Social Sharing and Biblical Interpretation

As our society has moved into the dialogue of interactive social media, people's use of Bible texts has become more fragmented and decontextualized, and is less and less controlled by what would be considered a "valid" interpretive process. This was the topics of the second part of Elizabeth Drescher's BibleTech 2010 session entitled "People of the Facebook." (In a previous post I reviewed the first part of this session.)

To set the context for this part of her talk, Dr. Drescher quoted Thomas Arundel, who was Archbishop of Canterbury at the beginning of the 1400s, who decreed that "no man, by his own authority, translate any text of Scripture into English or any other tongue." His concern was that theological error would creep into people's use of Scripture, and that the magisterial authority of the church would be undermined by private interpretation.

So in light of these pre-modern concerns about "private interpretation," Drescher looked at the use of Bible texts on three platforms: iPhone, Twitter, and Facebook.

On the iPhone, there are more than 400 Bible-related apps, and all different kinds of lenses are being applied to Christian Scriptures. For example, there is a Buddhist Bible, which selects Bible texts and interprets them through the lens of Buddhism. There is no central control on the interpretation of Christian Scripture -- anyone can interpret the Bible in any way they please.

On Twitter, a lot of people are tweeting the Bible text (you can find out more about this from Steven Smith's BibleTech talk, Tweeting the Bible). Elizabeth Drescher has noticed two things: (1) A lot of "private interpretation" is going on -- people are interpreting Bible texts in all kinds of ways, without regard for the textual or historical context in which the verses of the Bible were written (she gave as an example of this Jana Riess's Twitter feed, where she is summarizing each chapter of the Bible in a single tweet, from her own perspective). (2) There is not a lot of interaction of Twitter -- people are just broadcasting.

On Facebook, there is more interaction taking place. Drescher looked at three examples of Bible fan pages:

1. "The Bible" is a fan page with 2 million fans. On this page, there is thoughtful and meaningful engagement both with the text of Scripture and with others.
2. Another page called "The Bible" (which I wasn't able to find) is a fan page with 30,000 fans. Here, there is only affirmative, non-critical interaction with what is being posted.
3. A third page called "The Bible" belongs to an individual and has only a limited exchange of texts

It would be interesting to expand this study to include how people are using Bible texts in their personal Facebook status updates -- but of course, it is more difficult to study this, because status updates are (at least supposed to be) private among one's friends.

On all of these platforms, people are using Bible texts in a fragmented, de-contextualized fashion -- individual verses, interpreted apart from their textual or historical setting, and apart from the church, which functions as a community of interpretation. What can help people to interpret the Bible in a more "valid" way, according to accepted principles of hermeneutics (interpretation)?

Here Drescher introduces the "Wikipedia Effect", stating that the greater the general interest in the content, and the more textually and visually developed the content, and the more editorial access people have to the content, the greater the factual accuracy and critical quality of the content. Simply put, get more people interested, and more people involved, in developing shared understanding of Bible texts together, and the result will be higher accuracy and quality in what is being said.

I am interested in the development of an online platform for the co-creation of Bible-related content. But I have some questions:

1. What kind of platform can support the creation of shared Bible-related content? Something like Wikipedia with Bible references?
2. Can we really suppose that having more people interact with the Bible text and edit the Bible-related content will result in higher accuracy and critical quality? I have my doubts, but perhaps the answer is to find a set of "rules," such as Wikipedia has (e.g., everything must be backed up by published citations), which will provide some kind of control on content without preventing all kinds of people from editing.
3. How can get people from a variety of traditions to work together and to come together in a shared interpretive space? Or will people divide up into different "communities of interpretation" online? I see such divisions as highly likely if an open & shared Bible-related content system is developed.