The Bible, Helen Keller (and a Little Bit of Frankenstein): Tools You'll Need Before Answering the Questions
Most people have been introduced to the amazing true story of Helen Keller through The Miracle Worker. Both the award-winning play and movie were written by William Gibson, and his script and the original performances rightfully struck a permanent spot in the hearts of millions when it was released. The climactic scene where Helen Keller, both blind and deaf, suddenly learns that the fingerspelling tiredly repeated through her teacher’s undying efforts mean actual words, where Helen utters the only words she ever learned before losing her hearing--”wah wah”--will turn the most hardened heart into mush each and every time it plays out.
Though so many owe this play much as being their introduction to the courageous Helen Keller, The Miracle Worker is not about Helen. And the famous “wah wah” scene never took place, not as it climatically plays out on stage or screen. Gibson’s adaptation of the true-life events is about Helen’s teacher, Anne Sullivan, and all she went through in order to bring language to the dark and silent world of Helen. Anne Sullivan is the “miracle worker” in the title, though most people seem to forget that (as much as they forget that “Frankenstein” is not the monster but the doctor who creates him).
The Hebrew Bible is sort of like this play, The Miracle Worker. Most people know of Helen Keller through it and only it. Most people fail to realize the story is really about Helen’s teacher. Most people who know this is a true story have never read the actual accounts written by Anne and even by Helen herself. And yet almost everyone can tell you who Helen Keller is.
But when talking about Helen Keller, if you tell people the “wah wah” thing never happened, most people will argue with you. Most believe it did. To the majority of people in the world who know of Helen Keller, The Miracle Worker is, for lack of a better word, gospel.
No, Really. The Bible is Just Like "The Miracle Worker"
Though the gospel accounts are not part of the Hebrew Scriptures, the comparison holds, especially when it comes to what Jehovah’s Witnesses teach and believe about the Jewish Bible books. They (and unfortunately a lot of Christians) believe that the Hebrew Scriptures (or Old Testament) is the true and original story (as well as compendium of religious beliefs) for us Jews. Millions and millions of people believe that when they read a book like Exodus, Judges, Ruth, Job, or any other book the Jews hold as scripture, people truly believe that this is where Jews base their beliefs, that here in their hands is found the full history and all you need to know about everything Jewish, theology included.
But the Hebrew Scriptures are to the Jews, their history and religion, what The Miracle Worker is to the lives of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan. Jehovah’s Witnesses will tell you that their religion is based on the Bible. All and good. But the religion established by the God of the Jews and practiced by the Jews themselves is not based on the Scriptures. By claiming that true religion should be based on the Scriptures, the Jehovah’s Witnesses are offering a paradigm that is tantamount to saying what Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan did with their lives is based on the script of The Miracle Worker. You end up thinking odd things if you do that, missing the point (again, like mistaking Frankenstein's monster for "Frankenstein," the main character.)
The lives of Helen and Anne came first. The Miracle Worker is based on their life stories. It is the same for the worship of the God of Abraham. The religion came first. The Bible is the dramatized version of the people who lived it. This is important to keep in mind, because you can't treat something which is not the foundation as the foundation. If the basis for a story is something else, the basis is the foundation.
The Truth About Miracles is Philological
Of course outside of what is dramatized, even some of the actual speech used in The Miracle Worker is lifted from history. The entire “wah wah” climax in the script is really a clever device. If you read the actual account by Anne Sullivan herself, it was a bit different, but the “miracle” was no less dramatic. In order to translate for those seeing the drama unfold in a performance, writer William Gibson had to invent a narrative device so that the meaning of what happened when Helen Keller first grasped the concept of speech could literally be felt by an audience. If you’ve never seen it, find a version to watch and you will see what I am talking about.
The reason I am starting off by talking about The Miracle Worker is that a lot of what the Hebrew Bible is about, a lot of what it is trying to say, and a lot of the reason for it is not so different from this modern-day script. The “miracles” experienced by my people over the generations have often been similarly dramatized, and events in our past have been encapsulated into narrative devices that are often no more than inventions designed to get a point across. This means that some of the things the Witnesses have had you take for granted (such as the details of the Exodus, the battles fought by the Jews, even some of the players in Scripture) aren’t literal.
By now some of you may be reviewing the questions and realizing that some don’t even fit what’s about to be discussed. You are correct. We will tackle this too. But for now it was important to set the stage to help you understand the concept of a narrative device, dramatic (or “poetic”) license, and the order in which a true story becomes a written story. When all these things are in play in the discussion of Scripture, you have the critical research method known as “philology.” Hopefully you have the basics down now through this example, because what comes next is showing how without the right philological tools (understanding the historical development of a story, the structure this can take when lessons learned from history are what is trying to be passed on, and how language plays into all this), you won’t understand a lot of why the Jews invented the Bible in the first place.
Once you got that, however, things will now look different. You may soon learn that the “foundation for religion” you have been studying is just a “play based on true events,” that a lot of the details in Scripture are nothing more than narrative devices used for educational effect, and that telling a story like that of the history of the Jews can require a few liberties in the process to get the point across. Hopefully, if I do this right, you will end up having your own “wah wah” moment by the end of it all.
(Now, how many of you dressed up for Halloween as "Frankenstein" when in reality you were Frankenstein's "monster"?)
