Learning to Read from the Ancients

Jesus often fought about how sacred words should be interpreted. Indeed, his conflict with the Pharisees often concerns how the law should be observed (Mt 9.11-13 || Mk 2.16-17; Mt 12.1-8 || Mk 2.23-28; Mt 12.19-14 || Mk 3.1-6; Mt 15.1-20 || Mk 7.1-23). Likewise, church history is fraught with division over interpretations. One group claims to understand the true meaning of a text against another. Interpretive disagreement continues to divide churches today. 


In light of Jesus’ debates, disputes throughout church history and in the contemporary church, it is important to develop a consistent and logical method of interpretation – a hermeneutic. Most seminaries and Bible colleges are concerned precisely with this training. In her book, Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition, Kathy Eden traces the development of Christian hermeneutics from the rhetorical tradition of Quintilian and Cicero to early protestant hermeneutics in Erasmus and Philip Melanchthon. Eden is a distinguished classics professor at Columbia University and provides a fascinating study of the development of humanist hermeneutics.


Eden thoughtfully observes that it is in the rhetorical handbooks that one finds the reflection on interpretation that was appropriated by the church fathers. Her first chapter is devoted to works of Quintilian and Cicero showing how these rhetoricians were concerned with the interpretation of texts for legal disputes. There were three main problems that arose in interpretation:

1. Discrepancy between the letter of the law and the intent
2. Ambiguity with a particular word or a passage
3. Contradiction either between two related texts or within a single text

According to Cicero and Quintilian, the solution to these interpretive problems was to learn from Aristotle how to read with “equity” (ἐπιείκεια / aequitas). Equity is the ability to read a text graciously or tolerantly rather than in its “exactness” or “strictness” (ἀκρίβεια). So, Paul exhorts the Corinthians with the “humility and gentleness [ἐπιεικείας] of Christ” (2 Cor 10.1). Equity is a sought after characteristic in a judge (Acts 24.4) or ruler (Josephus, Ant. 12.122; 19.246; Against. Ap. 2.209) and frequently appears in appeals to God as a righteous judge in Hellenistic Jewish literature (2 Macc 2.22; 10.4; Wis 12.18; Bar. 2.27; LXX Dan 3.42; cf. Philo, Mos. 1.198; Virt. 106; Josephus, Ag. Apion 2.214). Equity, then, is an accommodation to a particular need or circumstance rather than a rigorous devotion to the letters themselves.


As a hermeneutical guide from Aristotle, equity aids in solving interpretive problems. An equitable reading allows discrepancies between letter and intention to be resolved by recognizing that written texts cannot take into account every eventuality or circumstance that might fall under their application. Thus, the intention of the law takes precedence when read equitably. Likewise, ambiguity is resolved by reading equitably to accommodate the particular use of a word or passage for a particular circumstance. So equity takes into account the historical and textual (or literary) context of a text. Equity also resolves contradictions by reading the parts of a text in light of the whole text and even the author’s life, again accommodating the particularity of the author.


In her second chapter, Eden shows the same interpretive principles at work in the grammatical tradition of Plato and later Plutarch. Using the poetry of Homer via Platonic allegory, Plutarch describes good reading as a journey home to true knowledge (philosophy). Eden shows that the grammatical texts use the concepts of “suitability” (τὸ πρέπον /decorum) which is “the ability to accommodate the occasion” (Eden, 26). Similar was the concept of “economy” or “order” (οἰκονομία) which was used by the grammarians to refer to the arrangement of the text. Suitability and economy, again, emphasized the same concept as equity among the grammarians – reading a text in light of its particularities.


In her third and longest chapter (pgs 41-63), Eden shows how these same concepts of learning to read a text in light of its particularities were employed by the church fathers Basil of Caesarea and Augustine of Hippo. She convincingly argues that Basil appears to have been influenced significantly by Plutarch in his exhortation to the young on reading. Likewise, she illuminates Augustine’s De doctrina as an example of Christianized hermeneutic from the rhetorical tradition. The last three chapters follow this trajectory in Erasmus (pgs 64-78), Melanchthon (pgs 79-89) and Flacius (90-100).


I first heard about Eden’s fine book in a presentation from a Patristics scholar, Professor Ronald Heine. Dr. Heine was presenting on Origen’s interpretation of Matthew’s divorce passage, one of the key examples of interpretive conflict in the gospels. Essentially, Heine argued that Origen, like Basil and Augustine, co-opted the concept of equity to defend Jesus’ reading of the OT against the Pharisees. It was a brilliant paper and well-received by all. After the presentation I asked where I might explore the concept further and he pointed me to Eden’s book. It was a wonderful find. Hermeneutics in the Rhetorical Tradition makes a great contribution to charting the development of patristic exegesis and prompts numerous questions about how these hermeneutical insights might be profitable for following the NT writers’ readings of the OT. If nothing else, Eden teaches what it means to read equitably.

Rethinking Ancient Reading

Pieter J. J. Botha wrote a fascinating article exploring the vast difference between contemporary and ancient reading practices. The article, “New Testament Texts in the Context of Reading Practices of the Roman Period: The Role of Memory and Performance,” published in Scriptura vol. 90 (2005) pgs 621-40, is well worth a read. I just wanted to note some highlights here.

Botha begins by painting the picture of a contemporary reading scene:

“One pulls the chair up to the desk and arranges some of the books and other papers already lying there. Then, glasses are picked up form a preferred place, cleaned [. . .], perched on the nose and steadied behind the ears to gaze at the now lucid pages. Adjustment of the study-lamp and little shifts of the chair and arms to reduce the shadows on the book follow. On reaches for a pencil or highlighter, and the soft sounds of scratching in the margins of book or notebook become audible.” (621)

This is the posture of many a contemporary reader – seated alone at a desk, wrapped in silence, bathed in incandescent light and aided by glasses. Botha observes how this picture is completely anachronistic in the first century. There was no electricity for light, no eye-glasses, no desks, and rarely was reading a silent solitary activity.

In regard to the texts themselves, Botha observes how unfriendly they are to modern reading practices. The dominant textual format—the scroll—was unwieldy and cumbersome. The visual landscape of the ancient text looks overwhelmingly cluttered to the modern eye with no paragraph divisions, punctuation or even spacing between words! “The Greco-Roman text was constructed with almost no aids to the reader, whose task it was to divide the lines correctly into words and sentences” (627).

It is not surprising, then, that ancient readers were expected to know the text before they read. Consider the orator Quintilian’s recommendation for reading,

“There is much that can only be taught by practice, as for instance when the boy should take breath, at what point he should introduce a pause into a line, where the sense ends or begins, when the voice should be raised or lowered, what modulation should be given to each phrase [. . .] I will give but one golden rule: To do all these things, he must understand what he reads.” (Inst. Orat. 1.8.1-2; Botha, 628).

Quintilian suggests practicing a text to the point that the reader knows his “reading” beforehand. Botha (drawing from J. Svenbro) suggests a fascinating illustration. He compares ancient reading practices to moderns “reading” sheet music. It is not impossible to “read” music in silence, but the most common way of doing so is by playing it on a piano to know what it sounds like (629).

Even the act of writing was drastically different in the ancient world. There were no editors, and often lengthy compositions were dictated in one sitting from memory. Pliny even mentions his preference for working out his texts in his head before dictating them to his scribe (Epist. 9.36). Or consider Cicero’s description of how the “speaking mind will forsee what is to follow” when delivering a speech (De Oratore 44.150; Botha, 633). These writing practices describe a very different literary concept that is far more oral than visual.

These ancient reading and writing practices ought to invite us to rethink ancient texts. This is especially so of NT texts which point to oral delivery as the primary means of distribution (1 Thess 5.27; Col 4.16; Rev 1.3). With these oral texts we must not fall into contemporary habits of “seeing” texts, but must have ears to hear.

Book Learn’n in the Ancient World (Part 1)

As anyone who has ever sat through a small group Bible study knows, books don’t read themselves. Readers carry with them certain assumptions and expectations about what they are reading. As a result, many small groups “study” the Bible by reading a specific book separately and then gathering to talk about how it “spoke to them” individually. It is sometimes surprising how differently the text speaks to different readers. Other small groups rely on a “teacher” to tell them how the text should speak to them. Increasingly, these teachers come in the form of a commenting author or an accompanied video. Occasionally the “teacher” will actually sit in the group and describe the meaning of the text. I’m not going to pontificate on the relative merits of these various ways of reading the Bible in a group. I only bring up the setting as a window into the way reading commenced in the ancient world.

Today books are conveniently organized in stores and libraries to tell us what we should expect from them. Individuals purchase or check out these books and consume them privately. They know what to expect at the time of purchase because the books are labeled accordingly. If you want to spend time in a magical land you read fantasy. If you want to learn about a person you purchase their biography. If you want to read an interesting story you check out something from the literature section. In short, modern books are produced to be read by a large audience of literate individuals who rarely ever meet one another. In sharp contrast, ancient books were produced and used in a vastly different context.

It is to the context of reading in the ancient world that H. Gregory Snyder turns his attention in his fascinating book, Teachers and Texts in the Ancient World: Philosophers, Jews and Christians. Snyder begins by observing that texts were chiefly used as “part of the everyday business of teaching and learning” (1). Since reading in the ancient world was mostly a social activity, texts required “performances” and presumed and audience (2). Usually, texts were performed by a teacher and the audience was composed of students. Teachers, therefore, often functioned as “text brokers” (3). For most people, these text-brokers were the only available means of accessing texts. Snyder focuses his study on how various groups (or schools) used their respective texts. He is particularly interested in “text-centered” groups and how they “study, maintain, transmit a discrete set of authoritative texts” (5). Snyder’s goal is to understand the reciprocal role of teachers and texts in the ancient world.

To this end, Snyder analyzes five distinct groups and their use of texts. He limits his analysis, for the most part, to the period from the first century BCE to the second century CE. In chapter one Snyder describes his method of evaluation, which is geared toward comparison, and then applies it to how Stoics used their texts. Chapter two evaluates how Epicureans handled their written texts. Chapter three is concerned with Aristotelians (or Peripatetics). Chapter four evaluates the textual practices of Platonists. Finally, in chapter five, Snyder focuses on Jewish and Christian textual practices.  Part one of the review will focus on the first four chapters. Next time I will address his treatment of textual practices among Jews and Christians.

Snyder describes his comparative method at work in each chapter,

I will consider whether the group(s) in question bothered to collect and organize their School texts, and whether they sought to maintain them through textual criticism. Then, we shall ask about the practice of commentary. Following this, we will explore more invasive procedures that involve ‘re-presenting’ the texts: altering them either by epitomizing, paraphrasing, or expanding.  Finally, we shall pursue the question of use, exploring any available testimony that promises to shed light on the way that members of these groups used books in their gatherings. (14)

In the subsequent chapters he follows this method quite closely and with some intriguing results.

Stoics, though “famous for their literary production” (14) exhibit little evidence that they had a recognized body of authoritative works. They do not engage in textual criticism, write commentaries or quote their founders with reverence. Still, Stoics used and produced a significant number of texts. Indeed, we learn from Epictetus that there was a specific reading method used in classroom textual performances that took four stages (22-27). First, a basic reading of a selected text would be recited by the teacher or perhaps an advanced student. Second, an exegesis that defined and interpreted the terms of the passage would given by either the teacher or students. Third, the logic of the argument would be scrutinized. Fourth, the text would be evaluated by testing another hypothesis by its logic. The argument might be extended or limited for the purpose of equipping the student to evaluate how to use texts. Snyder also looks at the literary practices of Seneca which are instructive as a teacher who instructed from a distance through texts. In general, Stoics were committed to textual performances in classrooms, but the goal was not competence in literature but development of reason and character. Thus, they did not venerate texts as much more than tools for development.

In sharp contrast to Stoics, Epicureans “show a remarkable reverence for their founder-figures and the written texts the founders left behind” (45). They labored in textual criticism to have an accurate rendering of Epicurus’ literature (46-53). Epicureans also produced epitomes – shortened versions of original texts or bodies of thought (53-56). These epitomes would provide access to Epicurean thought without the difficult work of reading all of Epicurus’ books. Epicureans even developed a reputation of being lazy or unskilled with books (57-61). This was probably prompted by the fact that Epicureanism was fairly popular among uneducated people. Furthermore, Epicureans were not primarily concerned with Epicurus’ texts per se but rather with his doctrine. For Epicureans, “Texts were vehicles, valuable for what they carried, but not venerated in and of themselves” (65).

Aristotelians were rigorously devoted to their books. Snyder suggests that the primary means of instruction among Aristotelians was continuous reading peppered with comments by the teacher (67). The history of Aristotle works is a bit mysterious. It seems that the texts were lost or significantly damaged and his students set about to recover them (67-69). Thus, Aristotelians often engaged in text critical issues and the need to organize Aristotle’s massive body of writing. The most characteristic form of literary production among Aristotelians was commentary. There were two types of commentary (75). The first commentary type was a continuous comment form following the basic structure of the source text. The second type of commentary was devoted to explaining only selected passages from one or more books. These commentaries seem to indicate that educational practices were typically focused on interpreting Aristotle’s writings. Thus, Aristotelians were the most bookish of the philosophical schools.

Plato’s writings were known for being eloquent and thus attracted an audience beyond the typical student of philosophy. As a result, numerous secondary works were produced to provide access to Plato among those without formal philosophical training. This also produced debate about how the dialogues should be ordered and which dialogues were authentic (94-99). Though less devoted than the Aristotelians, Platonists produced numerous commentaries that were usually focused on only portions of the dialogues. Among this diverse group practices differed, but it seems a large body of secondary literature was produced for classroom use as one way of accessing the wisdom of the dialogues which were unwieldy for classroom teaching. Platonists were used books, but it seems they like their preferred oral debate.

Each of the first four chapters was an enlightening foray into ancient reading practices, but I must admit it was quite outside my area of expertise. I have nothing in the way of critique to suggest in regard to Snyder’s reading of these texts. I will say, however, that after reflection it seems a bit odd to compare the reading practices among elite schools to the literary practices among Jews and Christians. Snyder addresses this objection in his introduction (8-9). He tempers the criticism by pointing out that “not all members of the various philosophical Schools were uniformly wealthy” (8; cf. esp. Epicureans) and conversely that some Jews (i.e. Philo) and Christians were quite wealthy. So since Snyder’s goal is to compare their use of texts, he finds the comparison quite helpful. This is fine goal, but the differences are perhaps more pronounced than he lets on.

Consider for example, the fact that each of these philosophical schools began in the third century BC. As a burgeoning movement, it is difficult to compare the practices of Christians to schools established hundreds of years earlier. In regard to Jews, Israel’s sacred texts were tied with ethnic and social identity in a way that these schools were not.  Perhaps in its more academic forms Christianity and Judaism might be compared to these groups, but as a whole it seems to me that the burgeoning Christian movement has less similarity to these schools than this study might suggest. This is not to say that the comparison is not valuable, but only to recognize that early Christians and Jews did not think of their identity in the same way as these philosophical schools.