Understanding the Language

“Why did the chicken cross the road?” asked a young woman from the U.S. The rest of the multinational group sitting around the patio didn’t know. “To see the man lay a brick!” she informed us triumphantly. Several of us laughed politely, but the two gentlemen from Africa and two from India did not; they merely looked puzzled. A combined effort from several of us to explain the joke-form of chicken-crossed-the-road jokes and the play on laying eggs and laying bricks did nothing to help. Jokes are contextual to culture and background. Then someone asked, “Why did the dinosaur also cross the road? (He didn’t want to be a chicken.)” It didn’t translate well either.

We were gathered at Tantur Institute in Israel where I was on Sabbatical in 2004. It got us all thinking about how our various countries and cultures had stereotypes that allowed certain jokes to make sense and be funny and how others did not. We discussed “Knock, Knock” jokes, and “Good-News-Bad-News” jokes, for example. Then one of the Canadians, asked, “What do you call a man with a shovel in his head?” … “Doug”. When that one again mystified the Africans, he asked, “Now, what do you call a man when you pull the shovel out of his head?” One of the Indians had that “You-crazy-Canadian” look but then thought for a moment and responded: “Doug-less?” & burst into laughter.

Reading the gospel is a bit like telling and receiving of jokes. There is a deep cultural background to familiar stories. Just as explaining the form and structure of chicken-crossing-the-road jokes removes all the humor. We fear the same will be true of the Bible. We worry that explaining the form, the editing, the historical background, the conventions of the day--will remove the wonder of the story of Jesus. We tread carefully on trying to explain or reinterpret a Bible story, and this goes double for Christmas stories.

The truth is, for those of us inside the church, we have made peace with the mysterious, non-scientific, mythical language of the birth narratives a long time ago--so long ago that we may have forgotten that we have done so. We just take them for granted. They are part of our culture. Yet they still mystify people who are new to the faith. We all sometimes need some background and context of the original audience for the story to understand what the story really means today.

Those of us on inside the church can help by trying to see the biblical stories as an outsider might see them, or better yet, share them with an outsider and ask them what they hear. Then, it would help if we all understood the background of scriptural texts more—a quality Bible Commentary can be a helpful devotional guide! If God takes time to speak to us in scripture, wouldn’t it be worth our while to better understand the language? … Just saying.

Church leaders and staff have been on my case to blog for some time now. This is my first venture into this mysterious world of hyperspace. I hope it is helpful to you and will appreciate any comments and feedback.