the political struggles that came before and after the introduction of

the Geneva Bible.

Our third movement places us in the final stage of the transit in which authority and

legitimization reproduce, nourish and maintain the biblical sphere of political power. This third

movement is the hermeneutical site of exegesis. The approach to the term as a critical explanation

of a religious text will help us to delineate the final stage of the political preeminence that the

Bible had in the 17th century. In order to accomplish this, we must contrast two exegetical

readings of the text: one of John Milton and one of John Donne.

In the eve of august of 1622, king James I issued a document called Directions for

Preachers; in this document, the king ordered the clergy to reform the way in which sermons

were given in the following manner:

no preacher ‘shall presume…to declare, limit, or bound out, by way of positive doctrine,

in any lecture or sermon the power, prerogative, and jurisdiction, authority, or domain of

sovereign princes, or otherwise meddle with these matters of … and the differences
 betwixt princes and the people.” Further, “no preacher . . . shall presume . . . to fall into

bitter invectives and indecent railing speeches against the person either Papists or

Puritans, but modestly and gravely (when they occasioned thereunto by the text of

Scripture), free both the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England from the

aspersions of [any] adversary.’ (John Donne in 1622)

This document presents us with the prelude for the Sermon XLIII by John Donne. This sermon

was uttered on November 5th in 1622 in the anniversary of the celebration of the Gunpowder Plot.

The purpose of this sermon was that Donne –installed now by James I as a Dr. in Divinity– gave

a political sermon in support of the king’s rule. The sermon

insists that good subjects owe their trust and obedience to the monarch regardless of

whether he is a good king (Josiah) or a bad king (Zedekiah). The fault of Catholics is

precisely in their disobedience, in their refusal to “have this man to reign over us” (Luke

19:14). Nevertheless, Donne is also quick to defend James as a Josiah, a “good king,”

echoing the rhetoric of the reign of Edward VI when Edward in his efforts to transform

the Church of England from a Latin to an English church was leading a reformation like

the one Josiah led. Donne also reassures his congregation that James is a “good text

man,” and no “good text man” would ever be a Papist. (John Donne 1622)

In his sermon, Donne revels on the authority of the King, the church and the nobility to rule and

defend the faith: “Accept, O Lord, this sacrifice, to which thy Spirit giveth fire; This Praise…and

this of Prayer…upon thy servant, our Soveraigne, for his Defence of the true Faith…”(Donne

397). Following this structure, Donne deploys an exegetical comment on the Lamentations of

Jeremy. In his explanation, Donne argues that the king must be obeyed regardless the quality of

his rule: “But whether Jeremy lament here the death of a good King, of Josiah, … Or he lament

the transportation and the misery of an ill King, of Zedekiah, …we argue not… we embrace that
which arises from both , That both good Kings, and bad Kings, Josiah, and Zedekiah, are the

anointed of the Lord, and the breath of the nostrils, that is, The life of the people…”(399). Hill

also reminds us of the moment in which the people under the rule of a sovereign must install

some precautions around his power: “God warned his people in Deuteronomy that if they insisted

on a king they must impose very strict conditions on him (XVII.14-20). Samuel repeated the

warning (I Samuel VIII.6-19), listing the awful things which kings would do to their subjects”.

(Hill 46). How is that exegesis help us to display a particular political agenda and therefore to

enable the possibility of resistance? If we take into consideration that “The Bible could offer

codes by which novel or unpopular ideas might be communicated with less risk” (39), the

exegetical movement would help the listener to take a political stand and to enable the transit

previously stated in order to regain the political agency that the king wanted to suppress by

means of his absolutist rule. In contrast with Donne’s sermon, we have the exegesis of Milton.

The poet announces the possibility of not only dismissing the command of a fallen ruler, but of

overthrowing him when he has become a tyrant: “Milton used the fact that Jehu killed his rightful

king at the bidding of a prophet to argue that ‘it was not permissible and good to put a tyrant to

death because God commanded it, but rather God commanded it because it was permissible and

good’[275]” (Milton and Hill 46). A broken language arises, the tongue of code, an obscure

congregation of references to us, but in Milton's time the possibility for critical thinking –and

ultimately for resistance– was the possibility that this kind of texts opened.

All of these three movements give us a possibility to nurture our approach to the sacred

text and, at the same time, leaves us with a teaching. A teaching that would later on be submitted

to another process of translation, commentary, and exegesis, by the enforcers of yet another

“heretical” doctrine, the Theology of Liberation: the Bible, at least for a Christian, does not give
sense to life, rather it is a way in which historically the word of God has manifested. Life

becomes the field in which we look for sense itself.

Bibliography

The Bible. Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha. Great Britain: Oxford University

Press. 2008.

Donne, John. Fifty Sermons. Great Britain: Ja. Fletcher. 1649.

Goodhart, Sandor. “Opening Genesis”. In Prose Studies Vol. 34, No. 1. pp. 18-31. 2012.

Hill, Christopher. The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution. UK: Penguin

Books. 1993.

“John Donne in 1622” Online article in https://vpcp.chass.ncsu.edu/john-donne-preaching/ [Last

Access: 12/01/2017]