Vocal Exegesis: Reading Scripture Publicly Without The Heresy Of Boredom

by Grenville J. R. Kent

Big Questions Films & Wesley Institute, Sydney

Introduction

Churchgoers are used to lukewarm yoghurt, but the Bible is about sin, scandal, violence, about lousy authorities, sex, money—all the things life is about today. A lot of people think the church should be some sort of haven to protect the self, turning their backs on human degradation and suffering. But that’s not the Bible. 

—Daniel Berrigan[1] 

Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespear and Milton and The Bible; and don’t sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon. 

—Professor Henry Higgins to Eliza, Pygmalion (Act I, Scene 1, 117)

Waves crashed and disciples shouted desperately to the sleeping Jesus, but the story was being read in the dry, factual tone of radio news. Jesus’ words brought “great calm” then two violently insane men screamed, but the reader’s voice did not vary in pitch, pace or volume. It was when Jesus was given the same vocal characterisation as the demons that I realised that this reading was more than boring. It was heresy.

How well do church readers transmit the living word of God? Are rich, emotionally layered psalms flattened to the even blandness of a textbook? Are the fiery warnings, gracious appeals and compelling reasoning of apostles and prophets blurred by readers who barely notice the movements of the text, and may have read it for the first time five minutes before? If so, hearers are missing important ideas and are being shown that the Scriptures and the God they describe are drab and predictable. And that is heresy.

Crowds listened for hours as Ezra the scribe read God’s torah with compelling clarity. The Levites “read in the book of the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.” (Neh 8:1–13) Ordinary people celebrated that they now understood, and they came back the next day for more, which led to a national revival. Moses read the book of the covenant in public with great effect (Exod 24:7). When the tribes crossed into the promised land, the blessings and curses of the law were dramatically recited from two mountains by two speaking choirs, a stereo of grace-based covenant theology, and then Joshua read the law (Josh 8:30–35; cf. Deut 11:29; 27:13ff). King Josiah was so powerfully affected by the old scroll read in his hearing that he called all the people together and personally read “all the words of the scroll,” standing with them to make a new covenant (2 Ki 22, 23). With such a history of revival after hearing God’s word, it is no wonder that Paul told the young pastor Timothy, “[D]evote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching” (1 Tim 4:13). Learning to read well is a first step for trainee preachers and teachers, just as it is for actors, and good public reading places a high value on the living words of a speaking God, bringing Yahweh’s word within reach of real people today (Rom 10:8; Deut 30:14).

I have worked as a producer of radio and television. The voice-over artists who read commercials are usually trained actors from theatre or film and can play their voices like an instrument. They can make a car’s upholstery sound sensual. They can pronounce a politician’s name with fond respect, with a menacing shudder or with a dismissive half-chuckle. They can mix emotional colours from a vast palette, adding three or four different emotions in different phrases of one sentence, and still finishing the read in 29.5 seconds. Even as I admire and envy their vocal ability, I wish that the everlasting gospel were given as much respect as soft drink. Actors and Bible teachers are both transmitting a text. But as an actor once said to an archbishop, “We actors on the stage speak of things imaginary as if they were real, and you in the pulpit speak of things real as if they were imaginary.”[2]

It is important to read the Scriptures publicly in a way that reveals their literary beauty and theological richness. This paper will consider how to encourage this.

Challenges

When I ask theology students to read Scripture, I usually get flat readings (though drama students taking theology classes usually show a better way). When I probe a little, some students say they want to transmit only the Bible rather than themselves or their own opinion. I admire their humble respect for biblical authority, yet I remind them that the Bible is colourful literature in various styles and that a reading that fails to show this is in fact a distortion, while text-faithful reading can help audiences see things in Scripture that they may otherwise miss. One reason churches have the Bible read out—rather than simply letting audiences read it themselves—is because reading gives more information than mere words on the page. Our verbal performance is an interpretation, a vocal exegesis, and rather than being afraid of that, we can study to make sure we understand the text so that our interpretation is helpful.

Other students say they want to be real rather than theatrical and emotionally manipulative. Nobody wants fake acting, least of all in Christian teaching, and yet one does not need to go to the other extreme with a delivery so under-stated it is wooden. Most theology students I encounter are well on the flat side, and could add much more expression before becoming anything like over-acted. In class I encourage them to try giving 30% more emotional intensity than they are comfortable with at first. Most then instantly start raising the volume. Volume is one way to add intensity, but preachers often tend to over-utilise it. Shouting soon becomes monotonous, and can push an audience away and talk down to people rather than inviting them in close for respectful conversation between equals. I encourage students to play with adjusting pitch and pace as well. A fast pace can be exciting in places, but you will need to work hard on articulation and make sure you do not lose details, and you will need contrast with slower sections or the audience will struggle to follow. Excitement can be built if you inject plenty of appropriate colour into the details and actually take things slightly slower. A slower pace at times can allow an audience to relish the moment. Most students try these things and step up about 10% in energy, looking shy. I encourage them to try 30% and ask their classmates how it came across. They step up, most feeling strange and fake and a little exposed at first, and usually they see from their classmates faces that it was an improvement and did not sound false. With encouragement, students begin to see that it is possible to be rehearsed and sincere at the same time.

I also sense that readers feel vulnerable. Speaking is very revealing because words not only come from the brain, revealing our thoughts, but are powered by muscles in the gut, where counsellors say our deepest emotions are felt, and words are expressed in breath, which is the word for the human spirit in both Hebrew and Greek. Words come through the mouth and face, and are affected by our facial expressions that reveal our emotions. Further, starting to speak can reveal our social class, our ethnicity, city/country origins, probably gender and general health and a number of other factors that people can place in various hierarchies. Many students cringe at the sound of their recorded voice and say, “Do I really sound like that?” Speaking is quite confronting to one’s self-image, and most beginners withdraw into totally flat delivery so they risk no self-revelations and no mistakes. Here perhaps the teacher’s first task is to encourage readers to be comfortable as themselves. This is an important personal growth challenge, involving important theological ideas of God’s acceptance and gifting of all kinds of people. While there are principles of presentation, the aim is to develop the reader or speaker not as an off-the-rack newsreader indistinguishable from others, but as an individual.

Bible readers and preachers can learn a lot from actors and voice teachers. For one thing, I notice many preachers are pushing from their chests and tightening their throats rather than breathing correctly and powering the sound from their diaphragm muscles and letting it come through a relaxed, open throat. A few voice lessons or singing lessons can start to correct this and form new habits. As a beginner preacher I would have a sore throat after most sermons, but voice training helps you to breathe properly and to relax, avoiding the tension that in fact reduces vibration and sound. Breath work, diaphragmatic breathing, posture, articulation exercises, vocal warm-ups, pitch and pacing exercises, theatre games, improvisation exercises and the like are very useful, especially for those who sense preaching is their major gift and want to develop it. This paper will focus elsewhere[3] but these things should be part of basic training for preachers.

Key Skills For Public Reading

1. Words

Carefully asking what words mean is an important part of exegesis, but a presenter will also consider the sensory and emotional responses produced by the words, and how they convey experience, thought and feeling. Think of King David’s gut-wrenching cry after Absalom’s death.

O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son.” “O my son Absalom! O Absalom, my son, my son!” 

—(2 Sam 18:32; again in 19:4)

These words do not give us new information—we already know Absalom is his son. Their function is to express emotion. Yet reading all these repetitions with just one emotion like simple sadness would soon become monotonous, so the skilled reader will see a range of emotions here—shock, grief, tenderness, anger, longing, regret, perhaps self-blame—and decide which fits best with each word. They would also plan which words deserve emphasis: for example, one time it might be “my son” and another time “my son.”

It is in the vowels of a word that emotion is most clearly heard: think of how many ways one can say the word, “O!” Meanwhile the consonants of a word shape the logical and intellectual meaning, and need to be clear. I would suggest that thought and emotion work powerfully together: understanding David and his story and how he arguably is at fault in the loss of his son can then produce mixed emotions, which are the most powerful emotions. If an audience feels deeply, they may remember and reflect later on the story and its themes. David as a father has been compared to God (2 Sam 14:1–23). His attempts to blend justice and love look shabby compared to the way God does. David seems incapable of bringing his prodigal son home, while God works out ways by which his banished ones may be returned to him (14:13–14)—which is gospel good news today. And so great biblical literature stays in our thoughts and feelings, which may be why God chose to reveal His truth in this way as well as in simple, factual statements.

In preparation, actors will “mark-up” a text, poring over it and noticing the ideas and emotional colouring of the various parts, and how it fits together, then underlining and jotting down comments in the margin. They will mark the keyword of each line or scene, and then their performance will make it stand out in some way. This can be done on a photocopy or printout of a biblical text.

2. Phrases

Good phrasing simply shows how words group together to form an idea, and how various parts of an idea fit together into an overall message.[4] Without clear phrasing, ideas and feelings run together and the meaning becomes smudged.

It can be helpful to pay attention to prepositions and conjunctions, the grammatical connectors. Yet over-emphasising them can sound dry and overly didactic: “The Prime Minister said to the US Foreign Minister, who is at the talks in London.” Phrasing should be like the beam that holds up a roof: not visible itself, but carefully structured to support ideas and feelings, and to produce clarity and natural energy. Stress nouns more than adjectives and verbs more than adverbs. Don’t over-stress adjectives, negatives (“not,” “no”) or personal pronouns (“I,” “me,” etc). Don’t strain to over-explain, or the text will feel heavily didactic rather than accessible and enjoyable. A reader does not need to pretend that a complex argument from Paul or Ezekiel is easy, but can offer the first-time hearer a way into it and an initial reading that begins to open up the key ideas. In a psalm, the phrasing is often done for you, and the basic unit is the line or the pair of lines in parallelism. Yet even lines can have various parts and various emotional colours.

Some readers swallow the last few words of a phrase or line, but it is important to maintain energy and interest right to the end, and often in poetry the key idea is at the end. The end of the sentence or the line is often worthy of emphasis because a clever writer will often construct sentences so the peak at the end, with the key action or idea arriving last.

It is important to ask what each phrase or line is doing, and how they fit together. Actors are trained to assign an action to each line, then to each phrase. For example, a Shakespearian sonnet, number 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? 

[I think the writer is trying to catch attention, to make her curious, to tease her.] 

Thou art more lovely, and more temperate. 

[To flatter, perhaps to manipulate?] 

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May. 

[To shock, to frighten.] 

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date. 

[To show urgency by hinting at death.]

And so on. This trick of asking what each phrase is trying to achieve can help you summarise the flow of arguments as well. Note Rom 8:1–4:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, [To assure, to gospel, to relieve guilt.] because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. [To contrast two forces working in conflict.] For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, [To show my plight.] God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. [To show God’s solution: the incarnation and the cross.] And so he condemned sin in sinful man, [To rebuke both sinfulness and self-righteousness.] in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, [To give hope, to promise sanctification as a free gift.] who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. [To motivate a choice to do just this.]

I do not pretend my brief notes have explained all Paul is doing in this passage. There are subtleties and connections with the wider context and the more we know of these the better we may read, as long as we are not lost in detail and can still introduce an audience to the big and basic ideas. The reader who can summarise for themselves the purpose of each line will read it with a well-defined purpose, and audiences will find their reading clearer. Try it and see.

3. Images

Pay attention to the striking images Bible writers use, anchoring an idea to a sensory experience so that it is remembered. In a screen age when so many people think visually, these are striking. The technique for the reader is Think—Feel—Say. In preparing the reading, think carefully about each image and the emotion it is intended to create. Then, while reading, visualise what is described. Try this visually rich passage from Psalm 58 describing the wicked: “Their venom is like the venom of a snake, like that of a cobra that has stopped its ears, that will not heed the tune of the charmer, however skilful the enchanter may be” (v. 5). Did you see the experienced snake charmer panicking because the cobra will not listen?

Note the powerful images vv. 6–7: “Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; tear out, O LORD, the fangs of the lions! Let them vanish like water that flows away; when they draw the bow, let their arrows be blunted.” And here come hard-hitting images that express the writer’s honest feelings about these enemies in v. 8: “Like a slug melting away as it moves along, like a stillborn child, may they not see the sun.” A slug? A stillborn foetus in a bloody bucket? These are shocking images, but the writer intended them to be, and a reader who respects biblical authority should not try to soften them, but let them have full impact on the audience. They will not be easily forgotten by people struggling with similar feelings and bringing them to God.

4. Make Interpretive Choices

When Amaziah the apostate priest pulls rank and tells Amos to go away and stop prophesying, Amos responds with a heart-stopping prophecy:

Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, your sons and daughters will fall by the sword. Your land will be divided… and you will die in a pagan country. And Israel will go into exile… (Amos 7:17).

How do you imagine Amos saying those lines? Harshly and loudly for maximum public embarrassment, enjoying the thought of vengeance on his opponent? Or is he shocked by this God-given vision, and saddened by the future of this man and his family and the nation? Does he speak gently, hoping that by kindness he can lead this priest to repentance to avert the disaster? Is his voice teary with compassion as he sees this vision? The text does not tell us. Yet our choice should be guided as much as possible by evidence in the text, and our imaginative reconstructions should be built around that.

I admit I sometimes change my mind on some reading choices when I come back to a text I have marked up earlier. I find that really knowing a text takes years and dozens of readings, but it is important to commit to a reading now as best you can, rather than staying in the bland middle.

5. Bring Out The Variety In The Text

One of the enemies of good reading is monotony (which literally means “one tone”), so actors learn to bring out the feeling and meaning of each line, and then of each part of the line. Good variation not a sing-song change of tone imposed on the text, but simply tries to react to what is in the text.

For example, we will look briefly at Psalm 46. (I have chosen KJV this time for its timeless grandeur.) You may like to practise reading each verse aloud after reading the comments and suggestions below. The poem begins by stating its key idea of the assurance of faith, which should sound authoritative but also personal because this is “our” God. Help the listener feel the emotional difference between “help” (which has a warm colour) and “trouble” (colder and more threatening) in Ps 46:1: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” The next thought builds in intensity, falling into four natural steps which can be expressed by raising the energy in the delivery. Raising the energy does not necessarily mean raising the volume: if you were warning a friend that a lion was behind the nearest tree, you would whisper with great intensity. And raising the energy does not necessarily mean going faster. These step-ups in energy should not be rushed, as we want the reader to visualise this huge earthquake and tsunami and experience it in their imagination, and this takes a moment. For example, note Ps 46:2–3:

Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed,

[Step up]

and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; [Step up]

Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,

[Step up]

though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.

The word “Selah” is usually understood as indicating an instrumental break in the music, so the reader could pause briefly. It appears three times in this psalm, forming sections that can be indicated by a brief pause.

In the next section there is no roiling sea, but the image of a river calmly gliding through paradise (cf. Rev 22:1–2). The audience will feel the difference between a reader who can picture images in their imagination and one who simply says the word. We are describing the peace in the city of God, so use the nice long vowels (“there,” “streams”) to express this calm emotion, and do not rush. You could legitimately lengthen the vowels in the words “glad” and “God,” or could leave them short and let them bounce along lightly and happily for contrast, before the long vowels in the next line (“holy place,” “most High”) provide an opportunity for gravitas and awe. Note v. 4: “There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.” The next verse can be read to show the balance and symmetry of its two parts. Colour its phrases with solid, dependable assurance in crisis and even the hint of a carefree smile: “God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early” (Ps 46:5).

Next comes another huge contrast in just two quick verses. The first verse is a dramatic and violent story told in four separate headlines. The words describing the actions of ‘the heathen’ could sound angry and shrill, but God’s response is stronger but calmer. Verse seven comes with solid assurance, and also repeats the key idea with which the poem began. There, God is called the Lord of hosts or armies, or the NIV translates Lord Almighty: “The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah” (Ps 46:6–7).

The next section requires imagination. We are being invited to admire God’s judgments by leaving His city of safety and venturing out onto the earth after the Lord of armies has stopped a war - which can be understood as the final eschatological war of good and evil: “Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire” (Ps 46:8–9).[5] (Did you remember to visualise the broken weapons, and smouldering chariots?)

Next comes another contrast: total calm, and God speaking for the first time directly to the audience. How will you differentiate God’s speech? Some readers drop their voices as deep as possible, since a deep voice can suggest authority. (Anthropologists say this is because a deep voice usually comes from a large body.) Others may represent God by a whisper, which has some biblical support (1 Ki 19:12). Your choice here will depend on whether you want to emphasise God’s transcendence or immanence, but it is important to cue audiences that this is God speaking. In these verses we realise God is not only in His city of safety, but is Sovereign over all nature and all history, including nations that do not recognise Him.

God’s power means his people have assurance of final victory, yet there should be no note of cheap boasting in the second half—God is well above that. Instead He is assuring His people: “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth” (Ps 46:10). The next part is God’s people—“us” speaking their enthusiastic faith in response to God: “The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah” (Ps 46:11).

Noticing the structure like this means that it becomes clearer how each part should be read. This naturally brings variety into the reading, and helps an audience think and feel their way into the text.

6. Read Characters

Characters in a biblical story should not all sound the same. Bible translators and other linguists speak of the “register” of language, which shows a character’s social position.[6] For example, in 2 Kings 6–7 we hear a king speaking, perhaps in formal language and high register (something like the English spoken by Prince Charles). At the other end of the social scale are four lepers, rejects who are starving almost to death and keep mentioning death and dying. Bible translator Andy Warren-Rothlin points out that register is often ignored, even by Bible translators:

RSV has the lepers uttering an absurdly unnatural high register ‘Let us enter the city’ (because everyone in RSV speaks like the Queen of England), whilst TEV has the king producing, equally unnaturally, a low-register, ‘I’ll tell you what the Syrians are planning!’ (because everyone in TEV—and how much more The Message—speaks like a gangland teenager.)[7]

This story also has the voices of Aramean soldiers (with foreign accents?) in panic about a larger army coming. We hear the polished prophetic oracles of Elisha (2 Ki 6:18–19), and the King’s guard mocking with exaggerated images (2 Ki 7:18–19).

Readers also need to consider how each character feels at that time. For example, when a woman asks the king for help, he slams her with sarcastic comments (2 Ki 6:27). She does not reply, perhaps because he has made her look a fool, so he asks more kindly what the matter is. She tells a horrific tale of child murder and cannibalism. (Would she speak with shrill mania or in a catatonic monotone, or would the baby-boiling Mummy Dear be trying to sound ultra-sweet and reasonable?) The king’s response is silent depression—tearing his robes and revealing the garments of mourning underneath. He perhaps suppresses his hopelessness and anger by taking a formal oath to kill Yahweh’s prophet. We hear him publicly blaming Yahweh for disaster, which is terrible theology, completely opposite to the prophet’s view.[8] Later we hear the king at night, just woken from his sleep and expressing fear and paranoia about enemy military trickery. In each case he would not sound the same, and a reader can consider the story context and the character’s feelings.

It is in narrative that character is most obvious, but it is useful to consider character in other types of literature as well. In an epistle, who is Paul? To whom is he writing? What relationship does they have? What rhetorical tactics does he use with them? Not every church reader can give a full vocal characterisation in every Scripture reading, but there can be some recognition of who is talking.

These suggestions are not the Ten Commandments. A reader who has learned them and practiced them can break them occasionally, as long as they know what the effects of this will be.

Reading Scripture Today

In some ways, ours is a visual age that distrusts words. The cultures of Ezra’s time or Timothy’s were arguably much more oral and aural—though the Greeks and Israel’s neighbours certainly emphasised the image. Yet since television, Western culture has been increasingly visual. Drama teacher Patsy Rodenburg writes:

Most of us, I think, no longer trust in words. We have forgotten and, in some instances, have lost forever language’s ancient mesmerising power… Somewhere along the line we stopped being an oral society… Storytelling, discussion, debate or just the simple enjoyment of words and word games ceased to be part of our daily lives… [W]e have grown accustomed to thinking that government and media of every sort have done a great deal to corrupt the need for honest and accurate words in our lives… We live in an age of ‘sound bites’ where even our leading politicians can only speak in disconnected fragments and simplistic homilies. The ‘great speech’ is no longer in them.’[9]

Our cultural moment makes the task of reading Scripture more difficult, but it also makes it crucially important, theologically and culturally. God has chosen to communicate in words, and we must learn to transmit them well. Luther wrote:

I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure… I see that there has never been a great revelation of the Word of God unless he has first prepared the way by the rise and prosperity of languages and letters, as though they were John the Baptists… Certainly it is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies, as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skilfully and happily.[10]

If we can read Scripture with an understanding of the aim of what we are doing, and a sense of its eternal importance, and can know ourselves and develop and control our communicative abilities, then people may hear God’s word, and may even listen: “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear” (Rev 1:3).[11]

Notes

1. Quoted in George W. Cornell, “Berrigan says guilt makes America sick,” St Petersburg Times, Saturday 29 October 1977, p.9-D. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19771029&id=H0QjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GloDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3844,362561 5, accessed 10 March 2013.
2. The Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Science &c, for the Year 1828: p. 89. At books.google.com.au. Accessed 10 March 2013.
3. See Cicely Berry, The Actor and the Text (Virgin Books, London, 1992). Patsy Rodenburg, The Need For Words: Voice and the Text (London: Methuen Drama, 1993). Michael McCallion, The Voice Book: For actors, public speakers, and everyone who wants to make the most of their voice (London: Faber & Faber, 1988). For practical workshop training on DVD, see Bill Pepper, “Voice In Action” (2006), available from billpepper.com.
4. After Bill Pepper, “Guidelines on approaching a text,” unpublished notes, n.d., p. 4.
5. “[T]he God who rules over nature and men is imagined eschatologically as overmastering all the world and bringing an end to war… God…exercises the power to end the era of violence and bring peace to humankind” [Robert Alter, The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2007), p. 164]. This has been seen at least since Hermann Gunkel, Die Psalmen übersetzt und erklärt, 4th Edition (Gottingen: Vendenhocek und Ruprecht, 1926).
6. Andy Warren-Rothlin., “Sub-Cultural Texture in Bible Translation,” in Warren-Rothlin, A. (ed.), Studies in Bible Translation in Nigeria 2: Papers from the Bible Society of Nigeria’s Annual Translation Workshop 2005 (Paper presented at UBS Afretcon, Nairobi, Kenya, 26 Apr 2005; Jos: Bible Society of Nigeria, 2006), pp. 83-91.
7. Warren-Rothlin, “Sub-Cultural Texture,” pp. 84-85. He makes the case that register exists in the Hebrew: the King uses modal and grammatical particles which are optional, while “the lepers fail to use directional” heh, “fail to modalise their language (i.e. ‘What are we doing sitting here?’ rather than ‘Why should we sit here?’…), and have a high proportion of stative utterances and deictic terms (distinctives of informal oral speech)” Warren-Rothlin, “Sub-Cultural Texture,” p. 85.
8. Warren-Rothlin, “Sub-Cultural Texture,” p. 90: “Does not our tradition of presenting the Bible as linguistically homogeneous stem from a quite unbiblical fundamentalist principle which would like to present its theology as consistent? If so, is this not unethical?”
9. Patsy Rodenburg, The Need for Words: Voice and the Text (Methuen Drama, London, 1993), pp. 4-5.
10. Martin Luther, Letter to Eoban Hess, 29 March 1523. Werke, Weimar edition, Luthers Briefwechsel, III, 50. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki /Page:Luther%27s_correspondence_and_other_contemporary_letters_1521-1530.djvu/179 accessed 13 January 2013.
11. The writer thanks participants at the Australasian Academy of Homiletics for helpful feedback.