Transposition

Scripture is a gift. This has been affirmed by countless people in the Judeo-Christian tradition down through the ages. Not only affirmed, but demonstrated in the way that its words have been revered, preserved, and followed. But is is a very strange gift, full of unfamiliar modes of communication and stories that vacillate between the weird and the confusing and the often brutally violent. It is a gift that many in the 21st-century world increasingly have little interest in accepting, both inside and outside of the church.

I spent three days this month at a theological studies conference near Calgary where we were looking at one of the most difficult books in all of Scripture, the book of Joshua. We were led by Canadian Mennonite University professor Gordon Matties in considering how this violent book full of divinely sanctioned slaughter and land appropriation could possibly be read in redeeming and life-giving ways.

One metaphor stood out to me throughout our time looking at Joshua and the problem of how to live with the nasty parts of the biblical narrative. The metaphor was transposition. Matties reminded us of how even within scripture we constantly see writers reinterpreting and representing their own scriptures in new ways as the story progresses, as God’s character and purposes become increasingly clear. Israel’s prophets and poets are continually working with, adjusting, and expanding upon themes from the Deuteronomistic history. And, of course, both Jesus and the apostle Paul radically reinterpret the Jewish scriptures and set them off on a trajectory that would have been unimaginable in earlier parts of the story.