I am a professional reader, teacher, and interpreter of the Bible. I do all of this in both academic and ecclesiastical settings. The controversy surrounding James Frey's book, A Million Little Pieces, creates some questions for my vocation. These are not new questions, but new facets of them may be exposed by these events. Two pertinent areas of inquiry present themselves: 1) The relationship between truth and recollection and storytelling, and 2) the significance of genre for understanding and using a literary work. I am trying to say something about American culture and our country's political life here. I chose the Bible as my academic discipline because it is a lens through which I am able to see the world, and reading and interpreting ancient texts is a way of entering into the world that fits my identity.
In academic settings, I work with students who are frequently disturbed by the discovery that the Bible does not simply report to us "what actually happened" in the past. Learning, for example, that many ancient cultures produced stories of a great flood which was survived by a heroic figure who had divine assistance and who then repopulated the earth forces them to look at the biblical story of Noah differently. Archaeological evidence which may indicate that the Battle of Jericho could not have happened in the way it is reported in Joshua 6 is initially troubling. When the writer of II Samuel tells us, near the end of the book in 21:19 that someone named Elhanan killed Goliath, what is going on? Is this writer telling his audience, with a mischievous wink, that the whole David-with-slingshot story is a piece of political propaganda? Such discoveries can cause a kind of crisis for students, and people like me sometimes become the bad guy because we have provided them with this information that has sometimes even been deliberately hidden from them by well-meaning parents, pastors, and teachers in the past. One significant question that arises from this situation is whether someone like me believes the Bible is "true." For those asking this question it is often a very simple one. Being "true" is measured by whether a text accurately reports the facts of an event in the past, or "what really happened." Those who insist that the Bible must be "inerrant" to be true will reject any information that is in conflict with the Bible because a single inaccuracy of any kind, even scientific or historical, undermines the truth of the entire Bible and their faith which is based upon it. Their reactions are sometimes harsh, because their faith is a fragile treasure which must be carefully guarded and defended against anything that might challenge it. At this point, atheists and Christian fundamentalists make similar assumptions about the Bible. Both deny the Bible and intrinsic sense of truth and authority. Both accept the Enlightenment notion that truth and authority rest in bodies of knowledge like history and science, and that the Bible can only have this sense of truth and authority transferred to it if it lines up with these other bodies of knowledge. Therefore, atheists reject the Bible and Christian fundamentalist struggle to construct a science and a history with which the Bible can be aligned. Intelligent Design is an example of this kind of attempt to construct science.
My own understanding of this is difficult to put into adequate language. It involves a conclusion that the truth of a text lies more in what it generates than in what generated it. The Bible has played a significant role in generating my Christian faith. My family and my own experience of life have also played a role in this, of course. The immediate charge that is made against an understanding like mine is that it is delusional. It is partly based on literary texts that somebody "just made up." This charge is based upon a false dilemma, though. It assumes that the only two choices one can make about a text is that either it reports "what really happened" or that somebody "just made it up."
This brings us to the question of genre. The Bible contains many different types of literature, some of which self-identify to some extent. Genesis 5 identifies itself as a genealogy, but there are various kinds of genealogies. Exodus 15 and Psalm 3 identify themselves as songs, but there are many kinds of songs. Other texts in the Bible do not self-identify their genre at all, so the reader is left to decide what the Garden of Eden story in Genesis 3 or the story of the Levite and his concubine in Judges 19 are supposed to be. Are these stories true only if they "really happened?' To what degree must they match actual events in every detail in order to be true? I refuse to allow modern notions of history to be the arbiter of truth in these cases. At least part of what makes these texts true lies in what they do to me and the ways they have helped to shape a community of faith of which I am a part. They force me to ask the kinds of questions that make me more fully human.
Given all of this, why do I join in the condemnation of James Frey? I was saying that he was wrong while Oprah Winfrey was still defending him. Was he not simply writing a text that had a complicated relationship to "what really happened?" I can respond that I do not believe any of the biblical writers made any money from their writing, but this is a fairly minor point. It is more significant that we can reasonably establish that James Frey had an intent to deceive, but I have no idea what all the intentions of the biblical writers were. The basic problem with A Million Little Pieces is the misidentification of its genre, and this is not all James Frey's fault. Semi-autobiographical novel, memoir, and documented autobiography are not clearly separated categories. They lie at various places along a continuum. The publishing industry is surely complicit in his deception, but so are American readers. It seems that this industry decided his story was not marketable as a novel, and they were probably right. Why does our interest in this story depend so much on its self-identification of genre? Why was Oprah so desperate for this story to be true in the "really happened" sense? When that became impossible to defend, why was Oprah willing, for about a week, to say that the truth of the story resided primarily in its effect on readers, and why did she ultimately abandon even this position? She believed that Frey's story had an important message for people suffering from addiction. Even when his story's direct connection to "what really happened" was broken, she still believed that the underlying message of "redemption" was true. When she realized, however, that the book might be providing bad, or even destructive advice, then she turned on it and its author. Of course, protecting her image and her brand-name had something to do with all of her decisions as well.
Can we bring some of these questions back to the Bible? Critical readings of the Bible reveal that it has a complicated relationship to "what really happened." A sensible response to this may be to say that its truth lies in its message of redemption and the way that if affects its readers, but the Bible has clearly provided bad advice. Genesis 9, Exodus 21, Philemon, and many other texts promote, or at least tolerate the practice of slavery. Genesis 19 and Titus 1 engage in ethnic slurs. Deuteronomy 7, Joshua 6, and Revelation 21 establish Holy War as part of God's purpose in the world. How is it that the same Bible has advised St. Francis, John Woolman, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Theresa on their way to such different conclusions? The Bible did not invent war, slavery, or ethnic strife. It emerged out of a social world which took for granted the existence of such phenomena. I do not think that any of these Christian revolutionaries were overly concerned with defending the bible or their faith. Their faith and their Bible were not a house of cards to be protected, but a resilient force to be brought into contact with the world in which they lived. The Bible and their experience transformed each other. The truth and authority of the biblical texts reside in their intrinsic identity as part of the canons of the Jewish and Christian faiths. The Oprah Winfrey Book Club has become a kind of canon for the religion of American self-help culture. Of course, canons are not formed instantaneously, and the problem with A Million Little Pieces is that Oprah tried to bring a book that was only two years old into that canon. It had not earned its place and it ultimately had to be thrown out.
Any kind of literature can be true. Even if the story of David killing Goliath I Samuel 17 is political propaganda, it can become part of a true story about how power operates in the world if the author of the book of Samuel gives us a knowing wink in II Samuel 21:19. There is an ongoing debate within Christianity about what kind of literature the Bible is and how it is true. This debate will continue to spill over into the political life of America. I hope that the James Frey incident will be part of an important moment in which we wrestle with all of these issues. I try here, and I hope others will also, to write something true that includes his deceptive story. Perhaps the story of the public disclosure of his false self-understanding can become the story of his true redemption. I believe that America suffers from a similar false self-understanding. I wish that there was some kind of meta-Oprah who could put us in a chair and call us to account. The Iraq War, No Child Left Behind, Tax Cuts, Medicare Part D, Hurricane Relief, etc. What genre are these stories?
