Tomorrow is observed in Britain as Holocaust Sunday. How should the terrible events of the Shoah impact on interpretation of violence in Scripture?

MANY Jews and Christians will turn to the Bible on Holocaust Memorial Day, which is commemorated for the third year on Monday next week. We may well try to relate the Holocaust to more recent disasters for humanity, such as the genocide in Rwanda. And we might turn to passages from the Psalms or Lamentations or Job, to seek comfort there in the face of the still-terrible truth that nearly 60 years ago the world witnessed in silence the murder of six million Jews and five million non-Jews. But we will probably glide over those passages which, according to their literal meaning, contribute to violence and hatred. We are likely, for example, to be familiar with the beginning of Psalm 137 ?

?By the rivers of Babylon ?
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion? ?

but to skip the ending of the same Psalm:

?Happy shall they be who take your little ones
and dash them against the rock!?

But how we approach these passages is important. Many Christians fall into the sin of assuming that violent texts are restricted to the Hebrew Bible, ignoring the violence implicit, say, in Matthew 25:41:

?Then he will say to those at his left hand, ?You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels?.?

Theologians need to be excessively careful of drawing beloved contrasts between the Old Testament and the New, as certain Christians once did and many still do. The American Baptist theologian Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) was typical of this thinking when he wrote in 1922:

?From Sinai to Calvary ? was ever a record of progressive revelation more plain or more convincing? The development begins with Jehovah disclosed in a thunderstorm on a desert mountain, and it ends with Christ saying: ?God is Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth?; it begins with a war-god leading his partisans to victory, and it ends with men saying, ?God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him?; it begins with a provincial deity loving his tribe and hating its enemies, and it ends with the God of the whole earth worshipped ?by a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation, and of all the tribes and peoples and tongues?; it begins with a God who commands the slaying of the Amalekites, ?both man and woman, infant and suckling?, and it ends with a Father whose will it is that not ?one of these little ones should perish?; it begins with God?s people standing afar off from his lightnings and praying that he might not speak to them lest they die and it ends with men going into their inner chambers, and, having shut the door, praying to their Father who is in secret.?

No doubt such a series can be arranged but, as the Jewish theologian Claude Montefiore (1858-1938) pointed out in 1927, so can another:

?From the Old Testament to the New Testament ? was there ever a record of retrogression more plain or more convincing? It begins with, ?Have I any pleasure at all in the death of him that dieth??; it ends with ?Begone from me, ye doers of wickedness?. It begins with, ?The Lord is slow to anger and plenteous in mercy?; it ends with, ?Fear Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in Gehenna?. It begins with, ?I will dwell with him that is of a contrite spirit to revive him?; it ends with, ?Narrow is the way which leads to life, and few there be who find it?. It begins with, ?I will not contend for ever; I will not always be wroth?; it ends with, ?Depart, ye cursed, into the everlasting fire?. It begins with, ?Should I not have pity on Nineveh, that great city??; it ends with, ?It will be more endurable for Sodom on the day of Judgement than for that town?. It begins with, ?The Lord is good to all who call upon him?; it ends with, ?Whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, there is no forgiveness whether in this world or the next?. It begins with, ?The Lord will wipe away tears from off all faces; he will destroy death for ever?; it ends with, ?They will throw them into the furnace of fire; there is the weeping and the gnashing of teeth?.?

As Claude Montefiore concludes, the one series is as misleading as the other.

If Jews and Christians share the same problem ? difficult biblical texts ? how, then, should we handle them? To pretend they do not exist is no good, and only benefits extremists who wish to abuse Scripture for their own scapegoating desires.

One topic for Christians and Jews to consider today concerns the authority of Scripture. What authority does the Bible retain after the Holocaust? As Martin Buber asked: ?Dare we recommend to the survivors of Auschwitz, to the Job of the gas chambers, ?Give thanks to the Lord for he is good, for his love endures for ever???

When the ancient rabbis debated the elusive nature of biblical texts, they offered us a means by which we might answer Buber?s question. They commended a willingness to see a multitude of different possible meanings, in marked contrast to the single ?authentic? meaning, backed by clerical or scholarly authority. Such an approach is based on the following passage from the Babylonian Talmud: ?In the School of Rabbi Ishmael it is taught: ?See, My word is like fire, an oracle of the Eternal, and like a hammer that shatters a rock? (Jer 23:29). Just as a hammer divides into several sparks, so too every scriptural verse yields several meanings.?

Support for such an approach to biblical interpretation can also be found in classical Christian exegesis. The fourth-century church father Ephrem, for example, extols the varieties of interpretations from one biblical text. Interpretation should result in a breadth and plurality of viewpoint.

Jews and Christians should adopt this approach when they face texts which have been used for evil, such as to maintain slavery or second-class citizenship, to hold women in subjugation to men, black to white, Jew to Christian.

Humanity should live by the commandments and not die by their observance. This means that in the light of the Holocaust a biblical text needs to be examined for the potential damage it may cause (or the real damage it has caused).

The rabbis refer to pikuah nefesh, the sacred duty to preserve life, which they say should take precedence over the mitzvot, the commandments. When human life is at stake, in other words, the biblical text needs reinterpretation. Or, as Jesus says in Mk 2:27, ?the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath?.

The recognition that the biblical text can have more than one meaning is significant for Jewish-Christian relations. It implies that it is no longer essential to search for the one and only correct meaning of a text, and that different interpretations are worthy of consideration in their own right, each within its own context.

This may leave us with an uncomfortable tension because of the presence of a number of interpretations arising out of a single biblical passage. The multitude of possible interpretations may be disconcerting, but it highlights an ambiguity not only inherent in Jewish-Christian relations but also within the biblical text itself.

Consider the following opposing translations of Job 13:15:

?Behold, he will slay me; I have no hope? (Revised Standard Version).

?Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him? (Authorised Version).

The reason for the difference between the RSV and the AV is the result of a variation in the reading and spoken versions. The Masoretic vocalisation (spoken reading) indicates that Job has hope while the consonantic text (written text) offers the view that Job has no hope.

The Mishnah, an authoritative collection of Jewish writings from around 200CE, acknowledges the ambiguity of the biblical text and has recognised that both translations are possible: ?The matter is undecided ? do I trust in Him or not trust?? The contradiction is meaningful: it expresses the tension of one who is torn between hope and doubt, the very tension that inhabits our mind when we read the Bible today. The words of Job signify at once both hope and hopelessness.

Such an approach to the Bible leaves Christians and Jews with an unresolved tension as they realise that the literal and traditional interpretation is not always the final meaning of the biblical text. The tension is uncomfortable but meaningful ? particularly for those of us who are struggling with the meaning of the Bible in light of the Holocaust.

Edward Kessler is the director of the Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations in Cambridge.

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