In my previous post I talked about how the Bible is embedded in a specific context and how inaccessible it may seem to us here in the 21st century. Unfortunately, far too many believers remain blissfully unaware of this fact or ignorant of its implications. It is very heartwarming to think of the Bible as the proverbial love letter to each one of us and I think on a certain level that is true. However, we have to realize that this mode of thinking has caused us to gloss over a simple reality: that the words of our Scriptures had an original writer with a specific intention for what he was trying to get across. Not to mention the original audience would have understood it in a very specific way based on the time, place and current historical circumstance. In the words of Bible scholar Peter Enns "The Bible was written for us, but it was not written to us."
The prime example of this idea I am presenting is found in the first few chapters of Genesis. Here we get the Israelite version of the Creation story. I say Israelite version because the Genesis story is not the only ancient account of origins or the oldest. Indeed the concepts of man being made from earth or a single group surviving a massive flood are not unique to Genesis. And while the Genesis account is unique and stands out from the rest of the stories of the ancient world it does share a great deal with other ancient legends. For example water is at the beginning of the Creation Story in Genesis. This is a common symbol in the ancient world for chaos, disorder, and dysfunction. So what was the ancient writer communicating? He is telling us that the one true God brought about an orderly, functioning, and inhabitable world out of primordial chaos. All the things that are necessary for man and animal to survive are provided, vegetation, seasons, light, other animals, dry land, oceans, a barrier between man and the waters of chaos. Then the Creator God dealt the final blow to chaos by resting on the seventh day, thus establishing the world as his sanctuary.
My main takeaway from this is that the ancient context of Israel heavily influence how the story looks and sounds. Thereby making Genesis and by extension the rest of the Bible a product of its time. Let that sink in for a few minutes for the ramifications to become clear. In many cases modern interpreters read the Bible as if it was outside of time and space. Each and every story, law and idea is true in the same way today as it was back then. Here is where the idea gets sticky, modern readers assume that ancients readers understood things the same way we do. Meaning that the ancient readership expected the same things from Scripture that we do like precise facts, scientifically and historically accurate data and so on. We imagine that like us post-enlightenment thinkers, the authors of the Bible wrote things down exactly as they happened in order to give a precise historical account. Now we can't help the way we instinctively think about history, however, it is anachronistic for us to project our strictly factual sensibilities on the text of the Bible.
Unfortunately for us moderns, most Bible scholars will tell us that the ancients did not write history as we currently understand it. Rather, they wrote stories as theological constructs about God, their relationship to Him or to the outside world. In reality, rather than a strict empirical account of history, what we are seeing in the pages of the Bible is the spiritual journey of Israel and their evolving perception of God and themselves.
We all know what a spiritual journey is like. Things start out simple and get progressively more involved with time. As we learn more about God and ourselves we understand what is required of us in a different light than from when we first started. We look back at the zealotry of our youth and shake our heads over our stupidity and wonder how we ever could have thought our actions were God's will.
So what is my conclusion? Is the Bible completely irrelevant now since it was written in a context that we don't share? Do we throw parts of the Bible out that portray ancient morality and violate our modern sensibilities? In the words of Paul "May it never be!"
On the contrary, the imperative is on us to thoroughly understand where the Biblical writers were coming from. Then we can approach the text honestly, no longer needing to force the text into our context and allow the Bible to speak for itself. And that's the point isn't it? To allow the Bible to speak to us? Our faith in the Bible can't be shaken because they wrote like we would, from our own time and place and not like some angelic zombies overflowing with cosmic truth.
We can rest assured that the Bible is God's living Word because after all God used the Book and the people of the Book to change the world.
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