NUNS AND CROSSES Nuns carry wooden crosses as they make the Stations of the Cross at the Philippine Center of St. Pio of Pietrelcina in Quezon City. AP
Why do Jesus and his disciples seem to have only bread and wine in the Last Supper stories in the gospels?
For Pampanga Auxiliary Bishop Pablo Virgilio David, answering the question may need more than biblical exegesis. According to him, it also requires imagination.
“Imagination allows us to read the lines and supply the gaps between the lines,” said David, a biblical scholar.
He calls the use of imagination in interpreting Scripture interpolative reading or “personal hermeneutical method.”
The method calls for the reader to have a feel of the text, including the emotion, the tension and the interpersonal dynamics.
To answer the question on why Jesus and the disciples seemed to have only bread and wine, one should first go to the gospel texts.
Passover meal
The story, according to Mark, Matthew and Luke, says it was a literal Passover meal (one that actually took place).
David said, “I’d expect there to be a roasted lamb at table. If there was, it would make more sense for Jesus to have taken a piece of lamb meat instead and said, ‘Take and eat, this is my body.’ But he said those words over the bread instead.”
He said that many believers would probably say Jesus is the lamb.
“This is true in the symbolic, figurative or theological sense. But if the detail about the meal as a Passover is factual, then there should be a lamb,” he said.
Here is David’s take on using imagination to make sense of the missing lamb: “When Jesus said, ‘One of you will betray me,’ he probably did not even have an inkling who it was that would do it. He said, ‘The one I give the bread to, that’s him.’ In John’s Gospel, Jesus takes a morsel of bread, dips it in a dish and gives it to Judas. Then he says to him, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’
“The disciples understood that to mean Jesus was instructing Judas (as treasurer) to get the things they needed for Passover, among them, of course, the roasted lamb. They probably had preordered the roasted lamb from a litsunan (rotisserie) and expected Judas to pay for it, pick it up freshly roasted, and bring it for the Passover meal in the upper room.
“But he went out and never came back because he had gone to the chief priest to get his 30 pieces of silver.
‘I am the lamb’
“Meanwhile, Jesus and the disciples waited and wondered what had happened to the lamb, and if Judas was going to show up at all. It was in the midst of that delay that it dawned on Jesus what was going on. It was then that he knew that something had gone wrong: There was going to be no lamb because Judas was not coming back anymore.
“It was then that he took bread instead and said the famous words of consecration, ‘Take and eat, this is my body.’ It was his way of saying, ‘You’re looking for the lamb? Here I am, I am the lamb. I’ll give up my life for you.’ Only then will the switch from the literal to the theological or figurative lamb take place. He turns a meal of betrayal into a meal of forgiveness.”
Scholars’ conference
Despite his busy schedule, David made time for teaching a new seminar course, “Reading Between the Lines of the Scriptures,” with the subtitle “The role of imagination in biblical interpretation,” to graduate students at Mother of Good Counsel Seminary in San Fernando, Pampanga province, during the first semester of last year.
David also used imagination as one of the methods (like exegesis and intertextuality) he applied in preparing the paper “Pauline Influence in the Lukan Rewriting of the Parable of the Two Sons (Lk 15: 11-32)” that he presented to biblical scholars during the recent joint conference of Society for New Testament Studies-Asia Pacific (SNTS) and Catholic Biblical Association of the Philippines (CBAP).
The conference, held at Institute of Preaching, at Sto. Domingo Church compound in Quezon City, was attended by some 50 biblical scholars from Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Singapore, Australia, Austria and the Philippines.
David told the conference that he uses imagination in interpreting biblical text because he is convinced that “God speaks mostly through human imagination.”
The use of imagination has been studied by social psychologists and educators and a growing body of evidence has found positive links between imagination and learning among children.
A 2009 study by Gabriel Trionfi and Elaine Reese found that children with imaginary companions create richer narratives. The children, they observed, used more dialogue in their story retelling and could better relate their past and present experiences to the stories.
Symbolic play
A 2012 study by David Bjorklund and Carlos Hernandez, on the other hand, centered on the use of symbolic (fantasy) play, including an “as if” orientation to objects, actions and peers. It can range from the simple substitution of one thing for another in a playful setting (using a shoe as if it is a telephone) to the sophisticated sociodramatic play in which children take on different roles and follow a story line.
The study found that the ability to engage in symbolic play may be important in developing an understanding of the beliefs and feelings of other people. This ability is significant for cognitive development, the ability to understand and learn.
David is aware that using imagination to study Scripture for some may not be good.
“My feeling is that imagination has developed a pejorative sense among Western scholars. If you start talking about imagination, you are not being scholarly,” David said in an interview with the Inquirer.
But blazing new fields, as well as being passionate, is not new to David. During their days in the seminary, Fr. Victor Nicdao said they used to tease David by calling him the “messiah.”
“The passion that he displays in carrying out his responsibilities convinces many of us that he is out to save the world,” Nicdao said.
David obtained his bachelor’s degree (predivinity) at Ateneo de Manila University, where he graduated magna cum laude.
‘Son of man’
Other Filipino biblical scholars later called David “the son of man” (the only christological title that came from Jesus himself) because of his research on the topic.
His doctoral dissertation dealt with the composition and structure of the Book of Daniel. He obtained his doctorate in theology, with specialization in Old Testament exegesis, summa cum laude, from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1991.
In 2001, David became the first Filipino scholar to present a major paper on the son of man, “The Roots of Collective Messianism in Deutero-Isaiah and Daniel,” at the annual convention of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines. (The annual biblical scholars’ convention previously had only known international biblical scholars as major paper presenters).
A man of varied interests—from gardening to cooking, to teaching subjects in philosophy and courses in the Old Testament, all of which he has done well with seemingly unbridled enthusiasm—David is not to be stuck with the usual roles.
Stereotyped
Last year, when he offered to teach the seminar course on reading the Scriptures with imagination, he asked to be excused from his core courses.
“The disadvantages of being a biblical scholar is that you sort of get stereotyped in your area of specialization and because they know you are an Old Testament scholar, it’s like you cannot do anything else but teach Old Testament,” he said.
He clarified that the use of imagination cannot be purely arbitrary. “I think there should be some rules also,” he said.
He calls the method interpolative reading because it is like using the method of interpolation used in geometry.
Interpolation, he said, is connecting the dots. If you have points, you try to find the trend by connecting the dots and then you see upward and downward trends.
“But before you can connect the dots, take the dots seriously. First, you have to find all the dots,” he said.
“The other term that I use is supplying and filling in the gaps. But before you fill in the gaps, take seriously first the existing material. You have to respect the text and then let the text stir up your imagination.”
The 22 papers presented during the two-day joint SNTS-CBAP conference used wide-ranging methodologies, prompting one participant to ask, “Is there one best method to study the Word of God?”
Commenting on this question, David said, “There is no such thing as one correct methodology in approaching the Scriptures.”
Moment of grace
Fr. Clarence Marquez, OP, who cochaired the conference’s organizing committee, said the conference was a moment of grace. “I am affirmed in the conviction that biblical scholarship always already needs a context, a community of faith to sustain it and render it relevant,” he said.
“These ancient texts of Scriptures call for new readings and nearer meanings for us here in the Philippines and in the Asia-Pacific,” he added.
David could only say Amen to that. He said, “Using imagination is so Filipino. It can be the Filipinos’ unique contribution especially for cross-cultural readings and for better interpretation of the Word of God.”
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