Bible as Literature (Part 2)

This quarter I am teaching Survey of World Literature and the course covers ancient to medieval literature.

The most difficult challenge teaching this course is working with biblical literature. The difficulty cuts two ways: for some students, their experience with the church has been so wretched that any mention of God or the Lord triggers such foul memories they want to run out of the room; for others, their love of God and the Lord is so deep and well-constructed, that it is nearly impossible to see the biblical texts in literary ways. I would say in fresh ways.

While preparing for class this morning, knowing I was going to work with Psalm 23 and the parable of the Good Samaritan, I realized that my job as a literature teacher exploring biblical texts, was to make the texts strange.

By strange, I don't mean weird. I mean unfamiliar. The problem with the student who viscerally recoils at the sight or sound of a biblical text and the student who is blindly in love with the text is the problem of familiarity.

I decided if somehow I could present "The Lord is my shepherd" and the rest of the Psalm in an an unfamiliar way, the Psalm might look like a poem my students had never seen before.

I needed to demystify Psalm 23.

I made Psalms 23 strange in two ways. First, I began class today by reading from the Tao de Ching. I'll do this every day. The Dao explores the Way. Seen through Lao Tzu's eyes, the Way has mysterious and contrary qualities. The contrary qualities do not oppose each other. They co-exist.

After reading from the Dao, I suggested to my students that in place of "the Lord" (who is, after all, the Way), we read "the Way".

"The Way is my shepherd".

Suddenly the grim holder of dominion was gone and suddenly a path or a direction or a mark was "my shepherd". As we look at the Psalm as an exploration of the "The Way", we began to see that the poem sees the way as a guide, a caretaker, a house, a protector, etc.

We saw this today because along with making the Psalm strange my seeing the Lord as the Way, we looked at the Psalm as poetry.

We explored its imagery: what does Psalm 23 invite us to see? (A shepherd, green pastures, still water, a valley, a shadowed valley, a cup, a house, etc.)

How do these images work as metaphors? How do these metaphors point to the qualities and the nature of the Way (the Lord) and to the nature of the soul?

In this particular portrayal of the Lord, or the Way, it cares to human beings. It stills the waters of the soul. It points us to the way of righteousness. Mercy and goodness follows. The Way or the Lord is a source of comfort, direction, nurture, sustenance, generosity.

It's all in the poetry.

It all comes to life when we look at this familiar Psalm as if it were strange and feel the astonishment and beauty of its poetry and vision as if we'd never read it before and as if no institution had ever appropriated this wondrous poem as its own.