Sandy, D. Brent. Hear Ye the Word of the Lord: What We Miss If We Only Read the Bible. Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2024. x+205 pp.; Pb.; $25.00 Link to IVP Academic
Brent Sandy coauthored (with John Walton) The Lost World of Scripture: Ancient Literary Culture and Biblical Authority (IVP Academic, 2013). He previously published Plowshares and Pruning Hooks: Rethinking the Language of Biblical Prophecy and Apocalyptic (IVP Academic, 2002). Hear Ye the Word continues the project of The Lost World of Scripture by calling attention to the oral culture in which Scripture was produced. Since modern Christians are accustomed to reading Scripture privately, oral culture is indeed a “lost world.”
In this book, Sandy begins with the observation that reading the Bible requires effort because readers are crossing a cultural gap. The biblical world was an oral culture: people spoke, and people listened. Today, most people prefer written text over an oral report. However, this was not the case in the ancient world. Sandy quotes Papias, “I do not believe that things out of books are as beneficial to me as things from a living and enduring voice” (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.4). Citing his earlier book, ancient culture was a “text-possible-yet-hearing prevalent society.” Therefore, Sandy concludes we ought to do our best to understand scripture as it was originally heard (11).
In this first part of his book, Sandy argues that modern reading can be a roadblock to understanding Scripture (33). Orality is “high context,” and context determines meaning. Writing down oral proclamation shifts understanding away from the communication experience to a fixed meaning on a written page. This makes it harder to notice subtle clues that help the listener understand the meaning. Since orality is a negotiation between the speaker and the hearer, much is lost by relying only on written texts. (This reminds me of the difficulty of detecting humor or sarcasm in an e-mail.)
In part two (“God and His Agents of Oral Communication”), Sandy points out that God communicates orally through humans (Moses, the prophets, Jesus, and his empowered followers). He observes that “The word ‘write’ was not in Jesus’ lexicon of instructions” (86; although I should point out that Moses and the prophets were both instructed to write at various times). Jesus’s followers were instructed to remember what he had taught them and to proclaim the divine truth orally. The apostles spoke the gospel to people who could not read it. Their preaching used the art of persuasion and the skills of a rhetorician.
That Jesus’s followers faithfully remembered what he taught them is an important aspect of his argument. Jesus commanded his followers to remember (John 15:20; 16:4, for example). Relying on memory may seem strange to modern people who do not need to remember (we can ask Siri). However, there are significant studies on memory in nonliterate cultures. Sandy is fully aware of these studies, although they are only briefly summarized in this book. More important for Sandy is the role of eyewitnesses who functioned as gatekeepers (93). In an ancient oral culture of the Bible, no one questioned the accuracy of eyewitnesses as the gospel spread since this was the normal style of reporting events at the time. For Christians, the activity of the Holy Spirit enabled the initial witnesses to remember accurately (John 14:26).
In part three, Sandy deals with three implications of an oral culture. First, stories were performed in an ancient culture. Consider Matthew 13:34: “Jesus always used stories and illustrations like these when speaking to the crowds” (NLT). Colossians 4:6 and Thessalonians 5:27 instruct the recipients to read the letter to the congregation. Revelation 1:3 blesses the reader of the book, referring to a public rather than a private reader. In fact, the entire New Testament was intended to be heard. Sandy offers several examples of how authors of written documents made their documents “performable” to small audiences. This is not unusual in an oral culture. Most literature was intended to be read aloud, and there were few private readers in the Greco-Roman world (primarily wealthy people who could afford books, scholars, etc.) Stories were performed, and speech-making was a highly developed part involving persuasion and rhetoric (105).
If this is true, the second implication is that Bible readers should improve both their hearing and speaking of scripture. Listening for the rhetorical impact of the story is to hear the way the author intended it to be heard. Sandy considers this “restoring oral scripture to its rightful place.” His third implication is that sermons ought to be performances of Scripture. I recall an undergraduate speech professor who bemoaned the lack of performance during Church services, especially during a congregational responsive reading of Scripture.
The book’s final part is entitled “Experiments in Oral Interpretation.” Sandy repeats the phrase, “Hearing is more than reading,” for each chapter in this section. If the literature of the New Testament was intended to be heard in an oral culture, it is wrong to zero in on a word or a verse without considering the entire scope of revelation. This used to be called “atomizing a text.” Many pastors are guilty of creating sermons out of word studies or focusing specifically on individual phrases without considering how they function in the overall persuasive rhetoric of a paragraph or an entire letter. One application of this Sandy does not mention is understanding the symbols in the Book of Revelation. In my view, the strange imagery often “paints a picture” intended to elicit an emotional response from the hearer. There are academic studies on how Revelation was intended to be performed by a public reader.
The final chapter of this section offers a list of practical things to do to help tease out the oral nature of scripture. Although it may seem obvious, listening to the Bible read dramatically may help the hearer understand the text better. Pastors and teachers must prepare to perform Bible passages rather than read them as monotonously as possible! This obviously takes work, and some Bible colleges and seminaries do teach the oral performance of scripture.
I have one criticism of the book. Despite using the word Bible in the subtitle, Sandy’s examples are primarily drawn from the New Testament. The world of the Old Testament was certainly an oral culture, so the principles described in the book are applicable (if not more so).
Conclusion. Sandy’s Here Ye the Word of the Lord: What We Miss If We Only Read the Bible is an engaging book that challenges readers to think about scripture differently than in the past. Although Sandy is well-read in the academic literature on orality, memory studies, and rhetorical approaches to Scripture, his book is written for laypeople, pastors, and Bible teachers. Sandy’s pastoral heart often comes through in his encouragement to do better when we approach the scripture.
NB: I appreciate IVP Academic’s generous offer of a review copy of this book, but this did not influence my thoughts about the work.
What God/dog does this shit represent.