THE PARABLES OF A SAMOAN DIVINE An Analysis of Samoan Texts of the 1860’s By Leulu F. Va’a A thesis submitted for the degTee of Master of Arts at the Australian National University. February 1987 1 Table of Contents Declaration iii Acknowledgements iv Abstract v 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1. The Nature of Hermeneutics 2 1.2. Historical Distance and Interpretation 3 1.3. Explanation and Understanding 4 1.4. Application of Hermeneutics 6 1.5. The Problem of Meaning 8 1.6. The Hymn Book 10 1.7. The Penisimani Manuscripts 12 1.8. The Thesis 17 2. Traditional Samoan Society 18 2.1. Political Organisation 26 2.2. Economic Organisation 29 2.3. Religious Organisation 31 3. The Coming of the Missionaries 39 3.1. Formation of the LMS 40 3.2. The Society’s Missionaries 41 3.3. Early Christian Influences 43 3.4. John Williams 45 3.5. Missionaries in Samoa 47 3.6. The Native Teachers 48 3.7. Reasons for Evangelical Success 51 3.8. Aftermath 54 4. The Folktales of Penisimani 57 4.1. Tala As Myths 57 4.2. Pemsimani’s Writings 59 4.3. Summary 71 5. The Parables of Penisimani 72 5.1. Leenhardt and Myth 73 5.2. Summary 86 6. The Words of Penisimani 87 6.1. The Power of the Word 88 6.2. Summary IOC 7. Myth, Parable and Signification 101 7.1. The Components of the Parable 102 7.1.1. The Cultural Element 103 7.1.2. The Christian Message 104 7.2. Semiotics 106 7.3. A Semiotic Analysis of Penisimani’s Parables 108 7.4. Myth As Ideology 111 7.5. Christian Practice and Ideology 113 7.6. Conclusion 117 Appendix A. Samoan Originals of the Tales m Chapter 4 120 Appendix B. Samoan Origmals of the Parables in Chapter 5 125 Appendix C. Samoan Originals of the Words of Chapter 6 130 References 134 Acknowledgements As one of the first two graduates in Samoan Studies from the Iunivesite o Samoa m 1983, I was asked by the Iunivesite to carry out research into the Penisimani Manuscripts at the Australian National University. Realizing the importance of this project for the future of Samoan Studies I accepted the proposal with enthusiasm despite my other commitments as a journalist with The Samoa Times. Therefore, I am deeply grateful to those officials of the Iunivesite for guiding me in this direction. In particular, I acknowledge my profound indebtedness to Dr. Derek Freeman, Founding Professor of Anthropology at the Iunivesite o Samoa and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, for his unrelenting efforts to assist in establishing myself at the Australian National University. But that is not all. For Professor Freeman, during my first two years at the Australian National University (1984-5), helped to initiate me into the mysteries of anthropological science and kept me straight on the path of Samoan Studies. He also undertook a fatherly interest in me and my family during our whole stay in Australia. As for the thesis itself, I wish to thank Dr. N. Gunson of the Department of History, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, for helping me locate useful historical sources; Rev. D. Inglis, whom I knew as a former missionary to Samoa, for making available to me his valuable manuscript on Samoan religious syncretism; Priv. Doz. Dr. Ulrike Mosel of the Institut Fur Sprachwissen-Umversitat, Köln, West Germany, for her assistance in the translation of some difficult passages; and Professors Anthony Forge and Derek Freeman for their valuable suggestions and criticisms during the early phases of the thesis. Last but not least, I wish to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. James "Weiner, for his patience, understanding and devotion during the course of this research. His brilliant insights, helpful criticisms and extensive knowledge of textual criticism and mythology have contributed immensely to the theoretical foundations of this thesis. Finally, I thank my family for putting up with the long and unusual hours I maintained at the Australian National University. To all these outstanding people and others I extend my most sincere appreciation and deepest gratitude for their help and encouragement as I sought my way through the strange, demanding and secret pathways of meaning. V A bstract The aim of this thesis is the interpretation and analysis of religious parables written by a Samoan pastor of the London Missionary Society in the early 1860’s. The approach adopted is essentially a hermeneutic one involving linguistic analysis at three different levels: semiotic (word), semantic (sentence) and text (hermeneutic). Ultimately, hermeneutics concerns the ’’reference” of the text or the world that the text reveals. The texts being considered here are labelled as tales, parables and words but I refer to them collectively as Parables because they are narratives which convey Christian teachings m allegorical form. Chapter 1 provides a theoretical discussion of hermeneutics and linguistic analysis as well as some biographical facts about the texts’ author, Penisimani, and the history of his writings. Chapters 2 and 3 give a historical background to traditional Samoan culture and the introduction of Christianity to Samoa. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 contain examples of Penisimani’s parables with explanatory introductions and commentaries. The final chapter is devoted to a detailed analysis of the structure of the Parables and the way in which this structure contributes to the overall meaning of the texts, which is what I call the author’s world view or ideology. This overall meaning constitutes the doxa of the texts. This may be construed as the most important meaning of the texts, from the author’s point of view, but it is a meamng which is made possible only by the contributions rendered by the other parts of the texts. The task of the analyst is to examine and relate these parts to each other; that of the reader to consume the message of the Parables, unthinkingly as it were. 1 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION The subject of this thesis is the interpretation and analysis of Samoan texts written in the 1860’s by a Samoan pastor of the London Missionary Society named Penisimani. These texts are believed to be the oldest surviving texts written by a Samoan and are, therefore, of interest both from a historical and anthropological point of view: historical because the texts provide a link to the history of ideas in the Samoa of the 1860’s, anthropological insofar as the same relate to a discourse about Samoan culture. The historical and anthropological concerns of the thesis are reflected in its structure. Thus, the second and third chapters may be described as historical reconstructions of Samoan society before the arrival of Christianity and of the initial process of Christianisation in the 1830’s. But strictly speaking the basic theoretical orientation is of a hermeneutical nature. That is to say, the primary focus of the thesis i$ on the interpretation of meaning in its widest sense. This process of unfolding the meaning or layers of meaning is to be understood, in the first place, in terms of Max Weber’s concept of verstehen or understanding the elements of subjective meaning, in this particular instance, of the texts; or in terms of Geertz’s notion of ’’thick description” or the elaborate search for the meaning of social action as construed subjectively by social actors (Geertz, 1973:5-6). Secondly, it is to be understood in terms of the reference of the texts, that is, what the texts refer to as a whole. These ’’extra meanings”, as Fowler calls them (I986:69f), are generated by the peculiarities of textual structure in both their syntagmatic and paradigmatic arrangements. Both of these approaches to the interpretation of meaning, considered as a totality of the texts, are encompassed by hermeneutics. 2 1.1. The Nature of Hermeneutics Hermeneutics is a specific methodology, a set of rules in fact, which governs the interpretation of texts (Dilthey, 1976: 107; Luckmann, 1981: 219; Ricoeur, 1971: 529). The body of rules which now form the science of hermeneutics have their foundation in Christian biblical exegesis of the Middle Ages. With the emergence of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment in Europe these rules underwent considerable improvement in the hands of scholars such as Flacius, Bellarmine and Semler (Dilthey, 1976: 110). Semler liberated biblical exegesis from the narrow confines and tyranny of church dogma by emphasising the use of linguistics and history in textual interpretation. But it is really Schleiermacher who is today generally regarded as the chief founder of modern hermeneutics. By the time Schleiermacher arrived on the scene, the body of rules which comprise hermeneutics had largely been formed. These rules, the product of "the philological virtuosity of many centuries”, governed the functions of interpretation dealing with the grammatical, historical, aesthetic-rhetorical and factual exegesis (Dilthey, 1976: 111-2). Schleiermacher’s mapr contribution beyond these rules lay in iris analysis of understanding or more specifically in the nature of understanding as derived directly from the text itself. Moreover, Schleiermacher introduced the concept which has come to be known as the hermeneutical circle whereby the meaning of the whole text may be derived from the meaning of its parts and vice versa. But the circle does not end there: it is repeated ”in the relationship of the individual work to the disposition and development of its author, and once agam in the relationship of the individual work to its literary genre” (Dilthey, 1976: 115). This, however, for Schleiermacher is not the ultimate end of the process of understanding.