The Need for Understanding Biblical Cultures
As I talk to college students and hear the questions
that come to us from our home page, one of the things that becomes
obvious is that many of the questions that people have about the
integrity of the Bible are rooted in a failure to understand the
culture that is responsible for bringing us the Bible. It is important
to understand that the Bible is not an American book, written in
English, and steeped in our vocabulary and culture. People seem to
forget that the Bible is not just written for one time or one group of
people. In order for Moses to make sense to the shepherd of his day, he
had to write things in a certain way. God knew, however, that this same
writing would have to make sense to people living in the twenty-first
century.
Do you know how hard this is to do? Recently I came across a paper I
had written in high school in 1954. In the process of the paper I had
written about how hard it was not to like a classmate whom I described
as "the most gay person I had ever known." Writing in 1954, the word
gay was associated with being
happy and carefree. The word used to
describe a homosexual was the word fairy
which had mostly a negative
connotation. Imagine writing something today that people in a different
part of the world would be able to understand in the year 5,202. I am
not sure that anyone in his right mind would even attempt it. The Bible
has accomplished that feat, but not without problems if the reader is
not willing to look at who has written the passage, to whom it was
written, where they were, and what the purpose was in writing the
passage. The problems associated with this are not restricted to
atheists and skeptics. Many erroneous biblical teachings are rooted in
a denomination or individual who is a believer, but is not recognizing
this fact and thus is using the Bible incorrectly.
What we propose to do in this discussion is to try to show some
common examples of misunderstandings that come about because modern
readers do not understand the cultural implications of Bible passages.
We will group these into areas that give general direction to the
concepts that we are trying to convey. In each of these areas there are
copious examples, but we will confine ourselves to a few basic ones
just because of time and space limitations.
We need to understand writing styles and
literary styles. There are many different styles of
writing in the Bible. How you interpret a passage is radically
affected by what kind of writing it is. An example of this is
apocalyptic writing. This is a style of writing in which symbols are
used that a particular group of people would uniquely understand, but
others might not. The classic example is the book of Revelation. John
is writing something that he wanted the first century Christians to
understand, but hoped that the Romans would not. You did not want to
talk about the overthrow of Rome and the demise of the Emperor and then
give it to the Romans to read. Much of the confusion in the
denominational world over the book of Revelation has come about because
people ignore the style of writing, and assume that 666, dragons, and
dark horses are literal descriptions of things going on today or in the
near future. It is not taking the Bible literally to take a passage and
apply it to something it was not intended to be applied to.
We
must connect the Old Testament with the New Testament. Another
source of confusion is the failure to understand the difference between
the Old Testament and the New Testament and how they relate to each
other. When man was first placed on this earth he was very primitive.
Genesis talks about the first man to forge metals, the first man to
create a musical instrument, and the like. Because of man's primitive
nature, there was a necessity to give man a system to live by that was
also primitive. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is a
primitive system, but when you are dealing with people that have not
developed spiritually or socially it is the only way for society to
function. The Old Testament functioned at a time when man's weakness
was tolerated by God, and in the words of the Bible "God winked at"(Acts 17:30).
When Christ came to Earth He moved mankind up a notch. The entire
Sermon on the Mount details a higher level to which man is called.
Jesus says "you have heard." and then He says "but I say to you.." In
each case man's capacity has raised the bar. Instead of just avoiding
murder, we are to avoid hate. Instead of just not committing sexual
sin, we are to not allow our minds to drift into thinking about that
sin. Polygamy is portrayed as something God winked at because of the
hardness of man's heart, but something God does not want us to do.
In the Old Testament God commanded people to destroy their enemies.
This unpleasant judgment was pronounced for a variety of reasons. The
diseases that had been contracted by the rejection of God's moral
system were rampant in these societies. Destroying the STD carrying
organisms including animals and burning the entire infected area was
essential to stopping the disease. Certain food restrictions were
essential in a society that had no way to avoid certain diseases
carried by poorly prepared food such as pork. When Jesus came he
"nailed" the old law to his cross (Colossians 2:14).
A specific command from God freed man from his food restrictions (Acts 11:4-10).
The New Testament gave man a higher calling and moved him into a new
relationship with God. We are told that the old law exists as a teacher
to us today to show us the consequences of actions that we are not to
engage in. When a man makes a rash vow (something God did not tell us
to do), he finds himself committed to something awful that no man wants
to do (Judges
11:30-40). We are not looking at something God commanded, but at
something a man created when he made a hasty vow God had not required.
The biblical writers could have excluded the story, but it stands as a
lesson for us.
We
must understand cultural practices and uses of words. We have
already stated that the Bible is not an American book written for
Americans and using American terms. Many misunderstandings come about
because of the failure of people to understand things in the Bible that
are cultural and unique to the societies in which the Bible had its
origins. An example is the use of the term father in genealogical
sequences. If you ask me who my father
is, I am very likely to identify
one individual man. Father to
an American is the person who was
involved in conception. To the ancient Jew, father was any blood
relative who was a hero. In Matthew 1:1 the writer tells us "Jesus
Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Does this mean that
Jesus was the grandson of Abraham? Just reading the rest of the chapter
tells you that this is not the case. A Jew regarded father to be a term
that indicated descendancy, but not that the person listed was actually
involved in his conception.
American Atheist
(Winter, 1999-2000), page 33 gave a
comparison of the genealogies in Matthew with the genealogies in Luke,
in which 42 generations are recorded in Matthew and 55 are recorded in
Luke for the same genealogical sequence. Why a 13-generation
difference? It is not because Matthew was ignorant about the people in
the family tree that Luke mentions. It is simply a clear demonstration
that cultures record things in different ways, and trying to apply an
American system to a ancient Jewish document is a major error. People
whose denominational tradition demands a particular age to the earth or
to mankind get caught up in this kind of mistake, and it creates
massive problems for their young people, because the evidence clearly
does not support the denominational tradition that they have been
taught.
Certain phrases in the Bible can be misunderstood if one
does not know the context in which they were written. Jesus' teaching
to "go the second mile," for example, is rooted in Roman law. The
Romans had a law that said that if a Roman soldier came by with a load,
that he could demand that any Jew he came in contact with should carry
the load he was carrying one mile.
The Jew had to do this or he was in
violation of the law of the land. Jesus simply told his followers to
reach out to the Roman soldier by going the second mile free. That was
unheard of to the ancient Jews, so that teaching has a special
significance to people who understand what the context was in which it
was written.
Individual words can have different meanings. The word
for create (bara in Hebrew)
was a word that could only be used in
reference to God. When Genesis says "In the beginning, God created
(bara) the heaven and the earth,"the significance is lost if one does
not understand that the statement could only be used in reference to
God. If it was an ordinary process that perhaps even man could do, the
word that was used was asah
(to make). The word for kind in Hebrew was
a broad word defined by Paul in 1 Corinthians
15:39 and used the same way in Genesis 1
and Genesis
6. Species, the modern scientific word, is not the same word and
does not mean the same thing.
The point is that understanding the basics of the culture
and what they understand the words and phrases to mean is critically
important if a person is to know what the Bible teaches. When someone
says he takes the Bible literally and does not look at the cultural
meanings, the style of literature, what the people who wrote it would
have understood the words to mean, or what the purpose was in writing,
he is not taking the Bible literally. The result of not taking the
Bible literally is to follow man-made tradition and to lose the essence
and meaning of the scriptures.
--John
N. Clayton
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Does God Exist?, MayJun04.