Metaphors and Meaning: The Power and Pitfalls of Interpretation

How Shared Context Shapes Our Understanding and Challenges Authoritarian Narratives

Metaphors are useful for understanding. Using familiarity to explain complicated things is a proven method of education. Plus, storytelling through extended metaphor is the backbone of literature. Consider the parables of the New Testament and the Hebrew mashal, or allegory, which is the genre in which New Testament parables participate.

For these mashalim (plural) to be effective, the audience has to share a cultural context with the storyteller. This is the point being raised if someone were to ask, “Do you think you fell out of a coconut tree?”

But metaphors are limited without that shared context.

Absent a shared context, the allegory's meaning can be imposed upon the story rather than extracted from it. The Biblical examples are especially useful because few texts have had meaning thrust upon them more than the Bible. Wherever the Bible is to be found, not far away is someone looking to exploit that literature for their structuring of power.

The other side of the allegorical coin is the ability to “make the text say anything we want.”

These allegories function within the realm of interpretation, and it’s from interpretation that any literature, from Shakespeare to the Bible, gets its authority. These texts have no inherent authority. Authority is conferred onto the text by the interpretive community.

My tradition follows volumes of rabbinic writings that discuss the proper interpretation and application of the law. From this point of view, study, interpretation, allegory, forms of argumentation, and debate are sacred works. Mitzvot even! Commandments! Take prohibitions of work on the sabbath. There are 39 melachot, or categories of work, that are prohibited on Shabbat. For example, carrying. But what exactly counts as carrying? Oh, we’ve got a Talmud for that. What about preparing food? Also prohibited on Shabbat. I love a good cholent, a traditional Jewish dish made before the sabbath and held warm in a slow cooker or low-heat oven to be prepared on Friday and enjoyed on Shabbat. That’s good with us, and it’s a great hot dish during cold winter sabbaths. Is that preparing food? Our rabbis have ruled it’s not. Will you find a verse in Torah with a cholent recipe? No, you won’t, but we have this:

This is what the Lord has commanded: Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil, and all that is left over put aside to be kept until morning (Exodus 16.23 NRSVUE).

Baked into the tradition (pun) is an extended discourse of debate and interpretation. 

You can see how the authority granted to the text here is rabbinic authority earned through debate.

Now consider the Christian doctrine of sola scriptura: The Bible is perfectly clear and can be understood by any honest reader without an intermediary or interpreter. The authority granted the text in the latter is profoundly different from the authority conferred on the text in the former.

Now, I’m a “let a thousand flowers bloom” type of guy, and so long as you let me cite the Talmud now and again, I’m happy to let you say what ‘faith like a mustard seed’ means. But there’s one catch here: We both must agree that we’re playing in the interpretive space and within interpretation, no one is technically wrong. I certainly think there are more historically informed, culturally sensitive, and more expertly translated interpretations of thousands of years old literature that more faithfully represent what an author had in mind when composing the text, but to quote Bright Eyes, “it’s more like a song and less like its math”; though, he was talking about love.

Because I read, say, the gospels through a Jewish lens, I’ll look to something like the prologue to the Gospel According to John, you know, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with Gd…” and see a Jewish midrash on Genesis. I’ll recognize that the word logos has a long Jewish tradition within the wisdom literature as a pre-existent and eternal sort of thing. I’ll note that the Jewish philosopher Philo may more or less agree with the gospel’s author. In contrast, Christians will identify this word with Jesus. And while I think I’m right, neither of us is wrong. This is the basis for multiculturalism and pluralism.

In the realm of interpretation, we are welcome to apply our cultural context, background beliefs, and extended metaphors to the text. This is why high school students still write term papers on Romeo and Juliet. I suspect there is a canon of accepted commentary on the play, but we recognize the utility of asking students to do some interpretive work independently.

So what, Adam?

Two lessons emerge: First, the meanings are never fully exhausted when interpreting any body of literature. Settled canon may result from consensus conferences and learning from the expertise of each previous generation to ultimately arrive at the accepted view. Still, the possibility of revelation is never closed. I don’t mean divine revelation, but you’re happy to interpret it that way. That’s sort of the point, right? This first lesson states that we have been and will be interpreters of any text anytime we pick it up. It’s inevitable. Whoever the text was written for, it’s not us, and like any conversation that we join mid-stream without the full context, we’ll be filling in the gaps based on what we bring to the analysis.

The second lesson is that we must agree on the first lesson! Indeed, all of us are engaged in interpretation all the time, and while some may think we’re right, none of us can be wrong when it comes to interpretation. In philosophical terms, we may call this underdetermination of theory by evidence. We don’t have enough evidence to decide on the correct interpretation, and instead, we select the meaning that is most likely true based on the available evidence. While I think I can make a compelling case for the Jewish take on John’s prologue, I can’t exactly call the author up and ask if that’s what they had in mind, and so, I can’t decisively rule against an alternative reading.

Failing to reach a consensus that we each operate within our cultural context or “interpretive community” diagnoses the problem with this “Bible-based curriculum” called for in public schools. This imposes a meaning onto the text–an interpretation–with the full power of the state behind it.

Christian Nationalism denies everything I’ve argued for up to this point. It says there is one discoverable meaning behind the text; it is certain and absolute, and not only that, we have that truth, they say. Like any system of domination, Christian Nationalism imposes meaning onto the text that best serves its interests and then seeks to teach that interpretation as the correct view. This is why some Christian clergy with different views are called “false teachers,” it’s not a disagreement with the interpretation; it’s a claim that capital T Truth is available, and what you have is false. It's not “you’ve got a different interpretation,” it’s “You’re wrong.” Period. And from there, it’s a short trip to “You’re undermining our Christian values.” Values that the holders of power established.

To return to the introduction, metaphors are useful for understanding, but without proper context, meaning can be imposed rather than extracted. This is ‘True’ because we say it is. If you don’t abide by this interpretation, you’re wrong, and because we have right and wrong circumscribed, now we can legislate, police, and prosecute different perspectives. Meaning must be flattened to fit the authoritarian agenda. There is little room in a hierarchy for disagreement. Pluralism threatens authority, and drawing one’s conclusion disrupts the accepted order. A free press is an enemy because it confronts ideology with facts, and education is a threat because, by design, it introduces competing perspectives. Education chips away at your ability to claim the Truth; you have to earn it through work and discovery.

The Bible is a collection of human-authored source documents compiled over a thousand years and undergoing significant phases of editing and redaction. It meant something to its original audience, and that’s not us. What it means to us is up for debate, and debates are won through careful thinking, not powerful coercion. We must learn from metaphor while recognizing its limitations.

My effort is to remind us that truth is discoverable, but it takes work. Without the work of study, debate, and careful thinking, it’s too easy to conceive of truth as whatever the most powerful person in the room tells us it is. They get away with it because they’ve convinced you that interpretation is woke and allowing others to hold differing views is seeking to persecute you. As for me, I’d rather work in uncertainty than be fed ‘truth’ by a tyrant.