Obviously
And they all continued in amazement and great perplexity, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” Acts 2:12 NASB
What does this mean? – Are you “full of sweet wine”? That’s what some of the bystanders thought when they heard the Galilean followers of Yeshua the Messiah speaking in their own languages. It was obvious to them that these people were drunk. Exactly how that explained their sudden linguistic ability isn’t clear. The real point of this question is not how it happened but rather why it was happening. In other words, the event was not self-authenticating. It had to be interpreted in order to be understood. That is the real issue with all of the biblical text. The Bible is not simply a chronological recording of events. It is a record of event-interpretation. And when we read it, we also add our own interpretation. This is just the way human language works.
“Language does not provide a simple key to meaning. The question seems to be, Who says the words? And how are they inflected by passion.”[1]
Zornberg’s comment should act as a caution—and a relief. A caution because every act of reading a text like the Bible is, in fact, an act of interpreting the text. Clarification with the authors is impossible. Similar material from the same culture and time helps but is never definitive. This explains why, for example, Christian traditional doctrine can be derived from the same texts that orthodox Jews read entirely differently. It isn’t a matter of right or wrong. It’s a matter of interpretive meaning, and meaning is a function of current culture, education, social expectation, personal experience and passion. The relief in Zornberg’s comment is that we are no longer pressed to “fully justify” our views of faith. The language itself is like an empty bottle. It can hold all kinds of liquids. It just depends on what you put into it.
Does this mean the interpretation is arbitrary? That any view is good enough? Of course not. What it means is that we can discover why various views are possible, and we can then compare these views with what we know about the time, culture and language of the original authors and audiences. We will have to be extremely sensitive to the likelihood of interpreting the text according to our way of thinking, but that doesn’t mean we are stuck with our way of thinking, as “conversion” amply demonstrates. What it means is that the arguments about what the text says are really about what we want the text to say—from our point of view. Once we realize that, we can spend useful time in self-reflection rather than arguing. We can acknowledge that our experience colors what we think the text says. We can look closely at the “sweet wine” we have consumed before we decide that those other people are just drunk.
“. . . total certainty can never be achieved in human affairs. Meaning cannot be finally arrested, stopped in its tracks. It is affected by sociological conditions, even by the very fact of reading.”[2]
Topical Index: language, interpretation, what does it mean, Acts 2:12
[1] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, p. 242.
[2] Ibid., p. 53.
