‘It’s all red ink’: The interpretation of biblical metaphor among Evangelical Christian YouTube users

1 Introduction

On the popular video-sharing site, YouTube, users from most of the world can interact with one another, posting ‘vlogs’, or videos of themselves addressing the YouTube community discussing a wide range of subjects. Through posting and responding to others’ vlogs, users build relationships with others, often forming small communities of users discussing particular issues. This article presents an investigation of the role of the Bible in antagonistic debate – called ‘drama’ by YouTube users. The vlogging community investigated includes both Christians (i.e. users who publicly professed faith in Jesus Christ) and non-Christians (including atheists, agnostics, and users who did not take any position on Christianity) who regularly discuss religious issues on the site. The focus of this article is particularly on interpretive disagreement between self-identified Evangelical Christians, and the aim is to offer an empirical description and analysis of how and to what effect text from the Bible is used within the community. This qualitative account of biblical interpretation by lay Christians complements recent discourse analytic research on how non-professional readers interpret fictional texts (e.g. Allington, 2012; Lang 2010; Peplow, 2011; Whiteley 2011; see Swann and Allington, 2009 for a review of earlier work). Because this passage contains overt metaphorical language, it provides evidence of how readers interpret metaphor in real-world contexts, as opposed to the artificial contexts used in experimental studies (see reviews in Gibbs, 1994; Steen, 2007).

2 Background

This study arises from the tradition of metaphor-led discourse analysis (Cameron and Maslen, 2010), which draws on complex systems theory and treats metaphor as entering and remaining active in discourse activity in the form of ‘a temporary stability emerging from the activity of interconnecting systems of socially-situated language use and cognitive activity’ (Cameron et al., 2009: 64). Emerging out of the complex system of situated language use, metaphor is then a phenomenon that develops in discourse activity (Larsen-Freeman and Cameron, 2008): a claim supported by empirical research (Cameron, 2010b; Tay, 2011; Zanotto et al., 2008).

By extending metaphor-led discourse analysis with discourse-centred online ethnography (Androutsopoulos, 2008), my previous research has shown that the use of metaphorical language and stories taken from the Bible is of particular importance to Christians on YouTube (Pihlaja, 2011a, 2011b). Because metaphor is extensively used in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament (Charteris-Black, 2004), it has historically been of interest to theologians and religious studies researchers (e.g. Boeve and Feyaerts, 1999; Lamarque, 1987; Soskice, 2007). Goatly (2007) and Charteris-Black (2005) also highlight the role of metaphor in spreading ideology, another potentially important aspect of the study of metaphor in discussions about the Bible. However, although some work has been done in analysis of metaphor in sermons (Corts and Meyers, 2002; Graves, 1983), a gap remains in discourse analysis of lay practitioner discussions of the Bible, with no research done to date which takes into account both the development of metaphor in this interaction and the interaction between metaphor development and biblical interpretation.

Because of the Bible’s centrality to Evangelical Christian belief, biblical interpretation is of particular importance for Evangelical Christians. Malley’s (2004) work also shows the complex interaction of both finding and creating meaning in biblical interpretation by Evangelical Christians, because although they may believe the Bible to be inspired by God and ‘totally true and trustworthy’ (Southern Baptist Convention, n.d.), they also believe God speaks to the believer and guides their reading (Nuttall, 1992). Particularly in social settings like Bible studies where lay Christians read and interpret the text together, contextual factors can play a role in how the text is interpreted, and what knowledge is brought to bear in interpretation can differ depending on who is present in the immediate context.

Searching for an empirical description to take into account the different factors contributing to the reading of the Bible, Malley (2004) suggests that Evangelical Christian hermeneutic activity, like the work mentioned earlier on metaphor, might be described by relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1986); that is, in interpreting the Bible, it can be argued that Evangelical Christians employ the reading that is most relevant to the immediate context. Here, a link between metaphor and biblical exegesis can be seen in the issue of resolving ambiguity in language. This view of processing ambiguous language focuses on cognitive processes, but the application of relevance theory to the interpretation of biblical language in the real world is not without concern. Kopytko (1995), for example, suggests that the study of pragmatics avoids ‘reductionist’ descriptions of real-world interaction, and presents relevance theory as an extreme example of such reductionism. In relation to biblical interpretation, a more holistic approach would require considering other factors, including the social context of the reading and powerful second-order discourses about the text (Foucault, 1981), which may contribute to how individuals understand biblical language. Relevance theory cannot, therefore, completely describe all the components contributing to exegesis in particular settings.

Another common description of the Evangelical Christian hermeneutic is ‘biblical literalism’, the belief that the Bible is ‘literally true’ or ‘infallible’ (Bartkowski, 1996), which is often typified by literal understandings of the biblical creation myth. This description of the Evangelical Christian hermeneutic, however, requires several important caveats. First, in practice, Evangelicals may concede that some elements of the Bible could be read figuratively, particularly language that is explicitly poetic or non-literal, as in the case of metaphorical language of the parables contained in the teachings of Jesus (Malley, 2004): an important point that I shall return to at the end of this section. Second, a literal reading of the text does not ensure agreement among readers. As Bartkowski (1996) shows, disagreement among Evangelical Christians about corporal punishment is not resolved by a ‘literal’ reading of the text; instead, various readings evidence conflicting worldviews with which different readers approach the text. A description of the Evangelical Christian understanding of the Bible as ‘literal’ does not, therefore, account for how and why disagreements arise between two readers applying the same hermeneutic.

The occurrence of such disagreement suggests that reading the Bible may not always be about deducing the ‘right meaning’ of texts, but rather convincing others of one’s world view using the Bible. As Fish (1982) shows, the interpretation of texts is always closely related to persuasion and appeals to the text for authority. The relationship between the reader and text, and how meaning is deduced, has continued to be of interest in reader reception studies, and Mailloux (1989) notes that theories of reader reception can generally be placed in two categories: ‘textual realism’ which sees readers as discovering meaning in texts, and ‘readerly idealism’ which sees readers as creating meaning from texts. As we have already seen, Evangelical Christian belief dictates ‘textual realism’ in that the meaning of the text is defined by God and Christians discover the meaning, but Evangelical Christian practice tends towards ‘readerly idealism’, in which Christian readers bring their own experiences and knowledge to bear on their interpretation of the text, which is understood to be guided by God. This can be seen as a specific case of the general phenomenon described by Allington (2007: 46):

In general … readers do not wish it to appear that they are the source of the meanings they attribute to texts: thus, it is not so much that reading does, or does not, create meaning (as in the idealism/realism debate) as that it aspires never to appear to do so in the current instance. If I attribute a meaning to a text, then to accept the text as the source of that meaning is to accept my interpretation of the text as a true one. On the other hand, you may reject my interpretation by representing me (or my assumptions) as the source of the meaning I attribute to the text: that is, you may accuse me of a mis-reading.

In this view, interpretation is a kind of argument, but the nature of argumentation, as Billig (1996) points out in analysis of Talmudic arguments, is the possibility for any argument to continue indefinitely in the search for the ‘last word’. In the momentum of argumentation, Billig states, opponents continue to answer the claims of the other in an attempt to leave the other speechless. The goal then becomes not the persuasion of the other, but ‘winning’ an argument by holding the floor last. In this understanding of argumentation, any positive argument can be met with a negative argument and vice versa, with the argument only ending when one opponent gives up. This understanding of argumentation is of importance for analysis of biblical interpretation because in the momentum of responding to another’s exegesis, the reading of the text that best supports an individual’s ability to counter the other is the reading that the individual is most likely to offer.

Although Billig’s model of argumentation focuses on the cognitive functions of arguments, Allington (2006) works to integrate Billig’s model into an account of argumentation in the exegesis of authoritative ‘foundational discourses’ (Foucault, 1981) because ‘individual attitudes and opinions [on authoritative texts] are made possible by a social context of controversy’ (Allington, 2006: 131). In taking into account both the social context for argumentation and Billig’s model for argumentation, Allington is able to present a more complete accounting for how certain readings of texts emerge at particular times. Although Allington applies this approach to literary texts and their professional readers, I will take the same approach with scripture and its lay readers.

Biblical interpretation among Evangelical Christians must also be contextualised in terms of broader Evangelical Christian belief about the Bible. Noakes (1992) outlines the origins of Evangelical Christian hermeneutic activity by presenting analysis of Jesus’ own exegesis of scripture in the gospel of Luke. In Jesus’ reading of the Old Testament, Noakes shows how Jesus contextualises scripture therein and applies it to his own context. As Armstrong (2007) argues, the Protestant Reformation subsequently afforded Christians the ability to read and interpret the Bible in this way, emphasising it, in theory, as the only authority for Christians, above and beyond the power of the Church. Bebbington and Bebbington (1989) cite the noted Evangelical theologian JI Packer’s (1978) work in putting biblical supremacy as the first in a list of Evangelical fundamentals. To exemplify the centrality of the Bible in Evangelical Christian belief, the following extract taken from the statement of faith of the influential American Evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, is presented:

The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.

Exodus 24:4; Deuteronomy 4:1-2; 17:19; Joshua 8:34; Psalms 19:7-10; 119:11,89,105,140; Isaiah 34:16; 40:8; Jeremiah 15:16; 36:1-32; Matthew 5:17-18; 22:29; Luke 21:33; 24:44-46; John 5:39; 16:13-15; 17:17; Acts 2:16ff.; 17:11; Romans 15:4; 16:25-26; 2 Timothy 3:15-17; Hebrews 1:1-2; 4:12; 1 Peter 1:25; 2 Peter 1:19-21. (Southern Baptist Convention, n.d.)

In this definition, the ‘Holy Bible’ is described, not as a clear collection of writings in a particular book, but rather as a series of properties. It is divinely inspired, authored by God, and totally true and trustworthy. This belief statement does not describe the actual, textual content of the Bible, but rather what is believed about it. The Southern Baptist Convention belief statement is not unique and other denominations and Evangelical organisations make similarly worded claims (Noll, 2001), showing an orientation to the Bible as a series of properties found in a collection of texts that has been historically viewed as a central authority in Evangelicalism (Bebbington and Bebbington, 1989).

Although there is a democratic aspect to the Evangelical understanding of scriptural interpretation, certain powerful, second order discourses do still emerge, instantiated in statements of belief and ritualised liturgical calls and responses (Forrester, 1981). In considering the social context of readings of scripture, it is necessary to recognise the ‘pastoral power’ the church exerts over the life of the individual, a power that is ‘embodied and crystallized’ in an institution, but which can also be found outside of the institution (Foucault, 1982: 791). In analysis of Evangelical Christian discourse activity, however, the institutionalised church can be obscured by the belief in the transparency and universal accessibility of the Bible (Boone, 1989). No central, hierarchical authority on biblical interpretation exists (as in the Catholic and Episcopalian churches), and Evangelical Christian hermeneutic activity thus becomes a complex interaction among individual ideology, context, and institutionalised Bible readings. Teachings of church doctrine, therefore, both formally and informally can instil in believers particular ways of reading the Bible that are salient for Christians across denominational lines.

The belief in the authority of the Bible and the complex factors contributing to how the Bible is interpreted are of particular importance for the data analysed in this article. For Evangelical Christians, the authority of the text is God’s authority and their own beliefs and actions must be presented as conforming to the ‘word of God’. Explicit metaphorical language in the Bible, however, poses a difficult issue for Evangelical Christian users, one that cannot be, as I have already shown, resolved by descriptions of relevance or literalism. My analysis will therefore show that the ambiguity of metaphor, combined with the Christian and Evangelical practice of interpreting the words of the Bible as directly relevant to and addressed to the reader and his/her contemporaries, provides enormous scope for disagreement between Christians over which kinds of behaviour are supported by the authority of the Bible (and thus, of God). I highlight the process of this interpretation through analysis and description of metaphor use, particularly ‘vehicle development’ (Cameron, 2008). Following Cameron (2010a), I employ the term metaphor ‘vehicle’ to refer to the focus term of a metaphor in discourse activity (also known as ‘source domain’ terms) while using the term metaphor ‘topic’ to refer to the thing which the metaphor ‘vehicle’ is being understood in contrast or comparison to. ‘Vehicle development’ is then the process where a metaphor vehicle is repeated, relexicalised, explicated, and/or contrasted in the course of talking-and-thinking, or ‘discourse activity’. My analysis shows how, in this process, the authority of the Bible is appropriated to a user’s own words.

3 Data collection

The videos for this analysis were identified following a two-year (October 2008–August 2010) systematic observation of a small community of YouTube users discussing religious issues on the site. The community was identified through a recursive process of observing individual user interactions, identifying users who frequently interacted, and subscribing to and following users over the course of the observation period. I observed approximately 20 users, with individual users making videos and engaging at different levels of involvement over time. During the period of observation, many different ‘drama’ events were observed, as users interacted and argued with one another about a range of topics.

The drama event on which I shall focus in this article began with an argument between the atheist user Crosisborg and the Christian Yokeup in which insults were exchanged. There was a long history of drama between Crosisborg and Yokeup, which developed from Yokeup’s condemnation of Christians who were friendly with Crosisborg and his argument that Christians should not be friends with atheists. At one point in their interaction in late-2008/early-2009, Crosisborg made a video that included joking about Yokeup’s wife, Caroline, calling her a ‘lesbian’ and making negative comments about her sexuality. This was offensive to Yokeup and Caroline because Caroline’s story of conversion to Christianity included a claim that she had changed her sexuality, having previously been involved in a relationship with a woman before converting (amy2x, 2011). By calling her a ‘lesbian’, Crosisborg rejected Caroline’s own description of herself and insulted Yokeup by appearing to challenge both the validity of their relationship and Yokeup’s own masculinity. In response, Yokeup condemned Crosisborg and everyone associated with him, calling him ‘human garbage’.

In this drama, the disagreement developed throughout the community when users, including both Christians and non-Christians, expressed outrage at Yokeup’s use of ‘garbage’ to describe others in the community. In response, Yokeup defended calling Crosisborg ‘garbage’ by saying the term was actually taken from the Bible from the parable of the vine and branches in John 15, claiming, in one video which he eventually removed, that his words were all ‘red ink’, or the exact words of Jesus from the Bible. This claim that the Bible supported his insult of Crosisborg was opposed by many other Christians in the community who claimed that Yokeup had taken the passage out of context to support himself and the Bible did not actually support Yokeup’s argument. Disagreement between Yokeup and other Christians developed around disparate exegeses of the parable.

To focus on the factors involved in the emergence of the drama, I initially identified videos made in relation to the controversy and discarded videos that did not ultimately relate to the drama. Twenty videos posted at the time of the initial controversy were therefore identified. Within the 20 videos, for this analysis, one video exchange between Yokeup and another Christian user, christoferL, will be used as an exemplar case study to discuss the role of biblical interpretation among Christians in the drama.

Table 1 gives information about the video exchange between Yokeup and christoferL analysed in this article. In the exchange, christoferL posted a video entitled ‘John 15 for dummies – Unbelievers are human garbage?’ which challenged Yokeup’s exegesis of John 15 and argued that because the parable of the vine and the branches was directed at Jesus’ disciples, it could not be used to describe the judgement of ‘non-believers’. In response, Yokeup posted a video entitled ‘more on … human garbage’ in which he also questioned christoferL’s exegesis of John 15 and reasserted his argument that his words were supported by the Bible. He also argued that ‘people like christoferL’ were more eager to be popular on YouTube than to follow the Bible.

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Table 1.

Drama exchange.

Video Titles	John 15 for dummies – Unbelievers are human garbage?	More on … human garbage
User	christoferL	Yokeup
Posting Date	15 Feb 2009	17 Feb 2009
Views	578	939
Comments	25	32
Time (min:secs)	4:54	6:03

4 Analysis

The initial drama videos that both Crosisborg and Yokeup made were subsequently removed and were not online at the time of data collection, although two atheist users did download Yokeup’s videos and reuse elements of these (including video and images) in their own videos. Yokeup removed his initial video soon after it was posted and others objected to him, but audio of the video was included in an atheist user’s video entitled ‘YouTube’s Psychopath: Yokeup’ in which Yokeup can be heard using the term ‘human garbage’ and arguing that the biblical parable of the vine and the branches from John 15 supported his use of the term. The passage follows, taken from the King James Version of the Bible:

In this text of John 15, Jesus is speaking to his disciples using a parable. The parable included the following metaphors: the disciples are branches, Jesus is the vine, and the father is the gardener. Within the parable, the following story was told: branches which remain in Christ, bore fruit and were pruned. Branches which did not bear fruit were cut and thrown away, and subsequently withered and were burned. The parable stressed the importance of ‘remaining in Christ’ so as not to be cut off from the vine and thrown away.

Yokeup had drawn an equivalency, therefore, between ‘garbage’ and the withered branches, and used the passage to support his insulting of Crosisborg. Responses to Yokeup’s video by other users suggested that the title of the video was ‘Human Garbage … Are YOU?’ and that it was posted between 10 and 13 January 2009. Audio and images from another video that Yokeup made during this time were also extracted and remixed by theoriginalhamster in a video entitled ‘yokeup the crackwhore’. This enabled some reconstruction of what Yokeup had said in the initial interaction with Crosisborg, namely that he had defended his use of ‘garbage’ to describe non-Christians by claiming that the term ‘garbage’ came from the parable of the vine and the branches, in which branches (people) which are not connected to the vine (Jesus) are cut away, thrown into a pile to wither and be burned. Yokeup also called ‘agnostics, gays, lesbians, and homosexuals’ ‘human garbage dumps’, relexicalising the vehicle of ‘piles’ into which the withered branches were thrown (John 15:6) as ‘dumps’. The development of the vehicle then implicated many more users, including anyone who did not identify themselves as ‘remaining in Christ’. Yokeup did not comment on the development of the vehicles nor did he address in later videos the potential problems of using these words. Instead, he consistently presented his language as the word of God, and as maintaining the meaning as in the Bible.

Yokeup’s justification for ‘human garbage’ and his self-positioning as someone presenting the actual words of the Bible (‘red ink’, as he claimed) prompted responses from other Christians who used the opportunity to both distance themselves from Yokeup and present a more positive biblical message. The video by christoferL entitled ‘John 15 for dummies – Unbelievers are human garbage?’ in which he took a position of openness towards unbelievers, highlighted attempts made by some Christians to position themselves as ‘loving Christians’ in contrast to Yokeup (see video extract, Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Video extract. ‘John 15 for dummies – Unbelievers are human garbage?’ by christoferL.

This video extract shows how christoferL framed his response to Yokeup as addressing the concerns of someone who was not a ‘believer’ and who wanted to know what ‘the Bible said about him’ (line 12). By reading aloud from the Bible, christoferL’s self-positioning also emphasised that he was presenting the ‘real’ meaning of the Bible and that Yokeup had ‘ignored a rather obvious point’ (lines 19–20). Since Yokeup had claimed the right to call others ‘garbage’ from the moral authority of the Bible, challenging Yokeup’s ability to interpret the Bible also challenged Yokeup’s moral authority and self-positioning as someone just repeating the words of God.

The challenge to the reading focused on Yokeup’s judgement of ‘non-Christians’ using the passage rather than the use of the term ‘human garbage’. To do this, christoferL mixed wording from the John 15 passage with his own exegesis to further support the accuracy of his exegesis, and emphasised the hearer of the parable must ‘obey [Jesus’] commands’ to ‘remain in [God’s] love’. Figure 2 transcribes what christoferL said.

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Figure 2.

Video extract. ‘John 15 for dummies – Unbelievers are human garbage?’ by christoferL.

In this video extract, (Figure 2, below) christoferL used the verses that follow the parable to further challenge Yokeup’s exegesis and use of ‘human garbage’ to refer to ‘unbelievers’. In the same way that Allington (2007) found readers arguing about whether or not a textual quotation had been taken ‘out of context’ in another’s interpretation, christoferL took into account the context in which the parable was told and argued that withered branches in the parable could only be applied to the topic ‘believers who do not remain in Christ’ (159–160) and not ‘unbelievers’ because the parable was told specifically to Jesus’ disciples. christoferL argued that because ‘unbelievers’ cannot be in Christ, they cannot become withered branches. The vehicle ‘garbage’ therefore could not take the topic ‘you’ if the hearer was an ‘unbeliever’. Therefore, christoferL did not explicitly challenge the development of garbage from the parable, but rather the redeployment of it to groups and people who might be considered ‘unbelievers’. christoferL’s video suggested that the problem was that the development did not maintain the original meaning of the parable, not that Yokeup’s use of the term was wrong.

Although christoferL did not accept Yokeup’s development of human garbage, he developed the parable’s use of ‘burn’ to refer to spiritual punishment in hell and specifically stated that, ‘This isn’t to say that unbelievers won’t burn because unfortunately you guys you will if you don’t accept Christ’. In this statement, christoferL affirmed his own belief in the Christian doctrine of hell, and the belief that ‘people who do not accept Christ’ will burn. The statement is ostensibly the same as Yokeup’s assertion about human garbage that ‘people who do not remain in Christ’ will burn, but unlike Yokeup, christoferL did not suggest that any specific user would burn. Moreover, christoferL’s use of the Christian term ‘unbeliever’ compared to Yokeup’s use of the names of particular users also made the assertion that some people would burn less direct, since no users in the ‘human garbage’ drama self-identified using the word ‘unbeliever’.

The development of garbage from the parable of the vine and the branches was also opposed by other Christians who followed christoferL’s reasoning. BudManInChrist and gdy50 as well as commenters appealed to other parts of the Bible to support their exegesis and to further interpret the meaning of the parable. Conversely, users who agreed with Yokeup also appealed to scripture to support Yokeup’s exegesis and development of ‘garbage’. Acceptance of the term among Christians was in part contingent on whether or not they believed the development maintained the original meaning of the biblical text. In the same way that Bartkowski (1996) showed that a ‘literal’ reading of the Bible did not resolve disagreements about corporal punishment because Bible passages supporting both sides of an argument can be offered, quotation of other parts of the Bible did not resolve the argument between Yokeup and christoferL: much like a literary text in the hands of an academic critic, the Bible becomes ‘both an object of interpretation and a source of (variously interpretable) evidence to support or undermine that same interpretation’ (Allington, 2006: 133).

In Yokeup’s response video titled ‘more on … human garbage’, Yokeup explicitly described how human garbage was developed from the John 15 text. In this video, Yokeup read from the text of the Bible and posted the text, taken from the King James Version in the video description box. Although Yokeup did not provide commentary on the parable in the description box, he did explicitly reference the text in the video. Yokeup read directly from the Bible passage, commenting on the scripture throughout his reading. Although the term human garbage was not contained in the parable of the vine and branches Yokeup presented the vehicle as a development of the parable’s withered branches vehicle (see Figure 3 video extract).

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Figure 3.

Video extract. ‘More on … human garbage’ by Yokeup.

In the video extract in Figure 3, Yokeup reiterated the point he had made before, drawing an equivalence between the metaphorical language in the parable and his own discourse activity. He accomplished this by first relexicalising ‘remain in Christ’ to be ‘connected to’ Christ (line 49) and then implicitly redeploying the topic ‘you’ from the biblical parable (lines 55–57). Yokeup developed withered branch to garbage using the fact that both can be burned to illustrate the relationship between the words. Although the ‘you’ in the context of the parable was ostensibly Jesus’ disciples, the text establishes a new topic for the vehicle branch in verse 6: ‘Anyone who does not remain in me …’ (John 15:6) which Yokeup explicated as anyone who ‘is not connected to Christ’ (line 49), including contemporary readers of the text, using the generic ‘you’ as the topic for the metaphor ‘you are garbage’, and thereby establishing an implicit metaphor: anyone who does not remain in [Christ] is garbage.

The use of the topic ‘you’ (as Jesus has in the parable) also made the use of ‘garbage’ more direct, with Yokeup taking the authoritative position of Jesus. Whereas the biblical passage referred only to ‘anyone who does not remain in me’ (John 15:6), Yokeup’s retelling of the parable addressed the viewer directly. The parable was, in Yokeup’s discourse activity, about the burning not only of unspecified ‘people who do not remain in Christ’, but of the video viewer. He presented this fact in a confrontational manner, without any redress, in contrast to christoferL’s use of the discourse marker ‘unfortunately’ to show that the ‘burning’ was not preferable.

In the retelling of the parable, Yokeup’s own words were not clearly demarcated from the words of the Bible. From Yokeup’s discourse alone, one would not be able to determine which vehicles are contained in the parable and which ones are the result of his own development. Yokeup’s exegesis of the parable, therefore, showed how vehicle development from the text of the Bible could be used to extend the language of the parable to new vehicles through comparison of biblical metaphorical terms with exophoric metaphorical language. The development of the metaphorical language also appropriated the moral authority of the Bible to Yokeup’s own words by taking on the ‘pastoral power’ (Foucault, 1982) that is present when the Bible is quoted.

5 Findings

The foregoing analysis shows that although the discussion between the users centred on whether metaphor vehicle development maintained what they perceived to be the original meaning of the parable, the reading was informed by what both users perceived to be correct activity on the site. Metaphor use in biblical interpretation was not only a question of finding the ‘right’ meaning, but of winning an argument, one that continued like the Talmudic arguments analysed in Billig’s (1996) work, with both users attempting, and ultimately failing, to get the ‘last word’. In the struggle, users asserted their own perception of how the world should be, illustrated in how they read the Bible. In the same way that Christians in Malley’s (2004) research used their own experience to interpret and apply the text of the Bible, christoferL and Yokeup used that text as a resource for describing, understanding, and shaping their social world.

In vehicle development and the retelling of the parable, Yokeup was able to present his own words as the words of the Bible. There was no clear demarcation between where the text ended and where his own words began, enabling the development of ‘garbage’ from ‘withered branches’ to be potentially heard as part of the biblical text. Yokeup’s exegesis of the parable, therefore, showed how vehicle development from the text of the Bible could be used to extend the language of the parable to new vehicles through comparison of biblical metaphorical terms with exophoric metaphorical language. The development of the metaphorical language appropriated the moral authority of the Bible to Yokeup’s own words by taking on the ‘pastoral power’ that is present when the Bible was quoted.

The use of the Bible in the argument also indicated how the enduring socio-historical power resources contributed to each individual attempt at dominance and evidenced the same appeals to the authority of the Bible and the institutional church that have been used throughout history to exert control (Foucault, 1981). Exegesis by Yokeup and christoferL and the lack of appeals to denominational authorities also revealed the ‘supremacy’ (Packer, 1978) of the Bible not only in Evangelical Christian theology, but in defining ‘right’ words and actions. The practice of exegesis to assert the authority of one’s position showed that although the two Christians had shared beliefs, these beliefs did not necessarily lead to agreement, a finding that supports Bartkowski’s (1996) observation that ‘literal’ readings of the Bible can still result in disagreement among Christians (e.g. in the use of corporal punishment).

Finally, the drama outlined in this article showed that, as with the interpretation of literary text, belief about the ‘right’ interpretation of the Bible could be powerfully challenged with the argument that the quoted words were taken ‘“out of context” (i.e. that the meaning or significance the quoted portion of text bears in context of the interpretation is not one that can reasonably be ascribed to it in context of the text in which it originated)’ (Allington, 2007: 47). For both users, as long as their interpretation of John 15 could be reasonably argued as maintaining the meaning of the parable, then the interpretation was ‘right’ and the actions that followed were also right.

This linking of ‘right’ exegesis (rather than ‘right’ belief) to ‘right’ activity had important consequences for how both behaved and for continuing ‘drama’ between them. Although Yokeup and christoferL both appealed to the same passage, they applied the authority of the Bible differently and did not agree on its use or the same ‘literal’ interpretation of the text. The disagreement instead became not about the status of the Bible as a moral authority or the validity of using of the Bible to justify one’s own actions, but about what activity could be justified from exegesis.