Our Bodies, Our Bibles

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Do our bodies have anything to do with how we interpret the Bible? Does our body image affect our religious beliefs? At first glance, the idea seems bizarre. What, after all, does Baywatch—or Weight Watchers—have to do with King David? When we read or study the Bible, we feel disembodied, spiritually intent on the words and images of the text, only occasionally distracted by our bodies when our back aches or our stomach growls. Our bodies and the Bible seem worlds apart. And yet, when we look closely, biblical interpretation may be more “embodied” than we think.

In a remarkable pair of books on Talmudic Judaism and on the apostle Paul, Daniel Boyarin has raised this issue, arguing that Judaism and Christianity in antiquity differed in their interpretation of the Bible in the same way that their concepts of the body differed.¹ The varieties of figurative interpretation practiced by Christian masters such as Paul, Origen and Augustine all made a distinction between (in Paul’s terms) the spirit and the letter of Scripture. There was no question which bore the true Christian meaning: Paul proclaims, “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6).

This dichotomy in Scripture corresponds to the bodily duality of spirit and flesh. Again, spirit was the more valued, the instrument of faith and salvation. Consider Paul again: “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6). To the degree that the physical body is inferior to the spiritual body, so too the literal sense of Scripture is inferior to the spiritual sense. The spiritual body—of a person and of Scripture—is the true body in classical Christian interpretation.

In contrast, rabbinic Judaism emphasized bodily rituals (purity laws, circumcision, etc.) and the value of procreation. There is even a daily prayer that extols God, “who has made the human with wisdom, and created in it orifices and hollows.”² The Jewish affirmation of the body corresponds to its intense concentration on the body of Scripture—the details, grammatical obscurities, even the shapes of its letters. Midrash is the method of interpretation practiced in classical Judaism that links the details of Scripture into one continuous, complex discourse. The effects of midrashic interpretation can be dizzying—and spiritually rich—but midrash rests firmly on the “physicality” of the text, requiring the details of intersecting passages to sustain its arguments. In this sense, Boyarin argues, the emphasis on the body in rabbinic Judaism corresponds to its concept of the body of Scripture. The spirit is thoroughly embodied, both in the person and in the sacred text.

Can we trace this history of the body into modern biblical interpretation? I think we can. The Renaissance and the Reformation brought Christianity back to the plain sense as the primary sense of Scripture; and most figurative interpretations became devalued. Luther famously disdained allegory, asserting that the meaning of Scripture was plain for all to see: “We must recognize that Scripture is of itself most certain, simple, and open.”³ No priests were required for biblical interpretation.

Just as the body of Scripture was coming back into fashion, so too the human body became more vital in art, literature and philosophy. Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo rediscovered the human body in art, and even Jesus was now portrayed as fully embodied, even sexual.⁴ Luther was a fully embodied man, savoring his corporeal existence. Boccaccio and Rabelais celebrated the human body, and naturalism took root in literature and science. The flesh of Scripture—its plain, historical sense —became increasingly the object of study and commentary.

In the modern era, Jewish and Christian interpretations of Scripture often meet on the common ground of the fleshy sense. Midrash and allegory have receded, and the main body of Scripture is accessible to all. Yet, curiously, another body has recently intervened. For the first time on a large scale, women’s bodies are in the church, the synagogue and the academy, studying and commenting on Scripture. And the Scripture thus interpreted is often differently configured, embodied from women’s perspectives. In the fleshy difference of male and female, the Scripture now often seems engendered too. Even God’s body is contested—is it God the Father or God the Mother? Biblical interpretation seems to be practiced differently on Mars than on Venus.

So our bodies and our biblical interpretations seem to be involved in a long-running, secret affair. The implications may be both liberating and scandalous. I just hope Larry Flynt and Kenneth Starr don’t find out.

Do our bodies have anything to do with how we interpret the Bible? Does our body image affect our religious beliefs? At first glance, the idea seems bizarre. What, after all, does Baywatch—or Weight Watchers—have to do with King David? When we read or study the Bible, we feel disembodied, spiritually intent on the words and images of the text, only occasionally distracted by our bodies when our back aches or our stomach growls. Our bodies and the Bible seem worlds apart. And yet, when we look closely, biblical interpretation may be more “embodied” than we think. In a […]