Inflection
The accounts that have come to us in the Bible are greatly compressed. Incidents are recorded in a paragraph, when they actually must have taken hours or days. Conversations that occupy a sentence or two were surely longer. Sometimes decades or generations are skipped over entirely.
On top of this, when we read what a prophet or an apostle or Jesus says, we cannot hear the inflection in the speaker’s voice. Humans rely a lot on inflection, but it’s notoriously difficult to convey in written text. And then, these abbreviated accounts have to be translated from the ancient languages into something we can understand.
Given all this, it might seem hopeless to accurately understand more than a fraction of the original content and intent. However, I think there are factors that lessen the problem:
The writers were used to the limitations of the medium they had to work with. They would have been accustomed to conveying meaning via text only.
The abbreviated narratives actually help, by reducing the number of words that might be misunderstood. We know the accounts are stripped down to essentials. The writers knew we would know it.
If the Bible is what it claims, it is inspired by God. He wants to communicate to us about Himself, in a way that we will understand.
All this helps us have confidence that the text is durable, and we’re getting the message we were intended to get.
But what about inflection? Is it lost without hope of retrieval? Maybe not, or at least not entirely.
Sometimes it’s right there in the text—we just have to listen for it. When John the Baptist denounced the entrenched religious leaders (Matthew 3:7-12), he was loud, he was fervent, he had a confident, commanding voice. When those same leaders confronted the man born blind, we can’t miss the dripping sarcasm on both sides of the confrontation (John 9:27-34). When Jeremiah pleaded, when he denounced, when he lamented, when he rejoiced in the promise of a better covenant to come, his tone of voice leaps right off the page. Very often, in the words the writers chose, we can tell not only what someone said, but also how they said it.
Sometimes the writers tell us explicitly what someone was feeling. We’re told flat out, “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.” (Jonah 4:1). So what inflection do we hear in his prayer which follows? Or when we read, “And he [Jesus] looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart…” (Mark 3:5), it’s not hard to hear the inflections in what he says next. Or this: “As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works…” (Luke 19:37). Is there any doubt about their inflections when they quote Psalm 118?
Of course, sometimes we are left to ponder what inflections there might have been. Personally, I think Jesus intentionally spoke to draw laughs, when he asked the crowds what they went out to see in the wilderness. (Luke 7:24-27) The humor of the first two suggestions was in the inflection of his voice. And it served to put a sharp point on the final, true and serious suggestion.
But I could be wrong. We just can’t always determine what the inflections were. I do believe it’s worth thinking about, maybe trying out a couple different tones of voice. Once in a while it might open up a passage in a way we hadn’t considered. I believe that’s what the One who caused these accounts to be written down would like to see.
Love, Paul