In episode 126 of the sixth season of the Enter the Bible podcast, co-hosts Kathryn Schifferdecker and Katie Langston discuss the question of how to interpret the Bible figuratively or metaphorically while still believing in the literal resurrection of Jesus with guest Nicholas Schaser. Together, they explore the different genres of biblical literature and the importance of understanding the intentions of the authors. Schaser explains that while Jonah may not be taken 100% literally, the resurrection of Jesus is presented as a physical, historical event in the Gospels.
Guest Nicholas Schaser teaches courses in biblical and Jewish studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. He received a Masters of Theological Studies in Old Testament from Luther Seminary (2010) and a Masters of Arts in Jewish Studies from Vanderbilt University (2013). He also completed his Ph.D. in Jewish Studies and New Testament at Vanderbilt in 2017.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Enter the Bible podcast, where you can get answers, or at least reflections on everything you wanted to know about the Bible but were afraid to ask. I'm Katie Langston,
and I'm Kathryn Schifferdecker, and our special guest today is Nicholas Schaser. He's the assistant professor of religious studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, not too far from Luther Seminary, uh, with a special emphasis on biblical studies and Jewish studies. So welcome, Nick. Thank you for being with us again today. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Great to have you. Uh, just to note, uh, Nick has a book coming out with SBL press called A Ransom for Israel Jesus' Exile and Jewish Salvation in the Gospel of Matthew. So a book, uh, specifically on the Gospel of Matthew. Um, so we, invited you here today, Nick, to address a question, that a listener submitted on the Enter the Bible website. And as always, listeners, if you want to submit a question, just go to enter the Bible org and we will get to as many as we can. So, uh, it's it's a bit of a lengthy question, but it's, I think, worth reading the whole thing just to understand what the, the person who submitted it is asking. So here's the question. "Hi, I'm a teenager who would like some advice and guidance on my question. How is it possible to take the Bible figuratively or metaphorically, but also believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead? I've been struggling to understand what I believe, and this has been a roadblock in my faith. I don't think the story of Jonah is 100% literal, but does carry symbolic significance and meaning. But I do believe Jesus rose again and is God. How do we know what is literal versus figurative in the Bible?" So it's a really good question. It's a big question and it's a good question. That question it's a wonderful question. Yeah. And it it has to do not just of course, with Jonah or with the resurrection, but but basically how do we read scripture. But go ahead, Nick, how would you address.
Absolutely. Yeah. Right. So, you know, it's not always easy to ascertain exactly how we should be reading something. You know, there's different genres in biblical reading and interpretation. So you get something like the Psalms, which are prayers and poetry. I mean, that probably shouldn't be interpreted exactly the same way as, say, the Book of Judges, you know, which is narrative. And and so it can be tricky. And, uh, oftentimes what we're doing is just doing our best to come up with evidence for our for our different interpretations. When it comes to Jonah, I'll do this as briefly as I can, Jonah is an actual prophet in historical literature, in the deuteronomistic history, in the Bible. And what happens with the book of Jonah as we know it's a very short four chapter text on Jonah and the Ninevites, etc., is that the author of that text is writing at a what's called a post-exilic time. So there's after the Babylonian exile, which is in 586 BCE. So the author is taking Jonah the figure, right, the prophet, and building a narrative around Jonah. And, you know, the question had something to do with I don't take everything 100% literally in Jonah, that's perfectly fine. Uh, Jonah is, um, Jonah is is a it's pretty clear that it's supposed to be comedic. Uh, and Jonah kind of does the opposite of every good prophet that we have. So Jonah is kind of like a negative foil. Like, if you want to be a good prophet, kind of don't be like Jonah. Um, but there's a lot of narrative repetition in Jonah. There's a lot of important stuff. One of those things is the number three, uh, particularly in the Greek version of Jonah, which is called the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. And this number three shows up. All the time. And one of the three numbers is, um, Jonah being in the belly of a big fish, a dag gadol in Hebrew, not a whale, by the way, uh, being in the belly of a big fish for three days and three nights and then vomited up onto the dry land. Now, the issue here is, vis a vis Jesus' resurrection, is that Jesus himself in Matthew 12:40 says that just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so too is the Son of Man, that's Jesus, going to be in the heart of the earth for three days. And so that is Jesus links his experience of death, uh, being in the grave and then being raised from the dead by God. Jesus links that to the event of Jonah. So what do we do, right, if we don't take Jonah 100% literally? And I'm actually on board with with that. I think that the Hebrew text compels us actually towards that. I think it's actually a sound, uh, biblical conclusion as opposed to like, you know, being, you know, just dropping the Bible wholesale or saying that didn't happen historically or this didn't happen. No. I think that the literature itself pushes us to the idea that we should be taking Jonah in a different way, okay, than fully historically. That said, what do we do with does that mean that with Jesus's resurrection, we also have to take that ahistorically or metaphorically or literarily, like, what do we do? Well, it's very clear that the gospels take Jesus' resurrection as an embodied, physical, historical event. There's just no way around that. This is not some, uh, you know, sort of abstract kind of thing where we saw a vision, but we weren't really sure what we saw. And, you know, Jesus was raised from the dead in our hearts or something like that, right? Uh, no, no, no, Jesus is is literally raised from the dead. You know, the stone is rolled away. He's gone. He's out of his tomb. And then he appears to his disciples, depending on again, depending on the, um, the resurrection narrative in the Gospels that you're reading. But an important thing to note is that this body that Jesus gets, uh, in in his raised state is physical. It is his body in many ways, and it's something else. So, for example, if you remember On the Road to Emmaus, Jesus, this is Luke chapter 24. It's the last chapter of Luke, and he meets two on the road to Emmaus. And it says they don't recognize him. Uh, why? Well, it's not just because they're thick. It's because Jesus' body is a resurrection body. Or as Paul will talk about in 1 Corinthians 15, a spirit body. I'll get back to that in a second. So Jesus, you know, can sit down in Luke and eat with his disciples and break bread. He's chewing. He's he's. Yeah, right.
You can touch him.
That's right. So this is the Gospel of John. So John chapter 20, he makes a fish breakfast. They're sitting down. He's eating it. He's swallowing the food. He says to Doubting Thomas, you know, touch my side, touch my hands. This is his body. And it's physical. At the same time in John, he he walks through walls. He appears in a room that's locked and he just appears. So the body is is, uh, physical, if you want. Yeah. Meaning when I say physical, I mean, we've got it's an entity embodied in space and time. Yeah, but it's not made of of, uh, the flesh and blood. The kind of to go back to Paul, this is, um, 1 Corinthians 15, by the way. This is like the best distillation that we have in the New Testament of this idea of resurrection and having a resurrection body. Paul says things like, well, when God's kingdom comes to earth and we're all raised from the dead bodily, we'll get a new body. Um, he says that those who aren't dead will just be changed in the twinkling of an eye, and there'll be a trumpet blast, which in it's the Greek translation of the word shofar in Hebrew, which is a ram's horn. This goes back to all sorts of biblical precedents, but Paul envisions the people being physically and bodily raised from the dead that is shaking dust off of your shoulder, getting out of the grave physically. But you're made of new stuff. You're not made of flesh and blood because that's perishable, that that goes away, that degrades. And Paul says, what is perishable cannot inherit that that which is imperishable. What's imperishable? The eternal kingdom of God. God makes a new heavens and a new earth at the end of days. We're going back to eschatology now, and this goes back to the Old Testament. This is Isaiah 65 and 66, or it's Daniel chapter 12 where this there's this idea of a new heaven and new earth. We're in some sort of new epoch. And Daniel talks about physical resurrection, that those who sleep in the dust of the earth will arise, some to everlasting life and some to some to everlasting abhorrence. And even in that the word for abhorrence in Hebrew is taking from the same word in Isaiah at the end of Isaiah. So all these biblical writers are building on each other in this. And the New Testament again, inherits this idea. So when you're raised from the dead, you are there. It's physical. It's not a metaphor. It's not a literary device. It's not a joke. It's not a parody.
It's not a ghost.
Exactly not a ghost. Right. We are talking about physicality. It's just that what is physical is made of different stuff. It's made of spirit rather than flesh. New Testament readers will be very familiar with, say, the Pauline bifurcation between spirit pneuma and flesh sarx in Greek. And what behind that is the idea of flesh or bone and blood that we're made of now, dies and is perishable. Then when you're raised from the dead, you have your same body, but it's like super charged. It's made of, it's made of a spirit stuff. Exactly. That never dies. So it's made of spirit stuff. So in the ancient world, particularly in Greek thought, but also you get some of this in Second Temple Judaism. Is that, uh, spirit okay, is a material. So it's not just like you can't like it's not like a wisp, you know, or a floaty thing like a cloud. It is stuff. So for example, in John chapter 4:24, when Jesus is talking to the Samaritan woman at the well, he says famously, God is spirit. And most readers today will take that to mean, well, that means God's not a physical entity, right? God has no body, for example. That's not what it means. What it what it means is, is that God's body is not made of flesh and blood like our body is. God is. God's body is made of spirit stuff, just like Jesus' body. Resurrection body is made of spirit stuff. But it's not an abstract body of God or of Jesus. It's real. It's physical. It moves in space. It goes from point A to point B, you know? So it's a real body, it's physical and yet it's spirit. So instead of talking in terms of how do we understand Jesus', you know, resurrection, do we understand it physically or metaphorically? A better way to look at it is do we think of it in terms of flesh or of spirit? Because it's all physical and literal. It's just the question is, what's the body made out of? How do we understand that physical body? Uh, the last thing I'll say on this, just to link it back to Jonah. Right? So what do you do? Jesus says, just like Jonah was in the fish. So I'm going to be in the grave, and I'm going to come out of the grave just like Jonah came out of the fish. Um, it doesn't mean that you need to take Jonah 100% historically; you can also take Jesus' resurrection 100% historically. Um, so, for instance, like, I just got back from Italy, uh, it was a wonderful trip, and we did a lot of traveling around Italy. My wife is Italian, and we visited her family in one part of the country and then hung out in different parts of the country so I could have done that big trip, you know, and come back home and said to my wife, you know, gosh, I feel like Odysseus, you know, after that big long trip. So this is the main character of the Odyssey who goes on a big, long trip. That's the whole point. Now, do I think Odysseus. I mean, Odysseus may have existed historically in some form, but the narrative built around Odysseus, right? Homer's narrative is fantastical and wild and theological and literary. It's beautiful, just like Jonah. So there's the building out of the of the historical Jonah, if you want, is for a purpose. It's for comedy, it's for parody, it's for theology, it's for didacticism, teaching us something, but we don't need to take it 100% historically. Um, so that is, Jesus could refer to Jonah in a similar way as I just referred to Odysseus, because in in the narrative, it is in the narrative, it's in his data set, it's in the scriptures that he holds as like the animating force of his entire life. So why not refer to Jonah in trying to describe this thing that's going to be truthful and historical and physical, but why not use the Jonah story to illustrate it? Because both. What? When Jonah goes into the fish and comes out, God's making a statement. When Jesus dies, it goes into the ground and comes out, God's making a statement. That is, both events are theological and you can happily, within the bounds of good Christian thought, take Jonah as, say, literary and Jesus' resurrection as historical.
Yeah. It's not. I think this is all really helpful, Nick. I think I would say. You don't. It's not an all or nothing thing, right? With scripture. Like, you don't have to believe everything literally, historically in order to accept the literal, historical bodily resurrection of Jesus. Right? Like that's right. And Jonah is a good example. I completely agree with you, right? When you read it, especially when you read it in the Hebrew. But but also you can get this in English. It is kind of a, it's a it's like a parody. It's this story that's meant to evoke laughter. It's humorous, um, and meant to make one think about how does God deal with my enemy, right? What does God think about my enemy? So it's again, to our to the person who sent in this great question. You don't have to take Jonah literally in order to take the resurrection literally, right?
That's right.
There are different genres in Scripture. There are different expectations in Scripture. But the point being, as you said, Nick, the gospel writers take Jesus that it's not a vision. It's not a, the resurrection. It's not a metaphor. Uh, they mean us to take it very literally.
Absolutely. That's right. I mean, resurrection, bodily resurrection is, I would say, the fundamental belief of not only the New Testament but of later Judaism, what's called Rabbinic Judaism. So the later rabbis, the Jewish sages who lived after Jesus, also take physical resurrection just as seriously. And so for and the belief is both in Christianity, quote unquote, and Rabbinic Judaism is that ultimately there's going to be a universal resurrection of the dead. And that goes back to Daniel, where everybody is going to shake the dust off their shoulders and be judged by God at the end of days. And so Jesus' resurrction has to be physical and literal. If we are to follow in those footsteps and our resurrection be something more than metaphor.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't know how a metaphorical resurrection would help anybody, right, to be frank. Right? Right. Uh, so yeah, but but again, and to go back to your point, Kathryn, about Jonah, just really briefly, um, there are differences that the, um, the biblical, the gospel writers, uh, would, would say exist between Jonah and Jesus as people. So that is, it's not always a 1 to 1 comparative. Jonah is doing stuff wrong. Right? Good prophets don't do what Jonah does, right. You know, come like get up and go to Jonah. And he immediately goes in the opposite direction. But Elijah, God says, come like, get up. And he immediately goes, so Jonah is doing the bad thing. So certainly Matthew and the other Luke and these other gospel writers aren't equating everything Jonah did and said, or the person of Jonah with everything Jesus did and said, that's way too strict an understanding. So the same can be true of the precise, uh, you know, presentation of Jonah's swallowing by the by the fish and coming out of the fish. And Jesus' precise death and resurrection like they're not one to ones. Even the gospel writers are not making that point.
Right? Yeah. And I would I would add just this thought, you know, um, understanding like what the writers of the, the various books in Scripture are trying to do is really important. So it's not, um, special pleading. The book of Jonah itself wants to be read literarily.
Exactly.
The gospels want to be read historically. The Psalms want to be read poetically and liturgically. Right. And so it's actually taking I think it's taking the text much more seriously not to superimpose this like, is it literal, metaphorical? That's that's a very modern way of looking at it. That's not how historically people read the scripture or the people who wrote the scripture, what they were trying to do when they were they were not trying to write a science textbook or, you know what I mean? Like, yeah. So absolutely. So it's actually in my mind, it takes the text more seriously. To try to understand what it's actually trying to do, uh, than to, you know, assume that we have to, um. You know, if Jonah didn't get swallowed by a whale, then Jesus didn't rise from the dead. Those are not. That's not necessary. That those are completely different questions, completely different literary literature that is trying to do completely different things.
That. Absolutely right. Yeah. That's right. Katie, what you said about taking the text more seriously, I think that's really, really important. Sometimes we think in terms of, okay, like if my Christian walk should be dictated by my ability to believe, you know, believe beyond belief. If I close my eyes, you know, I believe, believe, believe that all these things happened historically. But there's a better way, a healthier way actually, to approach the Bible, and that is to understand the text and what it's doing and to have your put your trust, your right, your faith in, in that, you know, um, and so sometimes we take what the Bible is trying to tell us and, as you say, superimpose our own understanding of what we think the Bible is saying or wanting us to hear, but the key is for let to let the wave wash over us, not the other way around. I often say in churches when I'm teaching, you know, like if you're in the ocean and a big wave comes up, you've got two options. One, you can dig your heels in and then the wave is going to hit you and probably knock your teeth out because it's much stronger than you are. That's bad. You don't want that. Or you can go loose and let the wave take you where it's going to take you, and then you'll be safe. It'll cough you up on on the shore, hopefully, rather than dragging you out. But the point is that's that's how we should understand. We moderns, Christian or not, need to understand that that's how we should be interpreting the Bible and understand the Bible. We need the wave of the Bible to hit us and allow us to tell. Tell us what it wants to say. It's a living document. We don't have the right to dig our heels in and say, this is exactly what should be understood about the Bible, or interpreted about the Bible every single time.
I like that. I like that analogy.
Preach it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think to go back to resurrection, just briefly, uh, I appreciate your distinguishing between spirit and flesh, but also saying spirit isn't what we moderns think of. It is right that there is a reality, a spatial, even reality about spirit. When Paul talks about that in 1 Corinthians 15. And I just want to say to the listener who sent this in or to others listening to this, if you don't understand that, it's okay, right? Right. Like Paul, if you want to read more, right. First Corinthians 15, Paul speaks about the resurrection and compares it. One analogy uses as a seed right that is planted. And then how is the seed related to the, you know, the tree or the plant that comes out of it? Well, it's, it's it's consistent with it. Right? The tree comes from the seed, but it's not the same stuff exactly, right? So it it's a mystery. But what we what we hold as a foundational belief as Christians is that the resurrection happened historically, literally, you know, uh, physically, uh, and that and that, that is the that as, as Paul says, right? Christ's resurrection is the first fruits of those of, of of the promise of resurrection, right? That just as Christ has been raised, we also will be raised. So whether we understand exactly what Paul means by spirit and flesh or what kind of body it is, uh, I think we hold to that promise, right? That the resurrection of Christ, uh, happened historically, literally, physically, and that we too, are promised that resurrection at the end of time.
That's right. Yeah. Very well put, Kathryn. Um, I completely agree. That's across the biblical narrative. That's the message. Uh, you know, the idea that, you know, when you die, your your body doesn't matter anymore. And like, you've got an abstract soul or something that floats up to heaven and gets a halo and wings and lives in the clouds, that that's simply
and plays a harp.
That's not biblical.
Plays a harp. It's not. It's not a biblical idea because it takes out. Because, for instance, if that were true and you're already in heaven wisping around with God or whatever, then what would be the point of physical resurrection? You got to go back down into your body, you know, it's just simply not the view. Um, if you want to just briefly, a couple quick biblical references to, you know, the idea of death and then having a body after death, you can take a look at 1 Samuel chapter 28, which is the medium at Endor, the woman at Endor.
Oh, yeah. And we have we have a podcast on that. So I'll put that in the show notes.
Good. I won't go too deep in that. But but Samuel is gets out from the realm of the dead. He's embodied. He's got his little robe on that his mom made him as a child. And that's. And that's how Saul realizes, in Hebrew it's me-al. That's how Saul realizes it's Samuel. Samuel has a body. Or in, um, Luke chapter 16 with the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man who's bad during his life. He goes into one part of, uh, Hades, you know, and then he's talking to Abraham. And then in the bosom of Abraham. By the way, bosom means chest, the space. The Greek word means space between your shoulders. So how about that for embodied. And they've got they've got mouths. The the rich man needs to get some water. The idea in Judaism, and I'm including the Gospels and the New Testament in that frame, is that you die. Your physical body that you have is in the grave. You know, that will decay. And then there's a realm of the dead where you are embodied, and one day you're going to be pulled out of that and that, and then your body is going to be the spirit body that's no less embodied than the one that you had. And it's going to be you when it comes out of the ground. So that's kind of the view just to try to put some legs on the whole, this idea of spirit versus flesh, which is kind of hard to understand.
And one of one of the things that the doctrine of the resurrection or the belief in resurrection helps me with is to to guard against an overly spiritualized, um, kind of gnostic understanding of faith, right? That God cares about bodies, right? God cares about, uh, flesh and blood, uh, and and and cares about, soil and cares about water and cares about air. Right. And God creates it all. God becomes flesh and blood. Uh, and God resurrects bodies, right? So I just think that it it fits, right? It fits with what we know of God from both, uh, Hebrew scripture testimony, Jewish testimony, and and from the New Testament as well. Yeah.
Yeah. Well put.
Well, thank you so much, Nick, for, uh, talking about this great question. Uh, and, uh, we really appreciate your, your input and your insights so much. Thank you for joining us.
Yeah, this was wonderful.
My pleasure. It was great to see you both.
Yeah. And, uh, thank you to our listeners and our viewers for, uh, listening to this episode of the Enter the Bible podcast. Uh, please go to Enter the Bible, submit your questions. Review and rate this podcast. Recommend it to a friend and we look forward to talking to you next time. Take care.