The Hyperreality of Sacred Writings

Concerning Biblical literalism and the view that every single letter of scripture is God-breathed

I know a few people — not many, but a few — who are even more inclined to extremes than I am. They say, “it must be this way, or everything is entirely different.” These are the only people who arrive at a view as extreme as Biblical literalism, but their reasoning has a kind of logic to it. Perhaps it even has the most logic to it. The text must mean exactly, precisely, and only what it says — or else it can mean almost anything, and we cannot actually know what it means!

I understand them, and I honor their intensity and their faith, which sometimes becomes a faith that swims against all mainstream currents, and even against the senses, if necessary. However, I am not a logician or a scientist, and I am not even a theologian. My only expertise is in thinking about literature, literary language, imagery, poetry, symbolism, and so on. And it was in that context that I first fell in love with the Bible, which was when I was about 20-years old, when I read that verse I’ve mentioned before, about the veil of the temple being rent in twain — Matthew 27:51.

The reason that verse lit me up was this: even if it did happen literally, even if it was a historic event, even if God Himself authored it: it was still, obviously, unavoidably, symbolic. That is: it signified more than what it physically was.

But once I saw that, I started to see this frankly amazing literary technique sprinkled through much of the Bible. And I feel that seeing it in these terms helped me to understand God better, so I want to share a few examples.

About eight years ago, having read the New Testament six or eight times, I fell into a weird opportunity to study the Old Testament with a Jewish person, and I discovered that sometimes, the rabbis saw in their scriptures what I was seeing in the New Testament. I learned that these seemingly mundane edicts in Deuteronomy — “Do not plant two kinds of seed in your vineyard,” “Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together,” and especially, “You shall not wear a material mixed of wool and linen together” — that these were thought to signify more than what they portray. These three examples are often understood as poetic or analogical language demonstrating the necessity of separation, and they seem pretty clear. Other examples are less clear: “Do not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.” Is it literal, symbolic — or both? There is disagreement.

And so yes: I want to acknowledge right away that this method of reading allows for and even produces disagreement, which means ambiguity. Therefore, if you are convinced that God would not confuse us like this, would not leave us groping in the fog to comprehend Him, this way of reading will not have much appeal for you. But maybe keep reading, because I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m really working through it here.

The problem is that absolutely raw historical truth is almost impossible to narrate. You might, might, be able to describe a single moment with no infusions of editorial commentary or judgment:

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

But such scenes are actually rare, and typically do not signify much at all — and therefore do not hold our attention. We all intuit the necessity of editing for narration. We know that Jesus did more things than the evangelists narrated. They never told us of how he clipped his toenails, or went to the bathroom, or laughed. These things probably occurred, but they were not narrated, because the narrators were (consciously or unconsciously, with or without guidance from the Holy Spirit, however you want to imagine) filtering for significance.

In fact, the final three sentences of the Gospel of John address this problem explicitly, and indicate that John, at least, was extremely aware of this filtering process. For the record, I love John for this. I wish I could thank him personally. He filtered with intention:

Now, there are many other things that Jesus did. If they were all written down one by one, I suppose that the whole world could not hold the books that would be written.

This is actually the birth of modernist literature, though it’s been little remarked. It’s easy to see how James Joyce might’ve read that and thought, what if I just told one day in the life of a guy, excluding nothing?—and produced Ulysses. John’s final lines impress me more every time I read them, and when you couple that meta-awareness with his much more famous opening lines, you are forced to acknowledge that this filtering mechanism is unavoidable: all cannot be told. Therefore, we must speak in distillations, in concentrated or condensed set-pieces, in order to try to communicate, in limited space, the infinite significance that believers felt was implied by the finite sequence of events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

The takeaway is that every word must have been chosen with extreme care, and that the goal was as much to reveal the meaning of what had happened as it was to report what had happened. One of the best examples of this is Matthew’s refrain, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet,” which he says something like 8+ times in the first half of his gospel. There is even the scholarly controversy about the “real meaning” of Isaiah 7:14 — the verse about a virgin conceiving — where the Hebrew word seems to indicate only “young woman,” but the Greek word used as an equivalent in the septuagint, which was the text Matthew knew, implied virgin. One can come away with a sense that the text of Isaiah, even if it was a strained translation, determined the future narration of the infancy of Jesus: he was born of a virgin because he had to be.

The older you get, and the more you read the Old Testament alongside the gospels, the more you see that a large proportion of the events narrated are narrated because they “fulfill what the Lord had spoken.” That is: the text of the Old Testament became a substantial part of the filtering mechanism in the composition of the New Testament. We are not told in Mark 11 about Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey because it was funny, or because Mark thought it memorable — we are told about it because the Old Testament prophet Zechariah said that the king would come into Jerusalem on a donkey. The fact is, Jesus, by natural (if studious) means, was very likely aware of this prophecy, and fulfilled it intentionally. He didn’t just accidentally ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. He did it because the text told him he had to.

So far, the point is: did they literally gamble for his clothes?—is that a historical fact? Well, probably. But the significance is, the writers of the gospels all knew Psalm 22:18 the way that you know “God Bless America”: They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing. They were looking for it, they saw it, they wrote it down, because the text told them they had to see it and write it down. This is what I mean by "hyperreality of sacred writings”: the text is more significant than reality—it actually produces a reality filter. Nothing (significant) is allowed to happen outside it.

Looking at the text this way leads to extremely interesting and unsettling questions: for instance, who is the naked young man who runs away as Jesus is arrested? Why is that detail told? What does it mean? It simply cannot mean nothing. The evangelists included and excluded according to a schema, according to a consistent filter. Each detail that is reported signifies something. You can read some of the widely respected commentaries on this verse here, but the point is: it can’t mean nothing.

Okay let’s get to my favorite example — the one where I’m really reaching, so that you can see how far this method of reading might go. You don’t have to adopt this view, but if you try it, it might open the New Testament for you, the gospels in particular, in a whole new light. Which is fun. Let’s go over the fourth chapter of Mark together.

In Mark 4, Jesus delivers a sequence of parables, and between them, he comments on the purpose of parables. “Gnostic” is a loaded term, but in a non-technical sense, it implies something like secret knowledge. Mark 4 certainly highlights the role of the gnostic within Jesus’ teachings. He tells the parable of the sower, and then his disciples ask him to explain it. He replies, “You have been given the secret of the Kingdom of God, but the others, who are on the outside, hear all things by means of parables, so that,” and here he quotes what is sort of a mash-up of the prophets, “They may look and look, yet not see… listen and listen, but yet not understand.” And this is where I want to suggest that the text of the Gospel of Mark begins to coach its readers about how to approach it (indeed, this is very, extremely “meta”). The evangelist reports that in this explanation, Jesus establishes the importance and purpose of parables.

Then (now, keep in mind: Mark could have arranged this any way he saw fit), Mark moves right into Jesus explaining the parable of the sower, so that Mark 1-20 consists of:

• The parable of the sower

• The purpose of parables

• The meaning of the parable of the sower

Still in chapter 4, Mark reports two more parables of Jesus — the Lamp under a bowl, and the parable of the growing seed. The growing seed is about how scattered seed grows secretly, at night, and the man who scatters them does not even understand how they grow. It’s notable that, in keeping with the theme of this portion of the text, Jesus’ image of the bowl speaks about hidden light and the revelation of what is hidden: “Whatever is hidden away will be brought out into the open, and whatever is covered up will be uncovered.” And he urges us: “Listen, then, if you have ears… pay attention!” Jesus then tells the parable of the mustard seed, and he begins with a delectable rumination where he pauses to consider what analogy he should use (!!). He has an idea, and he wants to express it, so he takes a moment to think about what he can use for a comparison. He could not formulate the idea in prose. He needed poetry: “What shall we say the Kingdom of God is like?—what parable shall we use to explain it?” he asks himself.

So now we add to the contents of the chapter:

• A lamp under a bowl

• The parable of the growing seed

• The parable of the mustard seed

Finally, we arrive at the grand finale. How will the chapter end? Mark has shown us Jesus telling four parables, speaking about the purpose of parables, and interpreting his own parables for his thick-headed disciples. When Jesus finishes speaking, Mark’s narrating voice intrudes with two sentences of commentary:

Jesus preached his message to the people, using many other parables like these; he told them as much as they could understand. He would not speak to them without using parables, but when he was alone with his disciples, he would explain everything to them.

Period. Then, with no other clues, and no further words, Mark moves on — if you’ve made it this far with me, please go just a bit further! — and reports a strange scene with numerous physical details:

On the evening of that same day Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” So they left the crowd; the disciples got into the boat in which Jesus was already sitting, and they took him with them. Other boats were there too. Suddenly, a strong wind blew up, and the waves began to spill over into the boat, so that it was about to fill with water. Jesus was in the back of the boat, sleeping with his head on a pillow. The disciples woke him up and said, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to die?” Jesus stood up and commanded the wind, “Be quiet!” and he said to the waves, “Be still” The wind died down, and there was a great calm. Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Why are you frightened? Do you still have no faith?” But they were terribly afraid and began to say to one another, “Who is this man? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

That’s it for the chapter, and the scene totally changes at the beginning of Mark 5 — so I want us to ask ourselves: what is the purpose of narrating that scene of the storm? Why mention the other side of the lake? Why mention other boats? Why the strong wind? Why the waves—why the details that they spilled into the boat? Why mention that in this case, the Son of Man actually did have a place to rest his head? Why mention these details, but not the details of the weather the day before or the day after? And to make it sharp, I want to ask: is it possible that, following Jesus’ lead, Mark the evangelist spoke to us by way of a parable, rather than merely reporting historical fact?

Before we decide, it’s worth looking quickly at two comparable Biblical storms (I’m trusting that a third, Noah’s, you know well enough). First, in the story of Jonah, Jonah tries to run away from God after God tells him to go to Ninevah. On his way to Tarshish, a huge storm comes up. The sailors are all terrified, and the storm keeps getting worse. Finally, Jonah tells them that he himself is the problem — if they throw him overboard, the sea will calm. Eventually, they chuck him, and the sea calms. It’s fine to believe that this incident is historical, but it’s “autistic” to overlook the symbolic significance of it. Storms, in the Bible, mean chaos, disintegration. Read more wisely and they might signify political strife, tribal antagonism, and so on.

My other example is the exciting and awesome story of Paul’s shipwreck in Acts 27. Was it a historical incident? I would say probably yes. But, is there a “metafictional” element woven in, which imbues the incident with significance that might have otherwise gone undetected or unremarked? Absolutely. In verse 20, the narrator remarks, “For many days, we could not see the sun or the stars, and the wind kept on blowing very hard. We finally gave up all hope of being saved.” And dear readers, I think you really should be reading that like this:

Did Odysseus really go on that zippity-doo-dah course through the Mediterranean to visit the island of the opium eaters, to be lured by the song of the sirens, to encounter the rustic ruffians with a single eye? Maybe. But do those things also signify some eternal moral truths for us, about how we ought not to get tangled up in drugs, women, and violence? Did Ithaca exist? Maybe. But the important point for The Odyssey is that Ithaca was home—heaven, even. And if you don’t read it that way, you’re missing the “gnostic” levels of significance.

When Paul’s ship looks to be sinking, the sailors want to jump overboard and swim for it to save themselves. But Paul says, “If the sailors don’t stay on board, you have no hope of being saved!” Do you really not think it possible that the narrators of these stories might work with the raw material of history to weave meaning into the events?

Back in Mark’s gospel, with another storm approaching, the disciples see Jesus walking on the water. They are all terrified as he approaches. When he gets into their boat, the wind dies down. Then Mark says, “The disciples were completely amazed, because they had not understood the real meaning of the feeding of the five thousand; their minds could not grasp it.” Isn’t that incredible? The guys who were actually there with Jesus to witness the actual historical event still did not fathom its significance. And my suggestion here is that Mark understood this problem, and understanding it, he made sure to “coach” his own readers, so that they would not mistake the events themselves for the significance.

The Biblical literalists reject the idea that some of the action described in the New Testament might be, well, “fiction” — or rather, parable. The distinction is important: fiction implies “untruth,” but parables are used to communicate higher, ineffable truths. Maybe someone can provide me with a counter-argument, but my sense is that, if parables were good enough for Jesus, they might certainly be used by his scribes. There’s no rule that you have to say, “I am now telling a parable” before you tell a parable. Jesus told his parables as if they were actual histories. It just goes, “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘There was once a rich man who had a servant….’” — can you imagine if the disciples argued about whether or not that rich man ever really existed?

Incidentally, in my twenties, I was an atheist for a while, having read the New Testament only once, maybe twice. Eventually, though, I thought about the composition of the New Testament texts from a strictly atheistic and skeptical perspective — even a cynical perspective. I went so far as to imagine, “What if Jesus never existed, and none of this happened, and it’s all fables?” And then, I read it again with that assumption. The problem became, if the entire New Testament was fabricated, made up out of thin air, that would make it nothing less than the greatest literary miracle ever conceived by humankind. It’s hard to elaborate here, but, it would mean that a set of writers, believing in nothing, became extremely well-versed in the Old Testament, then extracted from that a composite image of a fictional person who would not only qualify as the messiah, but plausibly go nearly undetected among those who ought to have recognized him—all to effectively put an end to the stranglehold of Jewish religious hegemony. All intentionally, subversively. And they would’ve had to do it so well that some Jews, and millions of gentiles, were “tricked” into believing it. It would be like trying to read the Book of Mormon so carefully that you knew it better than the most learned Mormons, and to somehow compose a sequel that people believed was true, a sequel which superseded the original Mormonism and drained it of authority. All without believing Mormonism. It would be a miracle equal to the resurrection. It simply could not happen that way.

Instead, I came to believe that the writers of the gospels absolutely did believe that Jesus was the promised messiah, and that he was killed—and, well, one way or another, but significantly, resurrected. But as Jesus himself said, “Stop judging by external standards, and judge by true standards” (John 7:24).

My favorite verse in the New Testament used to be that one about the veil in the temple tearing, but lately, for the past couple of years, it’s been John 20:15. It’s the scene where Jesus’ tomb is empty, and Mary Magdalene is standing outside of it crying. The two angels appear to ask her why she is crying — and right then, she turns around and sees Jesus standing there, “but she did not recognize him.” In Matthew’s telling, the angel himself (only one angel) says to her “he is not here,” but in John’s gospel, it is Jesus himself who delivers the line: “Why are you crying? Who is it that you are looking for?" And that’s where my favorite comes in:

She thought he was the gardener, so she said to him…

She thought he was the gardener? What a devastating line!! How dare John include that? First, to get inside her mind like that. And the implications — how could this be? Why would she not recognize him? How was he dressed? Was he holding a garden hoe? It’s just an amazing line. Please think about it!

Okay, finally — one last example. In the next chapter of John, chapter 21, Jesus appears to Peter and some of the disciples as they are out fishing. They’re struggling to catch fish, and then Jesus helps them. The text says,

Simon Peter went aboard and dragged the net ashore full of big fish, a hundred and fifty-three in all; even though there were so many, still the net did not tear.

Try to imagine yourself there that day. You catch 153 fish… and then, what? Count them up? And… then, what? Remember that number? Tell it to John the evangelist? Why? The well-known Pulpit Commentary shares some of the speculation about the meaning:

Cyril of Alexandria set the example, and was followed by Ammonius the presbyter, who both in different ways regarded the 3 as representative of the Trinity, the 100 + 50 representing, in different proportions, the success of the apostolic ministry among Gentiles and Jews. Augustine observes that 10 is the number of the Law, and 7 the number of the Spirit, 10 + 7 = 17; and the numbers from 1 + 2 + 3 + 17 = 153; so that the number represents all who are brought to God under every dispensation of grace. Gregory the Great reaches the value 17 in the same fashion as Augustine, but, says he, it is only by faith in the Trinity that either Jew or Gentile ever reaches the fullness of salvation; 17 is therefore multiplied by 3 = 3 x 17, which produces 51, which is the number of true rest; multiplied again by 3, which completes the glory of the perfected, it is 153.

But… there isn’t much agreement here. So, why did John include that detail? There is no reason to include merely anecdotal data like that. You can see the church fathers struggling to produce a meaning, to detect the significance. That’s because “mere history,” reading the text in a strictly literalist way, is actually insanity-producing. You would have to count the blades of grass in your front lawn—just in case they added up to a significant number. And then remember that number in case it became significant. No one could live like that.

We need a selection filter for relevance and significance, and therefore, total historical accuracy is not only impossible, but not desirable. Ultimately — and I really mean ultimately — the questions of whether this or that event happened are not as important as the question of their meaning.

This might be my wildest take yet, and I hope you enjoyed reading it!