The Epistles on women in the Church and society

Several weeks ago, one of my readers — Matt, I believe — asked for more information on a woman’s role within the Church, especially the priesthood.

Whilst I do not wish to start a controversy before Christmas, I did say I would provide more information before the end of the year.

In September 2011, I ran excerpts of Dr Craig S Keener’s introduction to hermeneutics, which he gave to a group of students in Africa. You can find it on my Christianity / Apologetics page. I found it helpful and enlightening, as I really didn’t understand the concepts behind hermeneutics before then, however, it is all about reading the Bible as its authors intended us to read it.

I also used the Revd Vincent Cheung’s commentary on 1 Peter for a few of my Forbidden Bible Verses posts and appreciated what he had to say on the role of women.

As my regular readers will know, I normally rely on Matthew Henry’s Bible commentaries for my series, Forbidden Bible Verses. Henry wrote four centuries before Keener and Cheung, and it is interesting to see how their views compare.

A number of younger Protestant men are quite forthright about their literal interpretation of St Paul’s letters, with many of their wives following suit in marital submission. The next few posts will explore the role of women within the Church by clergymen, two of whom — Henry and Cheung — are Calvinists.

Matthew Henry

In September 2010, I featured a post about Matthew Henry’s views on women’s headcoverings in church, which, today, are becoming more like Muslim veils in a number of American congregations.

What follows are excerpts (emphases mine):

First, on what headcoverings meant in Corinth versus 17th century England:

The thing he reprehends is the woman’s praying or prophesying uncovered, or the man’s doing either covered, v. 4, 5. To understand this, it must be observed that it was a signification either of shame or subjection for persons to be veiled, or covered, in the eastern countries, contrary to the custom of ours, where the being bare-headed betokens subjection, and being covered superiority and dominion.

Second, the reason why a man bares his head in church (the same still applies today):

The man that prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonoureth his head, namely, Christ, the head of every man (v. 3), by appearing in a habit unsuitable to the rank in which God has placed him. Note, we should, even in our dress and habits, avoid every thing that may dishonour Christ.

Third, the reason why a woman covers her head in church:

The woman, on the other hand, who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head, namely, the man, v. 3. She appears in the dress of her superior, and throws off the token of her subjection.

Fourth, women’s hair:

She might, with equal decency, cut her hair short, or cut it close, which was the custom of the man in that age. This would be in a manner to declare that she was desirous of changing sexes, a manifest affectation of that superiority which God had conferred on the other sex. And this was probably the fault of these prophetesses in the church of Corinth.

Fifth, why closely-cropped hair was forbidden for Christian women:

It was doing a thing which, in that age of the world, betokened superiority, and therefore a tacit claim of what did not belong to them but the other sex. Note, The sexes should not affect to change places. The order in which divine wisdom has placed persons and things is best and fittest: to endeavour to amend it is to destroy all order, and introduce confusion. The woman should keep to the rank God has chosen for her, and not dishonour her head; for this, in the result, is to dishonour God. If she was made out of the man, and for the man, and made to be the glory of the man, she should do nothing, especially in public, that looks like a wish of having this order inverted …

Should there not be a distinction kept up between the sexes in wearing their hair, since nature has made one? Is it not a distinction which nature has kept up among all civilized nations? The woman’s hair is a natural covering; to wear it long is a glory to her; but for a man to have long hair, or cherish it, is a token of softness and effeminacy.” Note, It should be our concern, especially in Christian and religious assemblies, to make no breach upon the rules of natural decency.

Sixth, the divine and natural order of God and the sexes — God, man and woman, respectively:

… man is the image and glory of God, the representative of that glorious dominion and headship which God has over the world. It is the man who is set at the head of this lower creation, and therein he bears the resemblance of God. The woman, on the other hand, is the glory of the man (v. 7): she is his representative. Not but she has dominion over the inferior creatures, as she is a partaker of human nature, and so far is God’s representative too, but it is at second-hand. She is the image of God, inasmuch as she is the image of the man: For the man was not made out of the woman, but the woman out of the man.

Seventh, why the divine and natural order must be reflected in godly worship:

… she who was intended to be always in subjection to the man should do nothing, in Christian assemblies, that looks like an affectation of equality.

Recall that Henry said above that St Paul was objecting to women prophesying in church with their heads uncovered.

Eighth, as to the role of angels in this passage, Henry examines both sides of the question.  Some believed that evil angels were in play (e.g. unveiled women prophesying) and others pointed to the influence of good angels (e.g. that the gifts of the Holy Spirit were working actively in the congregation):

Now, believe evil angels will be sure to mix in all Christian assemblies, therefore should women wear the token of their shamefacedness and subjection, which in that age and country, was a veil. Others say because of the good angels. Jews and Christians have had an opinion that these ministering spirits are many of them present in their assemblies. Their presence should restrain Christians from all indecencies in the worship of God. Note, we should learn from all to behave in the public assemblies of divine worship so as to express a reverence for God, and a content and satisfaction with that rank in which he has placed us.

Note that Henry agrees in the mandate of female headcovering, he appears to be saying that the composition and proportion of such headcovering may differ:

which in that age and country, was a veil

Which is not to say that it necessarily must be a veil in our ‘age and country’. 

He goes on to say further down in the essay:

Custom is in a great measure the rule of decency.

The inference is not to stand out in a crowd by calling attention to oneself.  A hat would be appropriate today.

Vincent Cheung

Cheung, a modern-day contemporary increasingly cited by his fellow Calvinists, has studied philosophy as well as Christian theology, however, he is frank about Scripture and minces no words. The following excerpts come from his extensive commentary on 1 Peter:

While Galatians 3:28 and other verses oppose racism, classism, and sexism in relation to how we must regard people’s standing before God, they do not erase all distinctions concerning race, class, and gender. Neither do they eliminate roles and ranks in the society, the family, and the church. How Scripture addresses a given context must be settled separately using other biblical passages.

Of course men and women are equal in Christ, and this means that God does not save men more readily than he does women, and vice versa. They are all justified by faith in Jesus Christ, and women can believe just as readily as men can. Christians coming from once race is just as much justified, sanctified, honored, and blessed as Christians coming from another race. But this says nothing about their physiological distinctions, their roles in marriage, or even their places in the church. We must not distort Scripture and use it to overturn what God has said elsewhere in Scripture.

When it comes to ontology and soteriology, husbands and wives are without doubt equal. In terms of competence, the husbands will be better at some things, while at other times the wives will excel. However, in light of Ephesians 5:22-24, when it comes to authority and order in the family, there is no question but that the wives must submit to their husbands. Within the context of that passage, to deny this would in fact amount to a rejection of Christ’s authority over the church. We marvel at how some people could love their gender pride more than Christ, so that they would even spit in his face in order to gain a sense of “equality” (sometimes superiority) with the leaders that God has ordained. But then, with a knowledge of Scripture about the human condition, sin should no longer surprise us.  (p. 105)

Therefore, we are to look at marriage as being analogous to Christ’s relationship with His bride, the Church.  Yes, it is hard to accept in our 21st century world, but the Church is supposed to ‘obey’ Christ. It would have been wonderful to be able to say that today’s Church does obey Him, but, as we have seen over the past century, that is another matter entirely.

He explains the social order further on page 118 of his commentary:

To illustrate, if we were to address a group of Christians whose parents oppose the faith because of its alleged negative effects on the children, then we would naturally emphasize the command, “Obey your parents.” But the command is in force whether or not the particular situation requires us to emphasize it. Likewise, wives must submit to their husbands. In fact, if the submission of women is considered undesirable or offensive in a given culture, the church would still have to teach and practice it, only that the command would receive attention from a different perspective.

As to whether a woman must submit to every man, as some Protestant men believe, Cheung writes (same page):

Proceeding now to 3:1, Peter states the command in this manner: “Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands.” The verse does not say that every woman must submit to every man, but that every wife must submit to her own husband. Although this is the consistent testimony of Scripture (Ephesians 5:22; Colossians 3:18; Titus 2:5), it is opposed by many professing Christians, who use various tactics to neutralize it.

However, husbands should note that more is expected of them — analogous to Christ — than of their brides (p. 120):

… in Ephesians 5, the only ones who are told to yield their rights are the husbands. Paul instructs them, “love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (v. 25). The church never gave up anything for the benefit of Christ, but Christ sacrificed himself to save the church. Likewise, the husbands are the ones told to make the sacrifice.

On p. 138, Cheung adds:

He is to use this authority to serve, protect, and direct his wife and family, often to his own hurt, and he must give an account for his decisions. Therefore, let every man exercise his authority with soberness and godly fear … And in light of this, women should not dare complain that they must obey their husbands.

And on p. 139:

Now, if we take a harsh tone with rebellious and overbearing women, we offer a still stronger rebuke toward husbands who do not cherish their wives. We think that they are not men, but ignorant and savage beasts. They must repent, turn from their sins against the Lord and their wives, and follow Christ’s example.

1 Peter cites Abraham’s wife Sarah (p. 121 of Cheung’s commentary):

Sarah was the wife of Abraham, and Peter writes that she obeyed (hypakouō) her husband. It cannot be said that Peter is only applying the word to Sarah, and not to wives in general. This is because the reason he mentions Sarah in the first place is to call all wives to imitate her example, and this means that we must equally apply hypakouō (obey) to all wives.

Moreover, in this passage, Peter either equates hypotassō (submit) to hypakouō (obey), or he at least assumes that hypotassō (submit) implies hypakouō (obey). This is because he writes, “They were submissive [hypotassō] to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed [hypakouō] Abraham and called him her master.” That is, they were submissive, like Sarah, who obeyed. Here submission implies obedience.

Therefore, whether Scripture uses hypakouō or hypotassō (and now we see that it uses both words), it commands the wives to obey their husbands.

Cheung notes that Peter also advised women to dress modestly (p. 128):

Outward beauty is characterized by “outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes” (v. 3). Peter is probably applying a common Christian teaching, as a very similar instruction appears in 1 Timothy 2:9-10: “I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God.” There Paul speaks to the proper behavior of women in the church in general, whereas Peter speaks to women in the context of marriage, or wives in particular. But notice the similarity in theme, as well as the same three categories of outward adornment: expensive coiffures, jewelry, and clothes.

But, you might say, what about men who are just bad people and, as a result, terrible husbands? This is why the Church places such emphasis on pre-marital courses and counselling. Clergy aren’t being nosy, but they do want to ensure that the marriage will be lasting and loving. St Paul warned us against being yoked with unbelievers — we are to find people like ourselves in faith, values and temperament.

Cheung says (pp. 132 and 133):

The correct answer, of course, is that a wife may disobey her husband whenever he commands something that is sinful. For example, if the husband commands the wife to commit adultery, or to worship a false god, then the wife will have no choice but to disobey. This sounds straightforward, but additional comments are needed to prevent abuse. This is because wives often take it upon themselves to call something sinful when it is only contrary to their personal preference or standard …

Therefore, when we acknowledge that there are exceptions to obeying the husband, we are probably not saying enough. Are the wives able to distinguish actual immorality from personal distaste? Or are they going to regard as an exception anything that they do not like, anything that runs contrary to their own hang-ups?

When Peter wrote his letters, he was addressing recent Christian converts; some women converted whilst their husbands had not. He did not want women lording it over the man of the house; rather, he envisaged that the women’s good and holy example would draw their husbands to Christ.

Craig Keener

Keener, who has written several books on the New Testament, explores St Paul’s exhortations for wives to be obedient to their husbands:

Some people used Ephesians 6:5-9 alongside Greek, Roman, and Arab discussions of slavery to support the kind of slavery practiced in the Americas, but a simple knowledge of the nature of the slavery Paul addressed would have disproved their understanding of the passage. Others even more recently have used 5:22-33 to treat wives in disrespectful and demeaning ways, which also misinterprets the entire tenor of the passage.

This passage addresses an ancient sort of writing called “household codes,” by which Paul’s readers could try to convince their prospective persecutors that they were not subversives after all. In Paul’s day, many Romans were troubled by the spread of “religions from the East” (such as Egyptian Isis worship, Judaism, and Christianity) which they thought would undermine traditional Roman family values. Members of these minority religions often tried to show their support for those values by using a standard form of exhortations developed by philosophers from Aristotle on.

From the time of Aristotle onward these exhortations instructed the male head of a household how to deal with members of his family, especially how he should rule his wife, children, and slaves. Paul borrows this form of discussion straight out of standard Greco-Roman moral writing, even following their sequence. But unlike most ancient writers, Paul changes the basic premise of these codes: the absolute authority of the male head of the house.

That Paul introduces the household codes with a command to mutual submission (5:21) is significant. In his day it was customary to call on wives, children and slaves to submit in various ways, but calling all members of a group (including the pater familias, the male head of the household) to submit to one another was unheard of.

Most ancient writers expected wives to obey their husbands, desiring in them a quiet and meek demeanor; sometimes a requirement for absolute obedience was even stated in the marriage contracts. This made sense especially to Greek thinkers, who could not conceive of wives as equals. Age differences contributed to this disparity: husbands were normally substantially older than their wives, often by over a decade in Greek culture (with men frequently marrying around 30 and women in their teens, often early teens).

In this passage, however, Paul adapts the traditional code in several ways. First, wifely submission is rooted in Christian submission in general (in Greek, 5:22 even borrows its verb “submit” from 5:21); submission is a Christian virtue, but not only for wives! Second, Paul addresses not only husbands but also wives, which most household codes did not. Third, whereas household codes told the husbands how to make their wives obey them, Paul simply tells husbands how to love their wives. Finally, the closest Paul comes to defining submission in this context is “respect” (5:33). At the same time that he relates Christianity to the standards of his culture, he actually transforms his culture’s values by going so far beyond them! Paul addressed Greco-Roman culture, but few cultures today give precisely the same expressions of submission as in his culture. Today Christians reapply his principles in different ways for different cultures, but these principles still contradict many practices in many of our cultures (such as beating a wife).

Keener addresses St Paul’s teachings on women’s conduct in church itself and encourages us to look at biblical passages in context.  He says:

When we apply them, we must make sure that we find the appropriate analogies between the situations Paul addresses and our situations today. For example, some interpreters believe that Paul prohibits most women in one congregation from teaching because they were generally uneducated, hence could prove easily misled (1 Tim 2:11-12). In that culture, his command that they should “learn” (2:11; “quietly and submissively” was the appropriate way for all novices to learn) actually liberated women, who normally did not receive direct instruction except by sitting in services. It makes a difference whether or not this is the issue: if not, the appropriate analogy today may be that women should never teach the Bible (though this would leave in question what to do with other texts, like Rom 16:1-2, 7; Phil 4:2-3; Judg 4:4; 1 Cor 11:4-5). If so, the analogy today may be that unlearned people, whether male or female, should not teach the Bible …

we need to take into account differences in situation: in the first century, men were far more apt to be educated, including in the Bible, than women; would Paul have written exactly the same applications for today, when women and men are more likely to share equal opportunities for education? …

We may provide one stark example of how we need to take Paul’s situation into account. In two texts, Paul requires women to keep “silence” in church (1 Cor 14:34-35; 1 Tim 2:12). If we press this to mean all that it could mean, women should not even sing in church! Few churches today press these verses this far, but are they ignoring the passages’ meaning? Not necessarily. In other texts, Paul commends women for their labors for the kingdom (Phil 4:2-3), and in Romans 16 commends more women for their services than men (even though he mentions more men!) Moreover, he at least occasionally uses his most common terms for his male fellow workers to some women: “fellow worker” (Prisca, Rom 16:3); diakonos (“servant,” Phoebe, Rom 16:1); and once even “apostle” (Junia, according to the best translations; Rom 16:7)! Even more importantly, he accepts women praying and prophesying with their heads covered (1 Cor 11:4-5). How can they pray and prophesy if later in the same letter he requires them to be completely silent in church (1 Cor 14:34-35)? Does the Bible contradict itself here? Did Paul contradict himself in the very same letter?

But the two texts about silence probably do not address all kinds of silence, but deal with special kinds of situations. The only kind of speech specifically addressed in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is asking questions (14:35). It was common for people to interrupt teachers and lecturers with questions in Jewish and Greek cultures alike; but it was rude for unlearned people to do so, and they might have considered it especially rude for unlearned women. Keep in mind that women were usually much less educated than men; in Jewish culture, in fact, boys were taught to recite God’s law but girls almost never received this education. As to 1 Timothy 2:11-12, scholars still debate how Paul uses the Old Testament background (he applies Old Testament examples different ways in different passages, even the example of Eve: 2 Cor 11:3). But one point, at least, is interesting: Paul’s letters to Timothy in Ephesus are the only letters in the entire Bible where we know that false teachers were specifically targeting women with their false teachings (2 Tim 3:6). In fact, they may have targeted widows (1 Tim 5:9) who owned homes so they could use their houses for churches–one of the Greek terms in 1 Tim 5:13 nearly always meant spreading “nonsense” or false ideas. Those who knew less about the Bible were naturally most susceptible to false teachings; those who do not know the Bible should not be allowed to teach it. Whatever other conclusions one may draw from this, it seems unlikely that Paul would have refused to let women sing in church!

Sometimes, in an effort to recover what we consider to be the ‘past’, we go too far and misinterpret Scripture taking it to a place where it was not intended to be.

The series continues with a study by Dr Philip B Payne, a contemporary New Testament scholar and seminary professor.

Tomorrow: More on hair and headcoverings in Paul’s world

Conclusions on hermeneutics with a word on ‘social location’

Today’s post concludes Dr Craig S Keener‘s excellent course on hermeneutics, Biblical Interpretation.

I hope that my posts on his course these past few weeks have helped to demystify the Bible for you and encourage you to read it either for a first time or to begin rereading it.

Today’s post has a gold mine of information countering those who say that Christianity is a white man’s religion! It also has much detail on the abolitionist movement, which had its origins in British and American Christianity. (Of course, not all churches were on board with the movement.) What Keener says is essential for all Christians to read, wherever they are in the world.

Emphases below are mine.

Conclusion for Chapters 1 -10

A general principle for interpreting any text is to seek to understand it in light of its full context, the whole book in which it occurs (its themes and plot or argument) and its historical background. Another principle is to take into account the kind of writing a work is; thus, for example, we read Mark as an ancient biography, Acts as a work of ancient history, Isaiah as a book of prophecies (mostly poetic in form), and Psalms as a collection of prayer and praise songs. In the same way, we read Revelation as prophecy or apocalypse (which would include many symbols). Each kind of literature has some special characteristics (for instance, we should interpret most narratives literally, but recognize many symbolic figures of speech in poetry and prophecy).

Once one has mastered the skills mentioned above, one needs outside resources only for help with background … and with words or phrases in Greek and Hebrew that might clarify the translations. But this course has focused especially on developing the skills the interpreter needs before pressing deeper. They may be summarized as literary context, cultural context, and context of genre (kind of writing).

Chapter 11: The Reader’s ‘Social Location’

… Different readers understand texts in different ways, and that is often because of the cultures and traditions we start with. Being sensitive to this issue can help us better understand why people interpret texts the way they do. Sometimes it can even expose our own prejudices or ideas we simply took for granted because we assumed that everyone thought the same way …

Recognizing the history of various lines of interpretation can help us guard against bias in the way we read the Bible. Church history is a very important safeguard in helping us put our own views in broader perspective. We can recognize the background of our own views and consider how this background influences us for good or ill. We can also challenge ourselves: how “obvious” is a view of a Bible passage if no one in history ever thought of it before? (This is not to say that majority views in church history are always correct, either. Sometimes those majorities simply reflect the cultures of those Christians writing down most of the interpretations! But church history does help us be more cautious.)

Recognizing different backgrounds (“social locations”) of various interpreters can also enrich the way we read the Bible. People in different settings ask different kinds of questions than people in other circumstances do, so we can sometimes learn from people who ask different questions as long as we follow the rules of context noted above … The questions do not contradict one another, and both may come to legitimate conclusions; the Bible is big enough to address both kinds of issues.

Listening to the voices of different interpreters committed to Scripture in different cultures can help us recognize a variety of questions and issues we may not have considered before … (A warning here: some people’s cultural assumptions can bias them to totally misunderstand the Bible. Some westerners start from the antisupernaturalistic assumptions of their culture, hence ignore or try to explain away miracles in the Bible, though God’s powerful acts are all through the Bible and at the very heart of biblical Christianity. By allowing their cultural biases to overrule their faith in what Scripture actually says, they cannot come to the biblical text with honest humility to hear its message. Most Africans, whose worldview recognizes the reality of both God and a demonic realm, will not make this same mistake.) …

1. Afrocentric Interpretation

This is merely one example of Christians in particular cultures asking particular kinds of questions; I offer this example because it is one of those with which I am more familiar.

There are extreme forms of Afrocentric interpretation that distort the biblical record no less than traditional Eurocentric interpretations have, for example, those forms which claim that everyone in the Old Testament was black (as some Europeans assumed they were white). But when by “Afrocentric” we simply mean asking questions relevant to African history, we are ready to explore issues that some Eurocentric scholars have ignored ... Again, we do not identify with characters in the Bible solely on the basis of race; otherwise only Jewish people could identify with many characters in the Bible! But it is helpful to know that a number of Africans do appear there.

Before we can look for Africans in the Bible, we have to establish what we mean by “African.”  …

… for the purposes of modern Africans who ask the question, it makes sense to include everything from northern to southern Africa …

We can look first at ancient Nubia, an empire which existed from perhaps as early as 3000 BC and which nearly all scholars today agree was an African empire whose people were quite dark in complexion. This kingdom is typically called “Cush” in the Hebrew Old Testament, sometimes translated “Ethiopia”; the term refers not solely to modern Ethiopia but to all of Africa south of Egypt. In some periods of Egypt’s history the Nubians conquered Egypt and Nubian Pharaohs reigned on its throne; one of these was Tirhakah, ally of the righteous king Hezekiah in the Bible (2 Kings 19:9). Moses also married a Cushite, or Nubian wife; when his sister complained, God struck his sister with leprosy temporarily to teach her a lesson (Num. 12:1-10). King David had a courier who was Nubian (2 Sam 18:21). One of Jeremiah’s closest allies (and Jeremiah had very few) was not a native Judean but was an African immigrant who worked in the royal court (Jer 38-39). It is also possible that Zephaniah the prophet (Zeph 1:1, if “Cushi” here means “a Cushite,” a possible reading of the Hebrew) and some other figures in the Old Testament were African immigrants adopted into Israel. With Egypt, Nubia was expected to come to recognize the one true God someday (Ps 68:31; cf. Is 19:24-25).

Egypt plays one of the most prominent roles in the Bible, appearing them far more often than Rome. Some nineteenth century European ethnographers, cognizant of Egypt’s great accomplishments but biased by racism, doubted that the Egyptians were of dark complexion. But a survey of ancient Egyptian artwork shows that, at least in that period, Egyptians were typically of reddish-brown complexion and some were quite dark (especially those in the south, toward Nubia). But unbiased by modern prejudices, different complexions mixed freely in Egypt, producing what is often called an “Afroasiatic” population from the intermarriage of Asiatics and Africans.

Such mixing actually affected ancient Israel. Joseph’s wife Asenath, mother of the tribes Ephraim and Manasseh, was Egyptian (Gen 41:45, 50; 46:20). The “mixed multitude” that left Egypt with Israel (Ex 12:38) included those of Egyptian blood, but given the multitude’s behavior in the wilderness, they may not be our favorite models! On the other hand, most of the Israelites probably had some Egyptian blood. Many of Abraham’s servants were gifts from Pharaoh (Gen 12:16), passed on to Isaac (25:5) and Jacob (27:36); though only 70 direct descendants of Jacob went to Egypt (46:27), the number of servants may have been even larger. When Pharaoh enslaved the Israelites (Ex 1:11), it is not likely that he freed their servants; rather, the servants became part of Israel.

In the New Testament, the first fully Gentile convert to Christianity was from Africa, a court official of the Kandake (“Candace,” in most of the translations, was a title for the queen mother). He came from a famous Nubian kingdom known as Meroe, which had existed since 750 BC and was known to the Romans and other peoples (Acts 8:26-40). This conversion was a southward example of the “ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8), symbolizing a greater harvest to come in church history. Nubia was later converted to Christianity through Egyptian missionaries in the fifth and sixth centuries AD, and maintained its independence as a Christian empire until 1270, then regained it until the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, when internal weaknesses allowed it to be conquered by Arab invasions from the north. During the early Arab period in Egypt, when Arabs there thought of Christians they did not think much of Europeans, with whom they had less contact, but of Africans.

English translations call the court official “Ethiopian,” but “Ethiopia” was a Greek term applied to all of Africa south of Egypt (what Hebrew called “Cush”). Here it applies to Nubia (where the Kandake ruled), not to what is called Ethiopia today. But modern Ethiopia as a whole converted to Christianity before Nubia as a whole did; Syrian missionaries Frumentius and Edesius preached the gospel there, and finally the Axumite emperor Ezanas was converted and led his empire to Christianity around AD 333, about the same time the Roman empire was converting to Christianity. Some Ethiopian Christians were already present as observers at the Council of Nicea (AD 325, along with six Arabian bishops). Later Ethiopia had to defend Egyptian Christians against Arab oppression in some periods of extremism.

The leaders in the church in Antioch, the first major missions-sending church, were multicultural (13:1). In addition to Paul (a Jew born in Turkey but raised in Jerusalem) and Barnabas (a Jew from Cyprus), and Manaen, “brought up” with Herod (possibly as a high-status family slave later freed), two leaders may have been from north Africa. One is Simeon called “Niger,” meaning “Black”; “Niger” was a common Latin name, but as a nickname (as it is here) it may indicate his dark complexion. The other is Lucius of Cyrene. We cannot be sure of his ethnic background, as Cyrene’s population was a mixture of Jews, Greeks, and native Cyrenians; but its location was certainly in north Africa.

For that matter, North Africa continued to play a major role in earliest Christianity. The Roman Empire was not so much a “European” one (in the modern sense) but a “Mediterranean” one, including southern Europe, northern Africa and western Asia. Over half of the most prominent early church fathers (Cyprian, Augustine, etc.) were from northern Africa; as a nineteenth-century German scholar opined, “It was through Africa that Christianity became the religion of the Roman empire.” Tertullian, a north African theologian, coined the term “Trinity” to describe the biblical doctrine and became known as the “father of Latin Christianity.” The leading defender of the Trinity was Athanasius of Egypt, whom his enemies called a “black dwarf,” suggesting that he was short and of exceptionally dark complexion. After the European invasions into north Africa, one north African bishop fled in a boat to Italy, and a portrait of him found there clearly indicates that he was black.

Ultimately the church declined in north Africa, however. It was torn by internal strife between professing Christians (the Donatist controversy; quarrels with the Byzantines) and later crushed by Christian heresies (Arian invaders, barbarians from northern Europe that had been converted to a very defective form of Christianity, oppressed the orthodox Christians of Africa). Likewise, in Nubia, a gradual loss of clergy because of a lack of adequate biblical training centers led to Nubia’s weakness and decline. In both cases, the Arabs conquered lands where the churches had already weakened themselves. But what much of the world forgot until modern revivals of the gospel in Africa, except concerning Christian Ethiopia, both the Bible and early church history remind us: Christianity is an ancient faith of Africa, even before it was a faith of northern Europe.

2. Slavery and Bible Interpretation

People have taken various religious texts out of their original historical contexts to justify their own behavior. Rarely has this practice been so blatant as when religious texts have been used to justify slavery. Sometimes these texts (like Ephesians 6, treated above) actually were meant to limit the horrors of slavery in cultures that practiced slavery, but such texts were later abused to justify slavery itself …

People sought religious justifications for slavery both in the Arab and western worlds. Arab tradition claims that Muhammad held slaves, but there is no basis for supposing that Muhammad made slavery worse than what already existed in his day, and in fact he may have limited it. After the Arabs conquered the Sassanian empire in 642, however, they took over the east African slave trade. By the ninth century, many Arabic texts (cited by Bernard Lewis in Race and Slavery in the Middle East [Oxford, 1990]) reveal a racial prejudice against Africans as stinky, lazy, and suited for slavery. The mighty empire of Songhay was eventually toppled in part by pressure from northern Arabs and Berbers for more slaves. By the nineteenth century the terrible march across the Sahara, Tippu Tib’s near depopulation of the upper forest region of the Congo, and other horrors had reached their peak, but they had continued for over one thousand years. The Arabian peninsula made slavery illegal only in 1962, and outside observers still claimed a quarter of a million slaves there afterward; it continues today in Mauritania, the Sudan, and elsewhere.

Those who practiced this abuse of others naturally sought justification for the practice. Building from an earlier Jewish tradition not in the Bible, Arab slave traders argued that all descendants of Ham (not simply Canaan as in Gen 9:25, fulfilled in Joshua’s day), hence Africans in general, were meant for slavery. Slavery was engrained in Arab culture; in the nineteenth century the sultan of Morocco resisted outside forces to abolish slavery, claiming that it was part of their religion as well as their culture. In 1855, when the Turks tried to outlaw the slave trade in their empire, under British pressure, Shaykh Jamal issued a fatwa from Mecca declaring the Turks now apostate from true Islam. He announced that it was therefore acceptable to kill them and to enslave their children.

Western slave traders, starting with the Spanish and Portuguese but soon including the British and Americans, borrowed the “curse of Ham” and various racist stereotypes from Arab slave traders. Although the Arabs had been engaged in this practice for many centuries, the Europeans pursued plantation agriculture more brutally, stuffing masses of captured Africans into cargo holds for the three-month voyage across the Atlantic. The earliest slaveholders in the U.S. refused to allow their slaves to hear about Christianity, protesting that the slaves might get the idea from it that they were equals of the slaveholders. (Their fears were justified: most slave revolts in the U.S. involved Christian teaching.) But eventually they were able to secure some preachers who would preach from the Bible more selectively, avoiding its themes of liberation, justice, or other matters that might cause troubles. The south was at that time the least evangelized part of the thirteen colonies, in a country which, before the Second Great Awakening, may have had only seven percent church attendance.

But while slaveholders came up with a selective way to read texts, a growing abolitionist movement looked for more general biblical principles. Passionate for justice, British evangelicals in the 1790s (especially related to Wesley’s growing Methodist brand of Anglicanism) had two main causes: missions and opposing the slave trade. The Wesleyan revival shook Britain in a number of ways, but one was creating a new climate of concern for evangelism, justice, and obedience to God. William Wilberforce and his Clapham Sect worked to abolish slavery in the British Empire until finally, on Wilberforce’s deathbed, they succeeded in persuading enough people about their Christian views.

The Methodist revival impacted the Americans, too. The 1784 Methodist General Conference declared slavery contrary to God’s law; the 1812 conference forbade slaveholders to be church elders; in 1826 the Maryland conference unanimously denounced laity holding slaves. In 1825 even the bishop of Georgia, in the heart of slave country, considered requiring all Methodists there to free their slaves. The African Methodist churches in the U.S., as well as other black American denominations, also opposed slavery. In 1789 the Virginia Baptists resolved that slavery should be abolished; Quakers like John Woolman had always opposed slavery; as early as 1710, Anglican Bishop William Fleetwood had condemned slavery. By the mid-1800s the American debate became fiercer and some churches withdrew from it, but many continued the fight.

Abolitionist Christian leaders like Charles Finney, Lewis Tappan and Theodore Weld built their case against slavery from biblical principles …

Meanwhile, the slaves engaged in some Bible interpretation of their own. The slave preachers often allowed them to hear only a small selection of biblical texts, but they could not avoid texts which talked about all humanity being descended from Adam or about all people having equal access to God’s grace through faith in Christ. Slaves would sing songs about God delivering Israel from slavery in Egypt, and the slaveholders, who were too morally depraved to understand the connection, did not realize that the slaves were praying for their own deliverance. One slave who had learned how to read later reported that he used to read the Bible while he was a slave and he found in it confirmation of what most slaves already believed–that God opposed slavery. He found there the principle that God made all humanity from one person, and that they therefore were of equal worth in God’s sight.

… because the slaves heard the Bible at their point of need, they were able to hear themes that were already there which the slaveholders did not expect. Our attachment to our traditions can keep us from hearing anything new. Not everything new is right; but not all of it is wrong, either. To apply the Bible most fully, we must be ready to ask fresh questions, as long as we search the Bible on its own terms (in context and original background) to supply the answers.

3. Other Issues in Application

The ideal in applying any biblical text is to find analogies in our setting as close as possible to the original setting. The closer the analogy, the more likely our claim to be explaining how the biblical writers would preach to our situations today. We must be careful to get the correct analogy; for example, we should read Jesus’ criticisms against the Pharisees as criticisms of religious people in error, not as against modern Jews (Jesus was also Jewish). We should read the plagues of the exodus as directed against an idolatrous empire enslaving God’s people, not against modern Egyptians (God actually wanted the Egyptians to know about him–Ex 7:5, 17; 8:10, 22; 9:29; 14:4, 18; and God has a good purpose for Egypt–Is 19:24-25). In other words, we should hear Scripture humbly, rather than using it as an excuse to condemn other groups to which we do not belong. We should be read to apply its teachings to ourselves first, when applicable (Jms 3:1; Ezra 7:10). Of course, not all Scripture is applicable individually; prophecies of judgments against nations are corporate judgments, not judgments on every individual who happens to read them.

We need to know Scripture well enough to know which texts are applicable to which problems. In the long run, this is best served by knowing the Bible thoroughly, not simply by using a concordance ... A concordance is helpful for locating a word; your own personal study will help you learn and remember where to find a concept …

End of series

Biblical hermeneutics: knowing how to read Revelation

Today’s post concludes with Dr Craig S Keener‘s explanation of various aspects of the Book of Revelation, the final book in the biblical canon.

The following comes from chapters 7 – 10 of his course on biblical hermeneutics, Biblical Interpretation.

If you read yesterday’s entry, you might be wondering about my take on the end times.  I have always been amillenial, although I have read a fair amount of other perspectives, including dispensational ones.

In the main, Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans (including Episcopalians), Presbyterians and Reformed (Calvinist) church members are amillenial.  This means, as I quoted Dr Keener yesterday, that, for us, the concept of the millennium (1000 years in Revelation 20) is symbolic.  If you read my chapter-by-chapter series on the Book of Revelation found at the bottom of the Essential Bible Verses page, you will learn about the use of numbers in the book.  This tradition did not start with Revelation but rather in ancient Jewish Messianic literature, which also relied heavily on dramatic symbolism.  The Jews living at the time knew how to interpret these numbers and symbols.  My entries on Revelation link to other sites where you can read more about both the use of numbers and symbolism.  These make Revelation less sensational and more useful in a wider context of Christian life.

It’s important to discuss Revelation, because many Catholic and mainline Protestant churchgoers have been dissuaded from reading it.  Yet, Revelation 1:3 states:

Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.

Part of the confusion for the layman who wishes to know more about the book ends up on a number of sensationalist sites which plot the book’s end times course through history.  Others detail a number of signs which announce that we won’t have long before the end is nigh.  Yet, as Keener explained, many of these ‘signs’ change throughout history.  Therefore, prediction is largely futile and erroneous.

That said, we should understand what Revelation says and know how to interpret its symbolism. This will avoid wasting hours, interesting though they are, reading prediction sites. A Catholic friend wrote me several years ago and said that she had just finished giving a course to her church on the Book of Revelation.  This was, coincidentally, at a time when I had been poring over dispensationalist and end-of-the-world sites.  They contained information I had never had in Catholic school; I was confused.  So, I wrote her back and asked her what she had taught her class.  No reply, even after a friendly reminder, which was unfortunate.  I had to wait until last year to finally amass enough useful information about amillenialism and interpreting Messianic literature.  That’s how I came to write my series!  I did it for myself, but also for you — my readers.  Please do have a look at it.  It will change many misconceptions you might have about Revelation!

Finally — ‘end times’ refers to the period of time between the first Pentecost and Jesus’s second coming.  For all intents and purposes, we have been in the end times for nearly two millenia.

Now onto Keener’s explanation of Revelation, which you will find in full at his link. What follows are some excerpts. Emphases below in bold are mine.

The Use of Symbolism?

Some people argue that we should take everything in the book of Revelation literally. But Revelation is full of images that we cannot take literally. Was a woman literally clothed with the sun in 12:1 (with the moon literally under her feet and twelve stars on her head)? Is Babylon literally the genetic mother of every prostitute in the world (17:5)? Revelation even tells us what some of its symbols represent, making clear that the book includes many symbols (1:20). God could create the sort of monsters described in Revelation 9, but they resemble locusts in Joel’s prophecy, where they are simply a poetic description of either a locust invasion or an invading army (or a combination of both).

Then take as much as possible literally, comes the reply. But why should this be the case? Is it not better to be consistent with how we interpret the rest of Revelation, which clearly has many symbols? The appropriate way to read narratives is normally to read them literally, but as we noted above, that is not the best way to read Hebrew poetry, nor the Old Testament prophecies given in poetic form. Neither is it the way to read New Testament prophecies that use the same mode of symbolic communication as many Old Testament prophecies. Some statements may be literal (we argue that the seven churches are, for example, literal churches), but others (like the woman clothed with the sun) are not, far more often than in narrative. Some scholars, pointing to a Greek word for “signified” or “communicated” in Rev 1:1, even suggest that one of the very terms used for revealing the message to John suggests that it came in symbols. (A related term for “sign” might bear this sense in 12:1, 3; 15:1.)

Jewish writers in John’s day who imitated the writing style of Old Testament prophets (writing a form of literature later called apocalyptic) frequently used symbolism as well (for example, 1 Enoch portrays angels impregnating women as stars impregnating cows). Just as Jewish teachers often used riddles to provoke thought, apocalyptic writings used enigmatic prophecies to challenge the hearers. Even if we had only the Old Testament as background for Revelation, however, we would expect an abundance of prophetic symbolism (for example, see especially Zechariah, Ezekiel, and many prophecies in Daniel and Isaiah).

Whole-Book Context

Revelation offers a running contrast between two cities: Babylon and the New Jerusalem. Babylon is a prostitute (17:5); the New Jerusalem a bride (21:2). Babylon is decked out with gold and pearls (17:4), like a prostitute seeking to allure us with its offer of sinful, temporary gratification. The New Jerusalem is built of gold and its gates are pearls (21:18, 21). No one with any sense would prefer Babylon to the New Jerusalem; but only those with faith in God’s promise wait for the city from above and resist present temptation.

In the days of Augustine (a North African theologian, AD 354-430), Rome fell to northern barbarian invaders, and Christians were dismayed. Augustine contrasted Rome with the City of God; earthly cities and empires decked with splendor will perish, but God’s city is eternal, and his promise to us will never fail. The world demands that one take the mark of the beast, if one wishes to buy or sell (13:17). But for those who refuse to compromise with the world’s kind of food (2:14, 20), God offers a promise of eternal food (2:7, 17) and manna even when the world persecutes them (12:6). Those who think themselves rich may be poor in what matters (3:17), just as those who seem to be poor may be rich in what matters (2:9). Jesus offers the true gold of the New Jerusalem to those who trust him rather than in their worldly wealth (3:18) …

Whole-book context also offers insight into what Revelation may mean when it mentions the mark of the beast. Should we preach about that by simply warning people to avoid something in the future, or does it have something to teach us in the present? Against what most of us have been taught, a consistent reading with the rest of Revelation suggests that this mark may not be visible to people. Notice the other marks written on people in the book of Revelation. For example, believers will become pillars in God’s future temple, and just as other ancient pillars had names inscribed on them, so we will have God’s name and the name of the New Jerusalem inscribed on us (3:12; cf. 2:17). Forever God’s and the lamb’s name will be written on our foreheads (22:4), perhaps like a slave brand or some other kind of brand showing to whom we belong. Jesus comes back with a name written on his thigh (19:12-13, 16), perhaps so John could read his title in the vision. Babylon the great has a name written on her forehead (17:5), but just as Babylon is not a literal woman, we recognize that the inscription is part of the vision, not literally written on a woman’s head.

Just like God placed a mark on the righteous in Ezekiel 9:4-6, so God seals the 144,000 to protect them during his judgments (Rev 7:3). As in Ezekiel, this is a mark that only God himself sees. Because there were no chapter breaks in the original Bible, the first readers would have readily noticed the contrast between the 144,000 and the rest of the world (13:1614:5). Those who follow the beast bear his name (13:17); those who follow the lamb bear his (14:1). The beast, progeny of its master the dragon, has seven heads and ten horns (12:3; 13:1; 17:3, 7). But a second beast is a deliberate counterfeit of the lamb (compare 5:6): he has two horns like a lamb, but speaks the dragon’s message (13:11). A small army of 144,000 follow the true lamb; the rest of the world (the army of which is at least 200 million, 9:16) follows the beast. Each follower has an identifying mark showing their loyalty, either to the lamb or to the beast. Whether those in the world need to see a literal mark showing who belongs to them or simply signs of allegiance, the preaching point is clear: we must be loyal to God’s side, not the world’s, no matter what the cost.

Background

John probably wrote this book while in exile (1:9) in the time of the Roman emperor Domitian. Domitian demanded that everyone worship his statue as if he were a god, and the early Christians refused to give it. This issue was most pressing in western Asia Minor, where the seven churches were; some of these churches already were facing persecution (2:9-10, 13; 3:9). The first audience of Revelation would have found its warning about worshiping the image of the beast (13:15) relevant for their own day! Some of the other churches, however, were compromising with the very world system that was killing their siblings elsewhere (2:14, 20; 3:2, 15-18).

The seven churches of Asia Minor (1:4) were an audience just as real as any church to which Paul wrote. The churches are in the seven most prominent cities of the Roman province of Asia, and are arranged in precisely the sequence that a messenger traveling from Patmos would deliver the letters. Many issues addressed (such as wealth and distasteful water in Laodicea) address precisely the issues we know were relevant to these particular churches. This is not to say that the message is relevant only for the church addressed; Jesus invites everyone to listen in on his message to each of the churches (2:7). But we learn from their example the same way we learned from the churches Paul addressed: we learn the background so we can understand what issues the inspired writer was really addressing.

We spoke above about Babylon. This need no more be a literal name than the false prophets’ parents had literally named them “Balaam” or “Jezebel” in 2:14, 20.  As most Christians through history have recognized, the Babylon of John’s day is Rome. Everyone knew that Rome was a city on seven hills (17:9); Rome even had an annual festival called “Seven Mountains,” celebrating its founding. The imports in 18:12-13 are precisely the imports we know were most prominent in Rome, and in John’s day Rome was the only mercantile empire to rule the kings of the earth by sea (17:18; 18:15-19). Most importantly, Jewish sources (and probably 1 Pet 5:13) already called Rome “Babylon.” This was because Rome, like Babylon, had enslaved God’s people and destroyed the temple.

The implications of associating Revelation’s “Babylon” with Rome are dramatic. In 18:2-3, John hears a funeral dirge over Babylon (just like the dirge over literal Babylon in Is. 21:9). Rome, the mightiest empire the world had yet known, seemed ready to crush the tiny church of Jesus Christ. Rome had exiled the aged prophet John to the island of Patmos (1:9). Yet John hears a funeral dirge over this mighty empire! What faith it must have taken the early Christians to believe this promise that their oppressor would fall; yet John stood on the shoulders of earlier prophets who had prophesied against Assyria, literal Babylon, and so forth, and their prophecies had come to pass. Assyria, Babylon, Rome, and all the other empires of past history now lie in ashes. But the church of Jesus Christ, whom past empires threatened to stamp out, is more widespread than ever before! In a day when the church was established mainly in a few cities of the Roman Empire, John prophesied a church from every tribe and people and nation (5:9; 7:9) and so it has come to pass!

But while “Babylon” for John’s first readers is Rome, that is simply because Rome filled the role in John’s day. If Rome could be a new Babylon, there could be other new Babylons or new Romes, other evil empires that usurp the rightful role of God’s future kingdom. These need not be geographically in Italy any more than Rome as a new Babylon was geographically in the Middle East. In other words, Babylon is the city of the world, like the city called “Sodom” and “Egypt” in 11:8; the world system, in its rebellion against God, is the alternative to the New Jerusalem. But just as the first Babylon fell, just as Rome fell, so likewise the other Babylon’s and Rome’s of history will fall. The final empires will collapse in the day when the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our God and of his Christ (11:15)!

The Roman background might be relevant for understanding the evil king in Rev 13:1-3 and 17:10-11. The first emperor to officially persecute the church was Nero, who burned Christians alive as torches to light his gardens at night. When Nero was killed, however, the belief that he was coming back became so widespread that some impostors rose up claiming to be Nero; a few years before Revelation was written, one false Nero even persuaded the Parthians to follow him across the river Euphrates to invade Asia Minor. Many scholars thus suggest that the head wounded to death and returning to life in 13:3 is a “new Nero.” This does not mean that he is literal Nero come back (any more than the figures in 11:3-6 are a literal Moses or literal Elijah come back); it would simply mean that he comes “in the spirit and power” of Nero (cf. Lk 1:17), i.e., he is being compared with Nero, the terrible persecutor. That is, Revelation uses the language of its day to say, “the future dictator will be like Nero Caesar, just as evil and persecuting Christians just as much.” A Parthian invasion from across the Euphrates was a horrifying image in John’s day, and a new Nero warned of future suffering.

Two further factors support this association with Nero. Revelation speaks of a past king not currently reigning, who would return (17:10-11); Nero was definitely one of the few kings before the current one when Revelation was written. Further, if his name is spelled in Hebrew letters, it comes out to 666. Many early Christians thought that Nero would return as the final Antichrist. There are, of course, other possible interpretations; “beast” in Hebrew letters also comes out to 666, and this point is no less relevant. Whether Nero or not, the final evil world ruler will be a wicked one! And the character of that evil ruler is already at work in others who do evil (2 Thess 2:7; 1 Jn 2:18). Let us never underestimate evil nor forget that in the final analysis, the righteous God is still in control (Rev 17:17).

Other Reapplications of Old Testament Images

… We could also note the reapplication of the plagues of Exodus in Revelation’s judgments (chapters 8, 9, and 16), or the city called “Sodom” and “Egypt.” Revelation is not pretending to “predict” the plagues of Moses’ day, nor is the city of which it speaks the literal Sodom or Egypt of old (as if it could be both!) …

Let us take one more example, perhaps the most controversial one possible, namely, the length of Revelation’s tribulation. Are the 1260 days (11:2-3; 12:6, 14; 13:5) literal or figurative? Whether they are literal or figurative, several factors warn us not to assume, before investigating, that Revelation must mean them literally. Revelation gets this length of time from similar figures in Daniel (e.g., Dan 7:25; 12:7, 11); but it may address a different issue than Daniel does. In Daniel, this period involves an abomination of desolation (Dan 11:31; 12:11); Jesus shows that at least one of these happened before Revelation was written, within the generation Jesus spoke of it (Matt 24:15, 34; Mk 13:14, 30). (Those who claim that “generation” means “race” there are making up their own meanings for Greek words; the term always means “generation” in the Gospels.)

Daniel’s literal abomination had already been fulfilled before Revelation was written (Revelation was written over two decades after the temple’s destruction!) Further, Daniel’s chronology rests on a symbolic reapplication of Jeremiah’s “70 years” prophecy, after the 70 years were nearly over (Dan 9:2-3, 24). If Daniel could symbolically reapply a number in Jeremiah, why could not Revelation reapply a number in Daniel? Many of John’s Jewish contemporaries also reapplied Daniel’s period of time symbolically, so everyone would have understood this method if Revelation followed it.

This would not mean that Daniel was not literal on this point (as we said, at least one of Daniel’s abominations was fulfilled literally before Revelation was written, according to Jesus); only that Revelation applies the number differently. Because Revelation often uses numbers (like 12,000 and 144) symbolically, it is possible that Revelation borrows Daniel’s number to tell us less about the length of time than the kind of time. But so far we have only argued that it is possible, not that Revelation actually uses the period symbolically. How can we know whether it employs the number symbolically or literally?

In Revelation 12:1-6, the dragon (the devil) opposes a woman and the child born from her. When the child is caught up to rule the nations with a rod of iron, the woman fled into the wilderness for 1260 days. Almost everyone agrees that the child refers to Jesus (cf. 12:17; 19:15); if so, the 1260 days seem to start when Jesus was exalted to heaven (over 60 years before Revelation was written). It begins with the first coming and ends with the second coming. For Judaism, the final tribulation was the period directly before the end (sometimes three and a half, or seven, or forty, or even 400 years), but we Christians recognize that we are already in the end-time. The coming Messiah has already come once, and we who live between the first and second coming live in the end-time, always awaiting our Lord’s return. Just as the lion is the lamb, Christ’s going and return frame the tribulation; all Jewish expectations take on new meaning in light of Christ’s coming.

It is perfectly likely that there will in fact be further intensification of tribulation just before the end, but Revelation’s point, at least in this passage, has a broader relevance to us than that. Our present time in the world is a time of tribulation, but we can take courage, because Jesus has overcome the world (Jn 16:33). The woman and her other children were in the wilderness (12:6, 17), which tells us about the nature of the in-between time. Israel lived in the wilderness between their redemption from Egypt and their inheritance in the promised land. By Christ’s exaltation we, too, have begun to experience salvation; Satan can no longer accuse us (12:10); but we must still endure in this world until Christ’s return (12:11-12).

There is not space here to address whether this is the only sense of the tribulation period in Revelation (I address the issue at greater length in relevant passages in my commentary on Revelation). But the present “end-time” does appear to be the point in chapter 12, and the New Testament often does view the present age as the end-time period. Ever since the first apostles, we have been in the “last days” (Acts 2:17; 1 Tim 4:1; 2 Tim 3:1; Jms 5:3; 1 Pet 1:20; 2 Pet 3:3). Jewish people spoke of the end-time as the “birth-pangs of the Messiah,” but Jesus taught that the birth pangs have already started, whereas the end will come only when we have finished our mission of preaching the gospel to all nations (Matt 24:6-8, 14). Paul declared that even creation is already experiencing birth pangs with us to bring forth the new world (Rom 8:22-23). Knowing that we live in the end-time should affect how we live. Since Pentecost we have lived in the era of the outpouring of the Spirit; we live in an era begun by Jesus and to be finished by him. Therefore we should keep focused on who sent us, what our mission is, and what and whom we are really to be looking for.

Tomorrow: Conclusions on hermeneutics and cultural context

Biblical hermeneutics: beware of misinterpreting Revelation

The next few posts concern the Book of Revelation, which Dr Craig S Keener explores in detail in Chapters 7 – 10  of his course on biblical hermeneutics, Biblical Interpretation.

In the introduction to yesterday’s post, I mentioned Hal Lindsey’s 1970 bestseller The Late, Great Planet Earth, which made the rounds of my high school for all four years.  Books like these should be popular only amongst high school students.  Anyone who knows world history will see that there were numerous times in numerous places when, surely, the end was nigh.  Anyone who has even lived through much of the 20th century should be able to see that the world has survived many catastrophes and horrors; some were natural disasters and others were manmade as a result of war and dictatorships.  Unfortunately, people old enough to know better — Harold Camping, anyone? — believe they can predict the end of the world.  Yet, Jesus said:

But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.  (Mark 13:32)

Keener details more of these erroneous predictions below, recurring throughout history.  Emphases in bold are mine.

A History of Misinterpretations

Too often people in the past two centuries have used “newspaper hermeneutics” to understand Revelation, that is, they have interpreted it in light of newspaper headlines. This is why many prophecy teachers have to change their interpretations of the book so often. That they recognize that Jesus could be coming soon, hence that prophecy is being fulfilled now, is commendable, but assertions that some current event definitely fulfills a biblical passage only leads to disillusionment when today’s headlines end up in tomorrow’s trash bin.

One example of newspaper hermeneutics involves interpretations of the “kings of the east” in Rev. 16:12. In the early twentieth century, many North American interpreters thought of the “kings of the east” as the Ottoman Empire, headquartered in Turkey. Of course, the seven churches of western Asia Minor could never have conceived of kings of the “east” as Turkey, since Asia Minor is modern Turkey! But to western interpreters over a century ago, the Turks seemed the most threatening “eastern” empire on their horizon. After the Ottoman Empire was dismembered at the end of World War I, the new threatening “eastern” empire was imperial Japan (an empire that also threatened Korea, China, the Philippines and the rest of Asia). After imperial Japan was defeated at the end of World War II, western interpreters shifted the title to Communist China.

The only common factor in any of these interpretations was that these hostile kings were to the “east” of those interpreting the passage; sometimes the interpretations may also reveal some anti-Asian sentiments, which are unbiblical and ungodly. How would John’s first readers have understood “kings of the east”? To everyone in the Roman Empire, and especially in Asia Minor, the greatest military threat was the Parthian Empire. The Parthian king rode a white horse, and claimed to be “king of kings and lord of lords.” The definitive boundary between the Roman and Parthian empires was the River Euphrates (cf. 9:14; 16:12). Although they ruled in the region of Iran and Iraq, the geography is less important than the image: the most feared enemies of the Empire would invade it. In the end, it was northern barbarians rather than an eastern empire that did the Roman Empire in, but Rome did die by invasion. Yet conquest remains a frightening warning of judgment in any generation, and from any location (6:1-4).

Other prophetic interpretation errors abound. Jehovah’s Witnesses, a cult, wrongly predicted Christ’s return or other end-time events for 1874, 1878, 1881, 1910, 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975, and 1984 . Even Bible-loving Christians, however, have made mistakes in setting dates, contrary to our Lord’s teaching (Mk 13:32). The church father Hippolytus concluded that the Lord would come by the year 500. Saint Martin of Tours believed that the Antichrist was already alive in his day; Martin died in 397, so if the final Antichrist is still alive, he possesses remarkable longevity!

Others have offered “prophetic” interpretations of the news uncritically. Some prophecy teachers in the 1920s embraced a work called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as confirming their teaching; the work is now known to be a forgery used by the Nazis. Many Christians in the 1970s worried about a computer in Belgium called “the beast”unaware that the computer existed only in a novel! Around 1980 I heard a prophecy teacher explain that the Soviet Union would, in the next year or two, invade Iran, take control of the world’s oil supply, and precipitate a world war. Needless to say, his prediction is running behind schedule at best.

Various books (including Richard Kyle, The Last Days Are Here Again [Baker, 1998]; Dwight Wilson, Armageddon Now! The Premillenarian Response to Russia and Israel Since 1917 [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1977]) have documented countless claims made by prophecy teachers through history, and especially in the past 150 years, about various contemporary events. These teachers were occasionally right (about as often as astrologers), but were wrong the vast majority of times.

Below is a brief sampling of mistakes in recent history, borrowed from the introduction to my own commentary on Revelation (Revelation, NIV Application Commentary [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000]):

•       Christopher Columbus voyaged to the New World hoping to help precipitate the biblical new heaven and earth

•       During the Reformation, Melchior Hoffman allowed himself to be arrested in Strassburg on the belief that it was about to become the New Jerusalem

•       Also during the Reformation, Thomas Müntzer aided the Peasant’s Revolt of 1524, believing that it would precipitate the final judgment; the peasants lost, and Müntzer was executed. In those days, end-time speculations died hardsometimes literally!

•       When King James I persecuted early Baptist leaders in England they feared that they were enduring the final tribulation

•       Many Americans believed that King George III (probably one of England’s most pious rulers, as John Wesley recognized) was the final Antichrist

•       Many northern ministers expected the U.S. Civil War to establish God’s kingdom in their favor; some ministers expected God to weigh in on the opposite side

•       William Booth, an apostolic leader in the late nineteenth century whose Salvation Army was doing great works for God, believed that the Salvation Army he had founded “had been chosen by God as the chief agency to finally and fully establish” God’s kingdom

More recently, Christians in the U.S. bought over 3 million copies of Edgar Whisenant’s 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988. A friend of mine worked in a Christian bookstore whose owner urged her to sell as many copies of the book by the end of 1988 as possible; the owner warned that no one would buy the book in 1989. Sure enough, Christians failed to buy many copies of his updated version the next year, rescheduling Jesus’ return to 1989. Let it never be said that North American Christians are easily deceived at least twice in a row by the same author the following year. The world was watching, however: the campus newspaper at the university where I was doing my Ph.D. mocked the failed predictions. Others predicted the Lord’s return for various dates in the 1990’s or for the year 2000. As one other writer has pointed out, all predictors of times and seasons have had only one thing in common: they have all been wrong.

Often interpreters have proceeded on the basis of two assumptions: first, that we are the last generation; and second, that all prophecies apply to the last generation. The first assumption is always possible, but we cannot ever assert it dogmatically; every generation, looking at potential “signs” around them, has hoped that it might be the last generation. (Biblically, the last generation needs to do more than hope: we need to finish the task of world evangelization, whatever the cost.) The second assumption is simply wrong; many prophecies were already fulfilled within the Bible or await Jesus’ return. Not all pertain specifically to the final generation before his return.

Views about Revelation

Traditionally, readers have taken one of the following approaches to interpreting Revelation:

1.      Preterist: those who believe that everything was fulfilled in the first century

2.      Historicist: those who believe that Revelation predicted the details of subsequent history which we can now recognize in history books

3.      Idealist: those who believe that Revelation contains timeless principles

4.      Futurist: those who believe that Revelation addresses the future

The historicist interpretation has been largely abandoned because history does not fit the outline of Revelation very well. (This is true even for the letters to the seven churches, which some once read as stages of church history; very few scholars accept this today even in the “dispensational” tradition where it was once most common. Dispensationalism has also changed a great deal since it was founded.)

Of the other views, there is something legitimate in each, provided that we do not use one of them to exclude the other views. It is true that Revelation, like other books in the Bible, was written first to an ancient audience (the preterist view); the book explicitly addresses the seven churches in Asia Minor just like Paul addresses churches in his letters (Rev 1:4), and Revelation is written in Greek and uses symbols that first-century readers would understand. This need not mean, however, that it does not speak about the future or (like the rest of the Bible) articulate principles useful for subsequent generations.

Revelation contains timeless principles relevant for the church in every generation. It also speaks about the future, in addition to the present and the past. Readers may disagree on how much of Revelation refers to the future, but almost everyone agrees that Revelation 1922, at least, is future. Likewise, at least some of it refers directly to the past: the catching up of the child in Revelation 12 (whom most believe to be Jesus) has already happened.

Beyond these points, however, readers have come to startlingly different conclusions about Revelation’s teaching throughout history. We can illustrate this divergence by way of commenting on the “millennium,” the 1000-year period mentioned in Revelation 20. Many readers schooled in a particular tradition may be surprised to learn how many people they respect in church history have held other interpretations …

After the Book of Revelation was finished, the first church fathers (leaders of the early church for the first few centuries) were premillennial; that is, they believed that Jesus would come back before the 1000 years in Revelation. They also were all post-tribulational; that is, they all believed either that they were already in the great tribulation, or that it was future but that Jesus would not return for his church until afterwards. But a few centuries later, by the time of Augustine, most Christians were amillennial. Many believed that when Constantine ended the persecutions against Christians, the 1000 years started, and many were expecting Jesus’ return 1000 years after Constantine. Another amillennial view, more common today and easier to defend from Scripture, is that the millennium is symbolic for the period between the first and second coming, with Christ ruling until his enemies are put under his feet. Not only were most Medieval Christians amillennial, but so were most of the Reformers (including Luther and Calvin). Most denominations founded in times when amillennialism predominated are most amillennial today; the same is true of churches in various parts of the world founded by amillennial missionaries. By contrast, churches founded by premillennial missionaries are usually premillennial! John Wesley believed in two separate millennia in Revelation 20, one in heaven and the other on earth.

Most leaders of the Great Awakenings in the eighteenth- and especially nineteenth-century United States were postmillennial, including Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney. During revivals that brought a large percentage of people in the early nineteenth-century United States to Christ, people exercised faith that “the gospel of the kingdom” would be “preached among all nations, and then the end will come” (Matt 24:14). Charles Finney, who may have led as many as half a million people to Christ, and helped lead the movement against slavery, was postmillennial. Postmillennialists believed that they would, through God’s Spirit, establish God’s kingdom on earth, and then Jesus would come back to take his throne. Today most Christians view postmillennialism as naïve optimism, but it was the dominant view of Christians in the U.S. in the nineteenth century.

Another view is first attested in the nineteenth and popular in the twentieth century. This view is called dispensational premillennialism. In or around 1830, John Nelson Darby came up with a system of interpretation that divided Scripture between what applied to Israel (the Old Testament, Gospels, Revelation, and much of Acts) and what applied directly to the church (especially the epistles). Through this system he argued that spiritual gifts were not for the church age, and that there would be a separate coming for the church (before the tribulation) and for Israel (afterward). Once introduced, the view was popularized through the Scofield Reference Bible, becoming popular especially in the early twentieth century. The failure of postmillennial optimism in the nineteenth century and the disintegration of the old, evangelical consensus in the U.S. made this view appear appealing. And after all, who would complain about getting raptured before a tribulation rather than afterward?

We cannot afford the space to debate for or against this view here, but merely wish to point out that most people who hold this view are unaware that no one in church history held this view before 1830. Some today believe that this view is clear; but Christians read the Bible for over 1700 years without anyone, so far as we know, noticing it! (And that, even though most Christians through history believed that they were already in the end-times, and many, like many Christians for the past few generations, that they were in the final generation.) Each view cites verses to defend its position, but each of these verses must be examined in context to be sure of its meaning. That includes views that are widely held today, like dispensationalism; and we should remember that such views widely held today were rarer or (in this case) unheard of in earlier history. For whatever it is worth, the majority of scholars committed to Scripture today are either amillennial or non-dispensational (generally post-tribulational) premillennial, though there are good scholars with other views.

In my opinion, premillennialists have an easier time explaining Revelation 20 itself, but amillennialists other end-time passages (for many, the debate then becomes whether to interpret the more explicit but single text in light of the many but less explicit ones, or the reverse). Since we will all know which view is correct by the time it happens, I see little point in arguing about it. Certainly it is foolish to break fellowship with other Christians over these matters! Why then do I raise the issue? Only to help us be more charitable to those who hold different interpretations of Revelation than we do. If we fight with our brothers and sisters over every single passage we interpret differently, then we will be out of fellowship with most of Christ’s body. The true church is united on the essential matters necessary for following Jesus, but beyond that it is our unity and love that shows the world God’s character (John 13:34-35; 17:20-23).

The real issues for us here must be the practical ones that our methods above can help us fathom. Some issues are very practical but no real Christian disputes them: for example, we all recognize that we must be ready for our Lord to return. But other issues are practical and often missed by interpreters who lack access to cultural background or whole-book context methods …

Tomorrow: Symbolism in Revelation

Biblical hermeneutics: prophecy and the Book of Revelation

Continuing with Chapters 7 – 10 of Dr Craig S Keener‘s course in biblical hermeneutics, Biblical Interpretation, today we look at Old Testament prophecy and the New Testament’s Book of Revelation.

Much has been written about the Book of Revelation and the ‘end times’.  When I entered Catholic high school, Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth (1970) was popular with my fellow students.  I’ve never read it, only his Wikipedia entry.  Lindsey seems to have been correct on a powerful European Union and that what was the counterculture 40 years ago is mainstream today.

Like many end times pundits, however, Lindsey had unsuccessfully predicted the end of the world.  The 1980s were to have been the last decade before the end of the world, then, when that didn’t come true, he wrote that we would be unlikely to see the year 2000.

Many end times authors look to the Old Testament prophets and to the last book in the biblical canon, Revelation, to arrive at their predictions.  This ‘end is nigh’ thinking accompanies dispensationalism, a Pentecostalist belief that faithful Christians will be ‘raptured’ — literally aspirated to Heaven — before the Tribulation.  You can read more about it here and here.

For a balanced, amillenial view of Revelation, please see my chapter-by-chapter entries in Essential Bible Verses.  As it is the last book of the canon, they are near the bottom of the page.

Now on to Keener’s exploration of prophecy, a separate biblical genre.  Emphases in bold below are mine.

9. Prophecy

Many prophecies appear in the Bible’s historical books, but we also have books that consist primarily of prophecy with merely some historical summaries in them, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Hosea or Nahum. In the historical books, it is usually clear when prophecies address a specific king or period in Israel’s history, in which case we study them the way we study God’s other actions in historical narrative (see discussion above.) But how do we interpret books of prophecies that do not provide the full background concerning the situations they address? Below we provide some principles that should prove helpful.

(1) Find out who and what circumstances the prophecy addresses in context.

To ascertain the circumstances prophecies addressed, you can usually discover the specific era in which a prophet prophesied by looking at the beginning of the book, which usually (though not always) lists the reigns of the rulers during which the prophet prophesied. Then you can turn to 1-2 Kings and 1-2 Chronicles to learn what was going on in Israel in that period of time.

(2) Use the law and earlier prophets as background.

The prophets saw themselves as calling Israel back to the covenant; many judgments they announce simply fulfill the warnings of curses in Deuteronomy 27-28. Their language regularly echoes and recycles the language of earlier prophets for their own generation. Many of the prophets repeat the same basic message over and over, except in creatively new, poetic ways. Some surrounding cultures claimed prophets, but none of them had a succession of prophets with the same basic message generation after generation. (The city of Mari had prophets whose most “moral” reproof to a king might be that he was in danger of losing a battle because he was not paying enough money to the temple. Egypt had prophetic writers who denounced injustices of past rulers, which is a little closer but still not like the Bible’s prophetic succession.)

(3) Before the exile, prophets usually prophesied in poetry in their books.

That prophets often prophesied in poetry invites us to interpret them in a particular manner. First, most ancient poetry was rich in symbolism, worded so as to capture attention. Most people knew that not all the details were literal; rather, one should strive to catch the basic point. Some details were even deliberately obscure until their fulfillment, though clear enough in retrospect that one would recognize both God’s wisdom and humanity’s foolishness in not understanding it.

Second, Israelite prophecy involved parallelism, as in the psalms and proverbs. (When the King James was translated, this principle was not recognized, but nearly all newer translations arrange biblical prophecies in lines like other poetry, which makes it easy to recognize the poetic form.) Some modern poetry and songs balance sound, for instance, by rhyme and rhythm; but the Israelites balanced especially ideas. Thus the second line might repeat the thought of the first line (either in the same words or in similar ones that might slightly develop the thought). Or the second line might give the opposite point (e.g., if the first line says, the memory of the righteous will be blessed, the second might note that the name of the wicked will rot). In such cases, we should not read into parallel lines different thoughts. Some preachers have even taken separate points of their sermon from parallel lines, but in the original poetry, these separate lines were not separate ideas; they were simply varied ways of stating the same idea.

(4) Was the prophecy fulfilled already? Does some remain?

Here you should check historical parts of Bible and other historical information to see if a prophecy was fulfilled. Often prophecies are poetic ways to give the general sense, while the particular application remains ambiguous (Is 37:29, 33-37); God does not give prophecy to satisfy our curiosity, but to tell us just what we need. Thus we should not expect literal fulfillment of every detail as if prophecies were prose rather than poetry (although God sometimes did fulfill details literally). Thus, for example, all scholars agree that Jeremiah prophesied before Jerusalem’s fall, announcing in advance judgment on his own people. (This was unusual in the ancient Near East, where prophets were often expected to be patriotic and encourage their people to victories.) But Jeremiah (and Deuteronomy) prophesied the restoration of Israel to the land. When the Assyrians had carried people into captivity, no one ever returned, and no one expected matters to be different with the Babylonians. But a generation after Jeremiah’s death the Judean exiles returned to their land. This was a remarkable, large-scale fulfillment, not naturally expected and not able to be viewed as coincidence, that validates Jeremiah’s prophecy even if some details were intended poetically. Jeremiah’s very writing style lets us know that many of his details are merely poetic, graphic ways of communicating his broader point (e.g., Jer 4:7-9, 20-31). (Parts of Daniel include more details in prose; these occurred exactly as Daniel predicted them.)

A few prophecies were never fulfilled and never will be (e.g., Jer 46:13; Ezek 29:19; 30:10), because people responded to the threats or took for granted the promises; God gives many prophecies in a conditional manner (Jer 18:7-10).

Of prophecies that were fulfilled, part may remain future. This is because there are consistent patterns in God’s dealing with humanity, because both God and human nature have remained the same. Thus, for example, the temple was repeatedly judged in “abominations of desolation,” by the Babylonians (587 BC), by Antiochus Epiphanes (second century BC), by Pompey (first century BC), by Titus (first century AD) and by Hadrian (second century AD). (Referring in advance to Titus’ destruction of the temple, Jesus could speak of an abomination of desolation within one generation–Matt 23:36-38; 24:1-3, 15, 34–which was fulfilled forty years after Jesus predicted it.) Because there are many evil emperors in history, the “mystery of lawlessness is already at work” (2 Thess 2:7); because deceivers remain, there are already many antichrists (1 Jn 2:18).

When a prophecy was not fulfilled but deals with God’s unconditional promises, how much of it remains future? For example, the Israelites’ return from Babylon was a clear miracle, although Cyrus needed less miraculous persuasion to let his captives return home than Pharaoh had needed when the Israelites had been slaves in Egypt. (Indeed, he sent home other captive peoples as well.) But Isaiah’s exalted prophecies of the deserts blossoming with lilies were not fulfilled; Israel remained a very small kingdom. (This disappointment seemed no less severe than the generation that wandered in the wilderness after a miraculous deliverance from slavery in Egypt.) Some aspects of Isaiah’s prophecy were fulfilled in Jesus’ ministry, both physically and spiritually (e.g., Is 35:5-6; 61:1-2; Matt 11:5; Lk 4:18-19). But history also suggests that God is preserving Israel for a purpose. Israel was scattered again a generation after Jesus’ crucifixion, as he warned would happen in judgment (Lk 21:20-24). Yet the Jewish people never disappeared, in contrast to the Hittites, Edomites, Philistines and other nations that were assimilated into other peoples.

Jesus’ coming may appear at first sight a less dramatic deliverance than the first exodus or the return from Babylon, but within a few centuries Judea’s oppressors were converted to belief in Israel’s God–something more dramatic than happened with Pharaoh or Cyrus. Today perhaps half the world’s population acknowledges that there is one God; much of this faith may be inadequate in many respects, but from the standpoint of Jeremiah’s or Jesus’ day it would appear an amazing miracle. All this leads us to expect the fulfillment of future promises of restoration, though we cannot get past the prophets’ symbolic language to fathom all the details. Those who have been grafted into the biblical heritage and hope by faith (Rom 2:26-29; 11:17-24) share in those future promises.

We must be careful, however, in speaking of “double fulfillments.” Many of the “secondary fulfillments” of Scripture we see in the New Testament are actually applications or analogies with the Old Testament, not claims to primary fulfillment. Thus, for example, when Hosea said, “Out of Egypt have I called my son,” the context makes clear that he speaks of Israel in the exodus (Hos 11:1). When Matthew applies this to Jesus, it is because he recognizes an analogy between Israel and Jesus, who repeats Israel’s history but overcomes: for instance, tested forty days in the wilderness (as Israel was for forty years), Jesus passes the very temptations Israel failed (note the context of the verses he quotes from Deuteronomy).

The whole Old Testament bears witness to Christ because it reveals God’s character, his way of saving by grace, his ways of using deliverers, his principles for atonement, covenant and promise, his purposes for his people, and so forth. This means that understanding it properly leads us to recognize in Christ the promised deliverer, and God had all this in mind when he inspired the Old Testament Scripture.

It does not mean, however, that we are free to come up with new “fulfillments” of Scripture randomly; the writers of the New Testament were guided by special inspiration, but we cannot make the same claim. That is not to deny that we should be led by the Spirit in understanding Scripture. It is rather to claim that if we say, “The Bible says,” we dare say only what it specifically says. If we read into the Bible what is not there, we should be honest and say, “This is my view, not the Bible’s,” or “I felt as if God were leading me this way.” The safest way to read Scripture is to look for its one meaning; with so much of the Bible yet to understand correctly, we have no reason to go looking for “hidden” meanings!

(5) We should beware of “prophecy teachers” who claim that every detail of the biblical text is being fulfilled in our generation.

Through most of church history and especially in the past two centuries, many interpreters have reinterpreted biblical prophecies to apply them to their own generation. Every decade or two, as news events change, they have to revise their interpretation of Scripture. In such cases teachers are not reading Scripture on its own authority, but interpreting it in light of current news reports. This is problematic because they do it on two assumptions: first, that all prophecy applies to the final generation (which is not true, biblically); and second, that we must be the final generation. But most generations in history believed they were the final generation! God says that for all we know we might be–or we might not (Mk 13:32); we must always be ready (Mk 13:33-37). In the New Testament, the “last days” included the entire period between the first and second coming, including the first century (Acts 2:17; 1 Tim 4:1; 2 Tim 3:1; Heb 1:2; James 5:3; 2 Pet 3:3).

Most interpreters who claim, “All this is being fulfilled now” use biblical texts that are general enough to have been “fulfilled” similarly many other times. A number of books (e.g., Richard Kyle, The Last Days Are Here Again [Baker, 1998]) survey the history of errors that are common to every group that has practiced prophecy interpretation. Most people know that some groups repeatedly predicted the end of the world and were wrong, but we mostly know about those groups that kept insisting they were “somewhat” right. Yet from some early church fathers through some Reformers and many modern prophecy teachers, the same mistake has occurred over and over again. We should learn from history, as well as from Jesus’ warnings (Mk 13:32; Acts 1:7).

10. Revelation

Revelation is a particular kind of prophecy; because of its special importance and the interest it generates, I have devoted an entire section to its discussion. Revelation is a mixture of prophecy and apocalyptic (a special kind of prophecy that appears in Daniel, parts of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah), delivered in a letter format.

On any book like Revelation, there will be serious differences of opinion, and we must be charitable in our disagreements. Nevertheless, it is worth exploring to see what the methods introduced above can teach us, and how they can take us beyond many of the views that have circulated widely. Reading Revelation as a whole (paying attention to whole-book context) and in light of its background (Old Testament and other background) will help us avoid or correct many of the common mistakes we have often inherited from others.

Revelation is not meant to be an obscure book. It may not be meant to satisfy our curiosity regarding all end-time details, but it certainly is a very practical book that presents God’s demands on our lives. Thus it opens by promising a blessing to those who heed and obey its message (Rev 1:3) which presumes that we can at least understand enough of it to obey it! An angel told Daniel that the book of Daniel would be sealed up and understood only in the end-time (Dan 12:9); by contrast, the angel told John not to seal up his book, because the end-time was near (Rev 22:10). Revelation may be “hidden” to those who think they need a special key in someone’s teaching to unlock it. It is certainly unclear to those who interpret it only in light of current newspaper headlines which require us to readjust our interpretations every year or two. But it is not as hidden to those of us who read Revelation straight through and understand it in its whole-book context. All Scripture should be profitable for teaching and instruction in righteousness from the time it was written (2 Tim 3:16-17) so whatever else it might mean, at least Revelation must mean something relevant for our lives today.

Tomorrow: A history of misinterpretations of Revelation

Biblical hermeneutics: genre in the New Testament

Over the past two weeks, I have been excerpting Dr Craig S Keener’s introduction to biblical hermeneutics: Biblical Interpretation.  My recent entries, taken from Chapters 7 – 10: Context of Genre, have focused on literary genres in the Old Testament. Today’s post looks at New Testament genres.

Emphases below are mine.

6. Jesus’ Teachings

Jesus’ teachings are not a broad genre like poetry or narrative; in fact, they mix together elements of different kinds of genres. Jesus was, among other things, a Jewish sage, so he often uses the teaching style used by Jewish teachers in his day: for example, rhetorical overstatements, wisdom proverbs (see [previous post]), and parables. At the same time, Jesus was a prophet, and sometimes gave oracles like prophets did (“Woe to you, Capernaum…!”) Of course, as the Messiah, Jesus was more than a prophet or a sage, and he often spoke with greater authority than either prophets or sages did. But he also used many teaching techniques that were familiar to his people in his day.

For our example, we will take Jesus’ teaching on divorce. Many people assume that what Jesus said on a particular occasion covers every situation, but while that is often the case, sometimes Jesus himself provided different perspectives for different kinds of situations. Thus we recognize that while Jesus wants us to love him more than our parents, we “hate” them only by comparison with our love for him (Lk 14:26); elsewhere he instructs us to provide for them in their old age (Mk 7:10-13) …

First we should examine the “why” of Jesus’ teaching, as best as possible. In Jesus’ day the Pharisees debated among themselves as to the grounds for a husband to divorce his wife; the stricter school said a man could divorce his wife if she were unfaithful to him, but the more lenient school said he could divorce his wife if she burned his bread. In Jewish Palestine (as opposed to Roman laws), husbands could divorce their wives for almost any reason; wives could not divorce their husbands or prevent themselves from being divorced. Jesus was at least in part defending an innocent party from being wronged: the husband who divorces his wife and remarries commits adultery “against her”–against his wife (Mk 10:11). This was a sin not only against God, but also against another person innocent of the divorce (cf. also Mal 2:14).

Second we should examine what this saying literally claims. “Adultery” in the literal sense is being unfaithful to one’s marriage partner; for remarriage to be adultery against a former spouse means that, in God’s sight, one is still married to one’s former spouse. If we take this literally, this means that marriage cannot be dissolved, and that Christians should break up all second and third marriages. (Interestingly, despite the scandal this would have caused in ancient society, we have no record of anyone breaking up later marriages in the New Testament.) But is this a literal statement, or one of Jesus’ deliberate overstatements meant to grab people’s attention–like plucking out the eye, a camel passing through a needle’s eye, or a mustard seed of faith? We can easily answer this question by examining Jesus’ other sayings on the same subject.

In the same context as Mark 10:11, Jesus also says, “What God joined together, let no one separate” (Mk 10:9). In 10:11, marriage cannot be broken; in 10:9, it should not be and must not be, but it is breakable. The difference in meaning here is this: one says that one is always married to one’s first spouse; the other says that one should remain married to one’s first spouse. The one is a statement; the other is a demand. Yet marriage cannot be both unbreakable and breakable; so it is possible that 10:11 is a deliberate overstatement (hyperbole) whereas 10:9 communicates its real intention: to keep us from divorcing, not to break up new marriages.

Other sayings of Jesus help us further. For instance, Jesus himself did not take Mk 10:11 literally: he regarded the Samaritan woman as married five times, not as married once and committing only adultery thereafter (Jn 4:18). Further, Jesus himself allows an exception in two of the four passages where he addresses divorce. A follower of Christ must not break up their marriage, but if their spouse breaks it up by sexual unfaithfulness, Jesus does not punish the innocent person (Matt 5:32; 19:9). In that case, the marriage may be broken, but only one person is guilty of breaking it. (Because both Jewish and Roman law required divorce for adultery, Mark and Luke could assume this exception without having to state it explicitly.) When Paul quotes Jesus’ prohibition of divorce, he tells Christians not to divorce their spouses, whether or not the spouses are Christian (1 Cor 7:10-14). But if the spouse leaves, the Christian is not held responsible for the spouse’s behavior (1 Cor 7:15). His wording, “not under bondage,” “not bound” (7:15), is the very language used in ancient Jewish divorce contracts for freedom to remarry. Paul therefore applies Jesus’ teaching as a demand for faithfulness to marriage, not a statement about breaking up marriages: Christians must never break up their own marriages, but if the marriage is broken against their will, we must not punish them, either. Jesus spoke to defend an innocent spouse, not to make their condition more difficult!

But even though Jesus is not really calling Christians to break up remarriages, this does not mean we should not take seriously what he is saying. The point of a deliberate overstatement is not to let us say, “Oh, that is just overstatement; we may ignore it.” The point of overstatement is to grab our attention, to force us to consider how serious is his demand. Genuine repentance (expressed in restitution) cancels past sins, but one cannot premeditate sin and expect one’s repentance to be genuine. Christians are not held responsible for marriages broken against their wills, but they are responsible before God to do everything genuinely in their power to make their marriages work. In this example, we have tried to show how we need to listen carefully to why Jesus speaks certain ways, and to examine all of his teachings to discern when he speaks literally and when he overstates his point parabolically. But overstatements are not meant to be ignored; they are meant to grip our attention all the more! We should also add two words of caution: Jesus himself uses principles like “compassion rather than sacrifice” (Matt 9:13; 12:7) and looking for the heart of the message (Matt 5:21-22; 23:23-24). But also we should be honest in grappling with what he says: proper fear of God will give us integrity in searching for truth rather than trying to justify how we want to live (cf. Prov 1:7).

7. Gospels

The Gospels are a specific kind of narrative, but rather than treating them only as narrative we make some special points here. The Gospels fit the format of ancient biographies. (Some early twentieth century scholars disputed this premise, but more recent scholarship has increasingly returned to the historic view that the Gospels are ancient biographies.)

Ancient biographers followed some fairly standard conventions in their writing, but some of these differed from the ways we write biographies today. For example, ancient biographies sometimes started with their subject’s adulthood (as in Mark or John) and sometimes arranged their story in topical more than chronological order (so, for example, Matthew’s reports of Jesus’ teaching; that is why events are not always in the same order from one Gospel to another). Nevertheless, biographers were not free to make up new stories about their heroes; they could choose which stories to report and put them in their own words, but other writers criticized those who made stories up. Further, one need not quote people verbatim, though one did have to get correct the sense of what they meant. Knowing such details about various kinds of ancient narratives helps us be even more precise when we learn principles for interpreting narratives. (We can also identify other kinds of narratives in the Bible more specifically than we have; for example, the Book of Acts is a special kind of history book that was common in the first century.)

Here we offer just a few comments on the historical trustworthiness of the Gospels as ancient biographies, using Luke 1:1-4 as a simple outline. We know from Luke 1:1 that by the time that Luke wrote, many written sources (other Gospels) were already in circulation. (Most of those Gospels no longer exist. Apart from the Gospels in the New Testament, all first-century Gospels have been lost. The so-called “Lost Gospels” some people speak about are forgeries, novels, or sayings-collections from later eras.) Luke himself writes in the lifetime of some of the apostles, and already many others have written before him! People were writing Gospels when others still remembered Jesus’ teachings very accurately ...

Further, we can trust the testimony of these eyewitnesses. The apostles remained in positions of leadership in the early church; both Acts and Paul mention Jesus’ brother and the leading apostles in Jerusalem. (No one had any reason to invent such people, and the spread of Christianity started somewhere; further, diverse sources attest them. So virtually no one today denies their existence.) Because of their leadership, no one could make up stories about Jesus that contradicted their true reports about Jesus. Further, no one can accuse them of lying about Jesus. They were so convinced that they spoke truth about him that they were prepared to die for their claims. Moreover, they were not simply dying for what they believed; they were dying for what they saw and heard when they were with him.

Third, Luke had the opportunity to investigate their claims (Lk 1:3, according to the Greek and most translations). Back when it was still possible to do so, Luke verified his sources by interviewing witnesses, wherever possible. Some sections of Acts say “we” because Luke was traveling with Paul at those points, and those sections include their journey to Jerusalem and Palestine, where they remained two years (Acts 21:15-17; 24:27; 27:1). That gave him the opportunity to interview Jesus’ younger brother James, among others (Acts 21:18).

Finally, Luke himself would not be able to make these stories up. He is confirming accounts for Theophilus, not introducing new ones (Lk 1:4). That is, while some eyewitnesses are still alive, the stories Luke records were already known by Theophilus. This further confirms to us that, even on purely historical grounds, the Gospels are trustworthy. (In the same way, Paul can remind his readers of miracles they themselves have witnessed, often through his ministry, or mention that other witnesses of the risen Christ are still alive and hence available for interview: 1 Cor 15:6; 2 Cor 12:12; Gal 3:5.)

8. Letters

As we read letters in the Bible, we must read them first of all as letters addressed to real people in the writer’s own day, for this is what they explicitly claim to be (e.g., Rom 1:7). Only after we have understood the letters in their own historical context can we consider how to rightly apply them to our situations today. In contrast to those who assume that letters require less interpretation than other parts of Scripture, they are actually among the parts of Scripture most closely tied to their historical situation …

As we noted in more detail above, cultural background in Bible study is not optional; we must take the original situation into account to fully understand the Bible. This is at least as true of letters as it is of every other part of the Bible, and maybe more so, because letters explicitly address specific congregations or people facing specific situations. Some passages are difficult to understand because the original audience already knew what was being addressed, and we are not always able to reconstruct it (2 Thess 2:5); in such cases we must learn humility! …

Writers of biblical letters often followed standards of “rhetoric,” proper speaking and writing conventions of their day. Knowing some of those customs can help us understand the letters better (for instance, why Paul often opens with “grace and peace be with you, from God and Christ,” which links Christ as deity alongside the Father). At the same time, those writers were not simply showing off their writing abilities. They were making points, correcting problems and encouraging Christians in particular situations … These writers applied eternal principles to concrete situations in their own day …

When we apply them, we must make sure that we find the appropriate analogies between the situations Paul addresses and our situations today. For example, some interpreters believe that Paul prohibits most women in one congregation from teaching because they were generally uneducated, hence could prove easily misled (1 Tim 2:11-12). In that culture, his command that they should “learn” (2:11; “quietly and submissively” was the appropriate way for all novices to learn) actually liberated women, who normally did not receive direct instruction except by sitting in services. It makes a difference whether or not this is the issue: if not, the appropriate analogy today may be that women should never teach the Bible (though this would leave in question what to do with other texts, like Rom 16:1-2, 7; Phil 4:2-3; Judg 4:4; 1 Cor 11:4-5). If so, the analogy today may be that unlearned people, whether male or female, should not teach the Bible.

Gordon Fee, in one of his chapters on “Epistles” in his book co-authored with Doug Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Zondervan, 1993), suggests two main general principles for interpreting letters. First, “a text cannot mean what it never could have meant to its author or his or her readers” (p. 64). He notes for instance that one cannot argue that the “perfect” in 1 Corinthians 13:10 refers to the completion of the New Testament–since Paul’s readers had no way of knowing that there would be a New Testament. Second, “Whenever we share comparable particulars (i.e., similar specific life situations) with the first-century setting, God’s Word to us is the same as his Word to them” (p. 65). Murmuring, complaining, sexual immorality and greed will always be wrong, no matter how much or little any culture practices them.

What do we do with texts that address situations very much unlike our situations today? Jewish and Gentile Christians divided over food laws and holy days, and Paul warned them in Romans 14 not to divide over such secondary matters. If we are in circles where we do not know any Christians who keep Old Testament festivals and who abstain from pork, do we simply skip over this chapter? Yet Paul’s advice in this chapter works from a broader principle in addressing the specific situation. The principle is that we should not divide from one another over secondary issues, issues that are not at the heart of the gospel and Christian morality.

Paul wrote to specific, real-life congregations. Because he was not expecting Christians for many centuries later to keep reading his letters in different cultures and situations (cf. Mk 13:32), he did not stop to distinguish for us his transcultural principles on which he based his advice from the concrete advice he gave to these congregations in their situations. Fee lists several principles for distinguishing transcultural principles from the specific examples the Bible gives us, the most important of which we have adapted here. First, we should look for the “core,” or the transcultural principle in the text. This is important so we keep the emphasis on Christ’s gospel and do not become legalists on details like some of Jesus’ enemies were. Second, the Bible presents some matters as transcultural moral norms, such as in Paul’s vice lists (Rom 1:28-31; 1 Cor 6:9-10). But in different cultures the Bible allowed different customs in terms of women’s work outside the home (Prov 31:16, 24; 1 Tim 5:14) or various forms of ministry (Judg 4:4; Phil 4:3; 1 Tim 2:12). If different passages allow different practices, we see these practices as providing guidelines in a specific culture, but not a transcultural principle behind them without exceptions.

Third, we need to understand the cultural options available to the writer. For example, biblical writers wrote in an era where no one was trying to abolish slavery; that the Bible’s writers do not explicitly address an issue that no one had raised does not suggest that they would have side with slavery’s supporters had the question been raised! On the other hand, Greeks in Paul’s day held various views regarding premarital sex, homosexual intercourse, and so on, but the Bible is unanimous in condemning such practices. Fourth, we need to take into account differences in situation: in the first century, men were far more apt to be educated, including in the Bible, than women; would Paul have written exactly the same applications for today, when women and men are more likely to share equal opportunities for education? Fee’s principles resemble those we articulated above on the use of cultural background.

We may provide one stark example of how we need to take Paul’s situation into account. In two texts, Paul requires women to keep “silence” in church (1 Cor 14:34-35; 1 Tim 2:12). If we press this to mean all that it could mean, women should not even sing in church! Few churches today press these verses this far, but are they ignoring the passages’ meaning? Not necessarily. In other texts, Paul commends women for their labors for the kingdom (Phil 4:2-3), and in Romans 16 commends more women for their services than men (even though he mentions more men!) Moreover, he at least occasionally uses his most common terms for his male fellow workers to some women: “fellow worker” (Prisca, Rom 16:3); diakonos (“servant,” Phoebe, Rom 16:1); and once even “apostle” (Junia, according to the best translations; Rom 16:7)! Even more importantly, he accepts women praying and prophesying with their heads covered (1 Cor 11:4-5). How can they pray and prophesy if later in the same letter he requires them to be completely silent in church (1 Cor 14:34-35)? Does the Bible contradict itself here? Did Paul contradict himself in the very same letter?

But the two texts about silence probably do not address all kinds of silence, but deal with special kinds of situations. The only kind of speech specifically addressed in 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is asking questions (14:35). It was common for people to interrupt teachers and lecturers with questions in Jewish and Greek cultures alike; but it was rude for unlearned people to do so, and they might have considered it especially rude for unlearned women. Keep in mind that women were usually much less educated than men; in Jewish culture, in fact, boys were taught to recite God’s law but girls almost never received this education. As to 1 Timothy 2:11-12, scholars still debate how Paul uses the Old Testament background (he applies Old Testament examples different ways in different passages, even the example of Eve: 2 Cor 11:3). But one point, at least, is interesting: Paul’s letters to Timothy in Ephesus are the only letters in the entire Bible where we know that false teachers were specifically targeting women with their false teachings (2 Tim 3:6). In fact, they may have targeted widows (1 Tim 5:9) who owned homes so they could use their houses for churches–one of the Greek terms in 1 Tim 5:13 nearly always meant spreading “nonsense” or false ideas. Those who knew less about the Bible were naturally most susceptible to false teachings; those who do not know the Bible should not be allowed to teach it. Whatever other conclusions one may draw from this, it seems unlikely that Paul would have refused to let women sing in church!

But Fee also cautions against extending the application too far beyond the point in the text. If the law is summed up in love (Rom 13:8-10), we apply the text rightly to love our neighbor as ourselves, a principle which has a potentially infinite number of applications. But some people have taught as if this principle empties all the moral content of the law, so that adultery or bank robbery are fine as long as one is motivated by love. That such an application twists the meaning of the text is obvious, but we practice other such distortions all the time. For instance, we sometimes quote 1 Corinthians 3:16, “you are a temple of God,” … Paul’s own primary point, however, is that our bodies should not be joined to prostitutes (6:15-17). This is a text to be used against sexual immorality! If we try to apply the principle also to smoking, because that is not glorifying God with our bodies, then we should also apply it to gluttony, lack of exercise, poor nutrition, and other problems damaging to our bodies. Our extension of Paul’s principle in this verse may be legitimate, but it is certainly secondary to Paul’s own focus, and Paul’s own focus should be primary to us: if we are joined to Christ, we must avoid sexual immorality.

Different letters were written in different ways, but for the most part we need to read letters carefully in sequence and the entire way through. Romans develops an argument through the entire book (as noted above); 1 Corinthians takes on several related issues, but most of those issues take up many paragraphs through several chapters (1 Cor 1-4, the church divided especially over the most skilled speakers; 1 Cor 5-7, mainly sexual issues; 1 Cor 8-11, mainly food issues; 1 Cor 12-14, spiritual gifts). You might practice discerning that argument by thinking up titles for each paragraph and show how these paragraphs relate to one another, developing a continuous argument.

Keener offers a selection of questions to apply when reading the Epistles — well worth a look.

Monday: Old Testament prophets and New Testament end-times prophecy

Biblical hermeneutics: more on genre

Today’s post examines more descriptions and examples of biblical genre from Dr Craig S Keener’s introduction to hermeneutics, Biblical Interpretation.  Today, we continue with Chapters 7 – 10: Context of Genre.

Keener presents a thorough examination of genre, not all of which is covered in the excerpts below.  Therefore, please refer to his link to read the chapters in full.  Emphases below are mine.

Yesterday, Keener introduced us to an overview of genre then explored narrative.  Another example of narrative is the parable. There are also historical narratives. Other genres, in addition to narrative, include prayers and songs, such as the Psalms. We also have genres of wisdom and romantic literature. (More genres to come tomorrow.) Emphases below are mine.

Parables

Parables are a specific kind of narrative that differs somewhat from other kinds of narrative. Ancient Israelite sages in the Old Testament and in the time of Jesus used various graphic teaching forms to communicate their wisdom, forms that usually made their hearers think carefully about what they were saying. One such kind of teaching was the proverb (which we will address below). A larger category of teaching (covered by the Hebrew word mashal) includes proverbs, short comparisons, and sometimes more extended comparisons, including some actually intended to be allegorized (unlike most kinds of narrative in the Bible)!

By Jesus’ day, Jewish teachers often communicated by telling stories in which one or two or sometimes more characters might stand for something in the real world … When Jesus told parables, therefore, his hearers would already be familiar with them and know how to take them.

But even though Jesus’ parables sometimes were extended analogies with truths in the real world (for instance, the four different kinds of soil in the parable of the sower, Mk 4:3-20), they often included some details simply necessary for the story to make good sense, or to make it a well-told story. (This is also the case with other Jewish parables from this period.) For instance, when the Pharisee and the tax-gatherer pray in the temple (Lk 18:10), the temple does not “represent” something; that was simply the favorite place for Jerusalemites to pray. When the owner of the vineyard built a wall around his vineyard (Mk 12:1), we should not struggle to determine what the wall represents; it was simply a standard feature of vineyards, and forces the attentive reader to recognize that Jesus is alluding to the Old Testament parable in Isaiah 5:5 so the readers will know that the vineyard represents Israel …

Let us look at the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:30-35. In this parable, a man goes “down” from Jerusalem toward Jericho, when he is overtaken by robbers who beat him and leave him nearly dead. A priest and Levite pass by him, but finally a Samaritan rescues him and takes him to an inn. Augustine, a profound thinker and church father from the coast of North Africa, decided that this was the gospel story: Adam went “down” because he fell into sin, was abused by the devil, was not helped by the law but was finally saved by Christ as a good Samaritan. One could preach this interpretation and actually expect conversions, because one would be preaching the gospel. But one could preach the gospel without attaching it to this particular parable, and in fact this is not what the parable means in its context in Luke.

In Luke 10:29, a lawyer asks Jesus who is his “neighbor” that the Bible commands him to love (cf. 10:25-28). Jesus responds that his neighbor might even turn out to be a Samaritan–that real love must cross racial, tribal, even religious lines. This was probably not the answer the lawyer wanted to hear; the answer remains offensive enough even to many people today to suggest why many people would not want the parable to mean this! But why would the man go “down” from Jerusalem to Jericho? Simply because Jericho is lower in elevation than Jerusalem! Further, the road to Jericho (like many roads) hosted many robbers; a man who traveled alone would make an easy target, especially at night. The priest and Levite who passed by on the other side of the road (10:31-32) probably did so to avoid contracting ritual impurity; many Jewish teachers felt that one would become unclean for a week if even one’s shadow touched a corpse, and one could not tell, unless one got close, if someone “half-dead” (10:30) were really dead or alive.

The point of the story is that some very religious people did not act very neighborly, but that a person from whom one would not expect it did so. Perhaps if we told the story today we would talk about a Sunday School teacher or minister who passed by on the other side, but a Muslim or someone from a hostile tribe rescued the person. Our hearers might react with hostility to such a comparison–but that is exactly the way Jesus’ hearers would have reacted to his. The lawyer’s “neighbor” might be a Samaritan. Ours might be someone we are tempted to dislike no less intensely, but Jesus commands us to love everyone.

Narratives and History

Following the influence of the Western Enlightenment, many western scholars grew skeptical of miracles hence skeptical of biblical accounts as history. Discovery after discovery from the ancient world has challenged this skepticism, new trends have begun to challenge old Enlightenment views, and today most scholars, whether Christian or not, focus more on the meaning of the text than its relation to history.

But the early church did expect Christian leaders to be able to respond to objections raised against the faith (2 Tim 2:25-26; Tit 1:9), so we will briefly introduce some of these issues here …

Some nineteenth-century scholars asking historical questions noted that some parts of the Bible overlapped, such as Kings and Chronicles or Mark and Matthew. Thus they developed a method called “source history,” trying to reconstruct what sources biblical writers of history used. Clearly, if they depended on earlier sources, they did not simply make things up from their imaginations. Many passages in the Bible mention their sources (Num 21:14; Josh 10:13; 2 Sam 1:18; 1 Kgs 14:19; 1 Chr 29:29; 2 Chr 27:7); 1 and 2 Chronicles cite a “Book of Kings” ten times (nine of them from 2 Chr 16 on). Although the Gospel writers write closer to the time of the events they describe, when many sources probably reported similar events, hence they do not need to name their sources, they do make it clear that many were available (Lk 1:1). Although there remains some debate, the majority scholarly view is that Matthew and Luke both used Mark and some other material they shared in common.

Beyond such a basic consensus, however, source history provided few widely accepted views. Early twentieth-century “scissors-and-paste” approaches (where skeptics chopped up Scripture to their liking) are now almost universally rejected, weakening the value of those commentaries that followed it. We also know that ancient Mediterranean storytellers drew on a wide variety of sources, including oral traditions, so we cannot always identify which report derives from which source.

Some other scholars advanced a method called “form history”; Jesus’ teaching and works were reported in several different literary forms. Some of these distinct forms (such as parables) are clear, but traditional form-historians speculated too much about which forms were used by the church in particular ways, and most of their early speculations have been refuted by later scholars.

Scholars then moved to redaction-history, or editorial history. If Matthew used Mark as a source, why does Matthew edit or adapt Mark the ways that he does? Ancient biographers had complete freedom to rearrange sources and put them in their own words; a simple comparison of Matthew, Mark and Luke will indicate that they do not always follow the same sequence or use the same wording to describe the same event, and such differences are to be expected …

While there is some value in each of the above approaches, modern scholars have turned especially in two directions. The first is various forms of literary criticism, a basic component of which is usually reading each book as a whole unit to understand its meaning. The second is the social history approach, which focuses on what we have called “background.” Nearly all biblical scholars today, across the entire range from “conservative” to “liberal,” accept the validity of both these approaches.

2. Laws in the Bible

Biblical laws have much to teach us about justice, even if we need to take into account the culture and era of history they addressed. Thus God informs Israel that no other nation has such righteous laws as they do (Deut 4:8) and the psalmist celebrates and meditates continually on God’s law (Ps 119:97).

Some laws, like the ten commandments, are stated largely as transcultural principles; it is also difficult to find genuine parallels to them in other ancient Near Eastern legal collections. Most laws, however, addressed ancient Israel as civil laws for how Israel’s society should work; these were addressed specifically to an ancient Near Eastern framework, and we need to think carefully when we look for appropriate analogies in how to apply them today …

But the laws in the Old Testament, while improving the standards of their culture, do not always provide us with God’s perfect ideal of justice. In any culture, civil laws provide a minimum standard to enable people to work together efficiently, but do not address all moral issues; for instance, a law may say, “Do not kill”; but only God can enforce the fullest implications of that law for moral standards, i.e., “You shall not want to kill” (Matt 5:21-26) …

When some scholars cited Deuteronomy 24 as permission for a man to divorce his wife, Jesus said that law was a “concession” to human sinfulness (Mk 10:5): that is, God did not raise the standard to its ultimate ideal because he was working within their culture. To provide workable laws in a sinful society, God limited sin rather than prohibiting it altogether. But the morality God really demands from the human heart goes beyond such concessions. God never approved of a man divorcing his wife, except for very limited reasons (Mk 10:9; Matt 19:9). Other concessions in the Old Testament may include polygamy, indentured servanthood, and perhaps holy war; God worked through or in spite of these practices, but his ideal in the New Testament is better. Ritual and civil laws may contain some moral absolutes, but they also contain concessions to the time and culture they addressed, just as Jesus recognized.

At the same time, some offenses always carried the death penalty in the Old Testament, suggesting that God took these quite seriously for all cultures: murder, sorcery, idolatry, adultery, premarital sex, homosexual intercourse, extreme rebellion against parents, and some other offenses. This does not mean that we should enforce the death penalty against all these sins today, but we should take all these offenses seriously.

The law remains good and useful for ethical teaching, provided we use it properly (Rom 3:27-31; 7:12; 1 Tim 1:8-11). But mere obedience to the law without faith has never brought salvation; God always saved people by grace through faith (Rom 4:3-12), and since the coming of Jesus he has saved people through faith in Jesus Christ. When we consider how to apply particular details of the law today, we should also take into account other factors. Some biblical patterns, like God’s command to us to rest, were given prior to the law (Gen 2:2-3; Ex 20:11), and God also gives us commands in the New Testament (Jn 13:34; Acts 2:38; 1 Jn 2:7-11). Also, the Spirit was quite active in the Old Testament era (1 Sam 19:20-24; 1 Chr 25:1-2), but has become active in a new way in Christ (Jn 7:39; Acts 1:7-8; 2:17-18).

3. Biblical Prayers and Songs, especially Psalms

In some cases we have the historical context for psalms (e.g., 2 Sam 22:1 for Ps 18; 2 Sam 23:1-7), but in more cases we do not. One can gather that some psalms reflect mourning after the exile (e.g., Psalm 89, especially 89:38-51), but the context of some other psalms, say Psalm 150, is obscure–and ultimately not as necessary as with some other parts of the Bible. God inspired the psalms not only for the immediate circumstances that generated them, but for use in liturgical worship in later times (2 Chron 29:30); most resonate with many kinds of circumstances …

Psalms on the whole may be meant less to be interpreted than to be prayed and sung. Once a person is full of the psalms, they also provide models for our own spontaneous worship to God …

Over sixty of the psalms give individuals or groups examples how to express our discouragement, suffering or sorrow in prayer to God; these are often called “laments.” Some Christians today think that we should never admit that we are discouraged; biblically, however, we should openly express our hurts to God. These psalms often follow a consistent structure; most include a statement of suffering, an expression of trust in God, a cry for deliverance, the assurance that God will deliver, and finally praise for God’s faithfulness. Prayers like this help us deal with our suffering rather than allowing it to crush our spirit.

Thanksgiving psalms are appropriate for celebrating God’s kindness to us, and are thus in some sense for different situations than laments (James 5:13); ancient temple worshipers may have sometimes used these during thank offerings (Lev 7:7-11) … In addition to these are many psalms [called] “hymns of praise,” which worship God without such focus on particular matters for thanksgiving (8, 19, 33, 66, 100, 103, 104, 111, 113, 114, 117, 145-50). Others emphasize trust in the Lord (11, 16, 23, 27, 62, 63, 91, 121, 125, 131).

The work of the biblical historians, prophets, and sages is compatible with psalms as well. Some psalms celebrate God’s work in our heritage in Israel’s history (78, 105, 106, 135, 136); some sound like the messages of the prophets, including a covenant lawsuit summoning God’s people to obedience (Ps 50); some are wisdom psalms, sounding like the teaching of the sages (1, 36, 37, 49, 73, 112, 119, 127, 128, 133). We can teach and learn through our worship (Col 3:16) …

We are trying to read the psalms according to their intention, thus according to their rhetorical function. Thus some psalms sound as if God always grants blessing to the righteous, whereas others note the frequent distresses of the righteous. Yet both psalms are in the same psalter, because those who first wrote and sang the psalms saw no contradiction; they used the psalms to express their hearts before God, and God inspired their worship and was pleased with it …

Psalms are mainly meant to be prayed, but we can also preach and teach from them provided we recognize that we are teaching models for various kinds of prayer. For instance, Psalm 150 tells us where to praise God–both in his sanctuary and in heaven, i.e., everywhere (150:1; Hebrew often summarized the whole by contrasting opposite parts); why we should praise God–both for what he has done and for who he is (150:2); how we should praise God–with dancing and all available instruments (150:3-5); and finally, who should praise God–anyone with breath (150:6). The Psalms also can provide other encouragement. For example, Psalm 2 predicts the victory of Israel’s king over the nations who mock him. This reminds us that ultimately it is not people in our society or other societies that wield power over us; God is in control, and he will reveal that; no human empire that rebels against him has ever endured and none ever will.

4. Proverbs

Wisdom teachers, or sages, often taught in easily memorizable sayings called proverbs. Most cultures have some familiarity with this genre; Americans have sayings like, “Haste makes waste,” and traditional African societies have made much more abundant use of proverbs.

Proverbs are short, succinct statements of general principle. As such, they are summaries of what is normal, not unconditional promises for all circumstances. Some general principles may actually conflict with one another in practice in specific situations. Thus in Proverbs 26:4-5 one should both answer a fool according to his folly, and not answer a fool according to his folly. For his sake you should correct him; for your sake you should be careful not to become like him. Both are true principles, and recognizing both requires us to keep attentive to the breadth of Scripture, rather than taking one text and reading it into all others without first considering the meaning of each text.

One who preaches from Proverbs may wish to gather different proverbs on the same topic and preach them together. This is important because most of the Book of Proverbs consists of sayings in random order, so normal rules of context do not apply. But the broader context of genre does apply, and pulling together other wisdom-sayings on the same topic can be very helpful ...

For example, some say that we can speak things into existence based on some proverbs (as well as some other texts out of context). They note that the tongue can bring death or life, hurt or healing (Prov 18:21; 12:18). But when one compares other proverbs about the tongue bringing healing or life, their meaning becomes clear: you can edify or hurt others by your speech, and you can get yourself into trouble or help yourself by how you speak to others (Prov 12:14; 13:2-3; 18:20; 21:23). Other statements in Proverbs about healing include the well-being of those who choose trustworthy messengers (Prov 13:17), have tranquil or joyful hearts (14:30; 17:22), receive good news (25:25) or hear encouraging words (16:24). Many texts emphasize the therapeutic value of the tongue, especially in relationships (12:25; 15:1, 4, 23; 25:11-12, 25). Egyptians and Mesopotamians also had proverbs about the tongue and about words bringing healing or death, not in the sense of speaking things into existence but in the sense of getting one in trouble or out of it (see, e.g., the “Words of Ahiqar”) …

We briefly mention some other kinds of wisdom literature. Job and Ecclesiastes both challenge the kind of conventional wisdom in Proverbs: What happens when the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper? That the Bible includes these books reminds us that the general principles in Proverbs are principles only, not ironclad guarantees that we can “claim” as if God is obligated to answer them. (He does, however, often answer our prayers of faith, including faith strengthened by such principles. But that is a different matter.) That the Bible also includes such a wide range of perspectives (although not contradictions) also may warn us to keep our own boundaries wide: God may send many Christians to us with different kinds of wisdom, and we should have the wisdom to embrace all kinds of wisdom. We may meet those who tend to be cautious and skeptical (like the cynicism of Ecclesiastes), those who have learned through the sufferings of Job, and those who have seen general principles of God’s faithfulness to the righteous; we should welcome them all, and help them to work together in Christ’s one body, just as different books of the Bible work together in one canon.

5. Romance Literature

Although some psalms may have been used at royal weddings (Ps 45), the largest continuous piece of romance literature in the Bible is the Song of Solomon. Through history many interpreters were annoyed that sacred Scripture would devote such attention to so “secular” a topic as marital romance, and so interpreted the song allegorically concerning the relationship between God and Israel or Christ and the church. But the song makes better sense in its literal meaning (Christ’s marriage to the church has some parallels to human romance, but the probable allusions to intercourse, a marital disagreement, and jealousy do not fit that interpretation!) …

The Song deals with many practical aspects of marital romance (through the specific example of the king and his bride): for example, he affirms her beauty (1:9-10, 15; 2:2; 4:1-15); she affirms his attractiveness (1:16; 2:3; 5:10-16); they participate in the wedding banquet (2:4); they experience a misunderstanding and are reconciled (5:2-8); one should beware of provoking jealousy (8:6).

This book is useful for marriage counseling and for preaching about marriage. Only after we have internalized its lessons for our own marriages can we find some marriage principles in the song that also apply to our relationship with our Lord.

Tomorrow: Genre — Jesus’s teachings, Gospels and letters

Biblical hermeneutics and the context of genre: narrative

We’re now in the last few chapters of Dr Craig S Keener‘s short course in biblical hermeneutics, Biblical Interpretation.  Today, we begin Chapters 7 – 10: Context of Genre.

Thanks to a number of pastors and professors, including those teaching in seminaries, many of us have been reading the Bible incorrectly.  The books of Holy Scripture are not completely allegorical or symbolic.  Yet, not everything is to be taken literally.  Keener introduces us to the types of genre in the Bible as part of interpreting it correctly.

Emphases below are mine.  As the chapters are lengthy, please refer back to Keener’s link to read what he has to say in full.  His course has really opened my eyes to the Holy Bible and I hope that you, too, have derived benefit from it.

Chapters 7 – 10: Context of Genre

Although we have surveyed and illustrated many of the most important general rules for interpretation, we must now note that some interpretation skills depend on the kinds of writing in the Bible one is studying. For example, Revelation is prophetic (and probably apocalyptic) literature, which is full of symbols; if interpreters today debate how literal some of Revelation’s images are, no one doubts that much of Revelation (for instance, the prostitute and the bride) are each symbols representing something other than what they would mean literally (Babylon and New Jerusalem versus two literal women). The Psalms are poetry, and also often employ graphic images. Poetry involved poetic license; when Job claims that his steps were “bathed in butter” (Job 29:6), he means that he was prosperous, not that his hallways were packed with butter up to his ankles. One could provide hundreds of examples; those who deny the use of symbolism in some parts of the Bible (especially poetic portions) have simply not read the Bible very thoroughly.

On the other hand, narratives are not full of symbols. One should not read the story of David and Goliath and think, “What does Goliath stand for? What do the smooth stones stand for?” These accounts are intended as literal historical stories, and we seek to learn morals from these accounts the same way we would seek to learn them from our experiences or accounts of others’ experiences today. (The difference between biblical experiences and modern experiences is that the biblical ones more often come with clues to the proper interpretation from God’s perfect perspective.) We may apply what we learn from Goliath to other challenges that we face, but Goliath does not “symbolize” those challenges; he is simply one example of a challenge.

Even our most important rule, context, functions differently for different kinds of writings. Most proverbs, for instance, are not recorded in any noteworthy sequence providing a flow of thought; they are isolated, general sayings, and were simply collected (Prov 25:1). This is not to suppose, however, that we lack a larger context in which to read specific proverbs. By reading these proverbs in light of the entire collection of proverbs, and especially in light of other proverbs addressing the same topic, we have a general context available for most individual proverbs.

Scholars use the term “genre” for kinds of writings. Poetry, prophecy, history and wisdom saying are some of the genres represented in the Bible … Let us survey some of the most common “genres” in the Bible, and some important interpretation principles for each.

1. Narrative

Narrative is the most common genre in the Bible. Narrative simply means a “story,” whether a true story like history or biography (most of the Bible’s narratives) or a story meant to communicate truth by fictional analogy, like a parable. A basic rule of interpretation for a story is that we should ask, “What is the moral of this story?” Or to put it differently, “What lessons can we learn from this story?”

Avoid Allegory

Some principles help us draw lessons from stories accurately. The first principle is a warning, especially for historical narratives in the Bible: Do not allegorize the story. That is, do not turn it into a series of symbols as if it did not happen. If we turn a narrative into symbols, anyone can interpret the narrative to say whatever they want; people can read the same narrative and come up with opposite religions! When we read into a text in this way, we read into it what we already think–which means that we act like we do not need the text to teach us anything new!

For example, when David prepares to fight Goliath, he gathers five smooth stones. One allegorist might claim that David’s five stones represent love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, and goodness. Another might claim that he picked five stones to represent five particular spiritual gifts; or perhaps five pieces of spiritual armor listed by Paul in the New Testament. But such interpretations are utterly unhelpful. First, they are unhelpful because anyone can come up with any interpretation, and there is no objective way for everyone to find the same point in the text. Second, they are unhelpful because it is really the allegorist and his views, rather than the text itself, which supplies its meaning and teaches something. Third, it is unhelpful because it obscures the real point of the text. Why did David pick smooth stones? They were easier to aim. Why did David pick five of them instead of one? Presumably in case he missed the first time; the lesson we learn from this example is that faith is not presumption: David knew God would use him to kill Goliath, but he did not know if he would kill him with the first stone.

Where did allegory come from? Some Greek philosophers grew embarrassed about the myths of their gods committing adultery, robbery, and murder, so they turned the myths into a series of symbols rather than taking them as true teachings about their gods. Some Jewish philosophers, trying to defend the Bible against accusations by Greeks, explained away uncomfortable portions of the Bible by taking them as mere symbols … Gnostics like Valentinus, condemned by the orthodox Christians, mixed some Christian ideas with pagan philosophy. They often used the allegorical method to justify blurring distinction between Christianity and other thought systems. Many later Christian thinkers borrowed the allegorical method, which became quite common especially in Europe in the Middle Ages.[1]

Many people practice allegory because they want to discover some hidden meaning in every word or phrase of Scripture. The problem with this approach is that it defies the way Scripture was actually given to us, hence disrespects rather than respects Scripture. The level of meaning is often the story as a whole, and individual words and phrases normally simply contribute to that larger contextual meaning. To read into the story meaning that is not there is in essence to attempt to add inspiration to Scripture, as if it were inadequate by itself …

Read the Story as a Whole

Sometimes we cannot draw a correct moral from a story because we have picked too narrow a text. Earlier in this book I mentioned my friend who doubted the usefulness of the passage where Abishag lies in bed with David to keep him warm. What moral would we draw from such a story? We would be wrong if we supposed that the moral was that young people should lie with older people to keep them warm. True as it might be that we should look out for the health of our kings or other leaders, that is also not the moral. Nor is the moral that live humans work better than blankets? Some might wish to draw from it a lesson that contradicts other moral teachings in the Bible. But all these interpretations miss the point, because the writer did not intend us to read one paragraph of the story and then stop. We should read the entire story, and in the flow of the entire story, this paragraph identifies that David is dying and prepares us for why Solomon must later execute his treacherous brother Adonijah. It helps us understand the rest of the story, and the point comes from the larger story, not always all of its individual parts.

How much do we need to read to get the whole picture? As a general rule, the more context you read, the better … Because it was difficult to get a very long document on a single scroll, longer works were often divided into smaller “books.” Thus 1 Samuel through 2 Kings represents one continuous story (with smaller parts); 1 and 2 Chronicles represents anothert story; Luke and Acts together comprise a single, united work (although our Bibles place John between them; read Acts 1:1 with Lk 1:3).

There is also a sense in which larger stories may contain smaller ones. For example, many of the stories in Mark can be read on their own as self-contained units with their own morals; some scholars have argued that the early church used those stories as units for preaching the way they used many Old Testament readings. But while this observation is true, modern scholars recognize that we should also recognize these smaller stories in their larger context to get the most out of them; one can follow the development of and suspense in Mark’s “plot” and trace the themes of the Gospel from start to finish. This prevents us from drawing the wrong applications. For instance, one might read Mark 1:45 and assume that if one is sent from God and fulfills God’s mission like Jesus does, one will be popular with the masses. But if one reads the whole Gospel, one recognizes that the crowds later clamor for Jesus’ execution (Mk 15:11-15). The moral is not that obedience to God always leads to popularity; the moral is that we cannot trust popularity to last, for the crowds are often easily swayed. Jesus thus focused on making disciples more than on drawing crowds (Mk 4:9-20).

Identify the Lessons in the Story

Reading a biblical story as a true account and then learning principles by analogy (the way we would learn lessons from hearing, say, our parents’ stories of lessons they learned in life) is not allegorizing; it is reading these stories the way they were meant to be read. As best as possible, we should put ourselves in the place of the original audience of the story, read it in the context of the whole book it which it appears, and try to learn from it what the first audience would have. Only then are we ready to think how to reapply the story to our situations and needs today. At the same time, if we stop we the ancient meaning, we will miss the story’s original impact. Once we understood what it meant in its first setting, we must think how to apply the passage with a comparable impact for our settings today.

Most narratives involve characters. One can try to determine whether the examples of the characters were good or bad ones in any given case by several methods: (1) When the writer and readers shared the same culture and it assumed an act was bad or good, the writer could assume that the readers knew which was which, unless he disagreed with the views of the culture. (2) If you read through the entire book, you may notice patterns of behavior; an evaluation of the behavior in one case would apply to similar cases of the behavior in that book. (3) By deliberately highlighting the differences among characters, one could usually see which were good and which were bad examples.  

Sometimes we learn from a story by looking at positive and negative characters in the story and contrasting them. We can do this frequently in 1 Samuel; in chapters 1 and 2, we learn that humble Hannah, who was looked down on by many of the few people who knew her, was godly, whereas Eli the high priest had compromised his calling. Hannah offered to give up her son for God; Eli, refusing to give up his sons for God, ultimately lost them and everything else as well. After this the story compares the boy Samuel, who hears God and delivers his message, with Eli’s ungodly sons, who abuse their ministry to make themselves rich and have sexual relations with many women. God ultimately exalts Samuel but kills the hypocritical ministers. Later 1 Samuel contrasts David and Saul; by examining the differences between them, we can learn principles for fulfilling God’s call and also dangers to avoid …

Of course, distinguishing positive from negative examples is not always simple, and most characters in the Bible, just like most characters in Greek histories and biography, included a mixture of positive and negative traits. The Bible tells us about real people, and we learn from that pattern as well not to idolize as perfect or demonize as wholly evil people today. John the Baptist was the greatest prophet before Jesus (Matt 11:11-14), but he was unsure whether Jesus was fulfilling his prophecy (Matt 11:2-3) because Jesus was healing sick people but not pouring out fiery judgment (Matt 3:11-12). John was a man of God, but he did not know that the kingdom would come in two stages because its king would come twice. Distinguishing positive from negative examples takes much work, but is rewarding. It requires us to immerse ourselves in the entire story over and over until we can see the patterns in the story which give us the inspired author’s perspectives. But how better to learn God’s heart than to bathe ourselves in his word?

We can often make lists of positive attributes we can learn from characters in the Bible, especially if the text specifically calls them righteous. One example of learning lessons from a character’s behavior is Joseph in Matthew 1:18-25. The text specifically says that Joseph was a “righteous” person (1:19). Before listing lessons, we need to provide some background. Given the average ages of marriage among first-century Jews, Joseph was probably less than twenty and Mary was probably younger, perhaps in her mid-teens. Joseph probably did not know Mary well; sources suggest that parents did not allow Galilean couples to spend much time together before their wedding night. Also, Jewish “betrothal” was as binding legally as a marriage, hence could be ended only by divorce or the death of one partner. If the woman were charged with unfaithfulness in a court, her father would have to return to the groom the brideprice he had paid; also the groom would keep any dowry the bride had brought or was bringing into the marriage. By divorcing her privately the groom would probably forfeit such financial remuneration.

The narrative implies first of all something about commitment: Joseph was righteous even though he planned to divorce Mary, because he thought she had been unfaithful, and unfaithfulness is a very serious offense. The text also teaches us about compassion: even though Joseph believed (wrongly) that Mary had been unfaithful to him, he planned to divorce her privately to minimize her shame, thereby forgoing any monetary repayment for her misdeed and any revenge. Here Joseph’s “righteousness” (1:19) includes compassion on others. The passage further emphasizes consecration: Joseph was willing to bear shame to obey God. Mary’s pregnancy would bring her shame, perhaps for the rest of her life. If Joseph married her, people would assume either that he got her pregnant or, less likely, that he was a moral weakling who refused to punish her properly; in either case, Joseph was embracing Mary’s long-term shame in obedience to God’s will. Finally, we learn about control. In their culture, everyone assumed that a man and woman alone together could not control themselves sexually. But in their obedience to God, Joseph and Mary remained celibate even once they were married until Jesus was born, to fulfill the Scripture which promised not only a virgin conception but a virgin birth (1:23, 25). There are other morals in this paragraph, too (for instance, about the importance of Scripture in 1:22-23), but these are the clearest from Joseph’s own life.

Now is a good opportunity to practice on one’s own. One could take a passage like Mark 2:1-12 and list the sorts of morals one might draw from it. For example, one critical lesson is that the four men who brought their friend recognized that Jesus was the only answer to their need and refused to let anything deter them from getting to Jesus (2:4). Mark calls this determination on their part “faith” (2:5). Sometimes faith is refusing to let anything or anyone keep us from seeking Jesus for ourselves or (as in this case) for the need of a friend. Another important lesson is that Jesus responds to their faith first of all by forgiveness (2:5), because that is Christ’s first priority. We may also note in passing that Jesus’ true teaching generates opposition from religious professionals (2:6-7). Not everyone in religious leadership is always open to God! But while forgiveness is Christ’s priority, he also is ready to grant the miracle these men sought and to demonstrate his power with signs (2:8-12). He was not a western rationalist who doubted the reality of supernatural phenomena!

One could subdivide some of these lessons and perhaps find other lessons. But one should always be careful, as noted above, to draw the right lessons in light of the larger context. As noted before, Jesus’ popularity in the text (2:1-2) does not imply that such ministry always produces popularity, for many people ultimately asked for Jesus to be crucified (15:11-14). Nor should we read into the text something that is not clear in it; for example, we should not read into Jesus’ response to “their faith” in 2:5 that the Lord will forgive others’ sins because of our faith; the text nowhere indicates clearly that the man lacked faith himself …

Can We Learn “Teaching” from Narratives?

Some modern theologians have been skeptical about learning “doctrine,” or (literally) “teaching,” from narratives. 2 Timothy 3:16 explicitly declares that all Scripture is profitable for teaching, so to rule out a teaching function for narratives altogether these theologians would have to deny that narratives are part of Scripture! But narrative makes up more of the Bible than any other genre does, and Jesus and Paul both teach from Old Testament narratives (e.g., Mk 2:25-26; 10:6-9; 1 Cor 10:1-11)[2]

If narratives did not teach, there would be no reason for different Gospels. Because Jesus did and taught so much, no one Gospel writer could have told us everything that he said or did (as Jn 21:25 explicitly points out). Rather, each Gospel writer emphasized certain points about Jesus, the way we do when we read or preach from a text in the Bible. This means that when we read Bible stories, we not only learn the historical facts about what happened, but listen to the inspired writer’s perspective on what happened, i.e., the lessons to be drawn from the story. When the writer “preaches” to us from the stories he tells us, he often gives us clues for recognizing the lessons; for example, he often selects stories with a basic theme or themes that repeatedly emphasize particular lessons.

Yet despite considerable historical precedent for using biblical historical precedent, many theologians suggest that one should feel free to find in narrative only what is plainly taught in “clearer,” “didactic” portions of Scripture … I freely admit that I do not understand some portions of Scripture myself (what is the eternal function of the genealogies in Chronicles?); but other obscure parts came to make sense to me after I understood the cultural context they addressed (for instance, the design of the Tabernacle in Exodus). Some given texts are more useful for addressing common situations today than others, but all biblical texts have a useful function for some circumstances.

One of the most basic principles of Bible interpretation is that we should ask what the writer wanted to convey to his contemporary audience. This principle applies to narratives like the Gospels as much as to epistles like Romans … The way God chose to give us the Bible is more important than the way we wish He would have given it to us.

More importantly, we must be able to read each book first of all as a self-contained unit, because that was how God originally inspired these books …

Most cultures in the world teach lessons through stories. Most theologians who question the use of narrative, by contrast, are westerners or those trained by them, children of Enlightenment thought. In fact, not even all westerners find Bible stories inaccessible. Even in the United States, Black churches have for generations specialized in narrative preaching. In most churches children grow up loving Bible stories until they become adults and we teach them that they must now think abstractly rather than learning from concrete illustrations. Just because our traditional method of extracting doctrine from Scripture does not work well on narrative does not mean that Bible stories do not send some clear messages of their own. Instead it suggests the inadequacy of our traditional method of interpretation the way we apply it, because we are ignoring too much of God’s Word.

When Jesus’ followers were writing the New Testament, everyone in their culture already understood that narrative conveyed moral principles; biographers and historians expected readers to draw lessons from their examples, whether these lessons were positive or negative. Students recited such stories in regular elementary school exercises, and in more advanced levels of education learned how to apply these examples to drive home moral points.

Demanding the use of non-narrative portions of the Bible to interpret narrative is not only disrespectful to the narrative portions; it implies a thoroughly misguided way of reading non-narrative portions of Scripture as well …

Not only is the traditional “doctrinal” approach inadequate for interpreting the Gospels; it is inappropriate for interpreting the epistles as well. The “narrative” way of interpreting Bible stories in fact shows us how to read the epistles properly. Paul wrote to address specific needs of churches (rarely just to send greetings); while the principles Paul employs are eternal and apply to a variety of situations, Paul expresses those principles concretely to grapple with specific situations … Paul’s letters presuppose a sort of background story–he is responding to events and situations among his audience. In other words, we must read even Paul’s letters as examples. This is how Paul read the Old Testament–drawing theology (especially moral teaching) from its examples (1 Cor. 10:11).

I suspect that many scholars–including myself in earlier years–have felt so uncomfortable with finding theology in narrative largely because of our western academic training …

One warning we need to keep in mind is that not all human actions recorded in Scripture are intended as positive examples, even when performed by generally positive characters. Scripture is realistic about human nature and openly reveals our frailties so that we can be realistic about our weaknesses and our need to depend always on God … Jesus alone exhibits no moral weaknesses, and even he identified with our being tempted (Mk 1:12-13; 14:34-42). Scripture shows the weaknesses of men and women of God so we will recognize that there are no spiritual superhumans among us–just, at best, men and women who depend on the power of God’s perfect Spirit to give us victory.

Tomorrow: More on genre

Understanding biblical background — more examples

Over the past several days, I have been excerpting from Dr Craig S Keener‘s introduction to hermeneutics, Biblical Interpretation.

The past two posts have covered Chapter 6, Bible Background.  September 25′s entry introduced the importance of knowing the background to the books and stories of the Bible.  Yesterday’s post provided useful examples of the cultural and legal background to various passages in Scripture.  Today’s post gives further insight into several more well-known Bible passages, including St Paul’s instructions on women and on slavery.

The research below — and in yesterday’s post — reveals interesting insights into the Christmas story, the Lord’s Prayer and the Crucifixion. For those among us (myself included) who find the parables perplexing, Keener sheds light on their cultural and legal background. Finally, as Keener used this course to teach students in Nigeria, readers will also find fascinating connections to Africa in both the Old and the New Testaments.

What follows are only excerpts, so, please be sure to read Chapter 6 in full at Dr Keener’s link above. Emphases below are mine.

11. Demands of Discipleship in Luke 9:58-62

… Disciples usually sought out their own teachers (in contrast to Jesus, who called some of his own). Some radical philosophers who eschewed possessions sought to repulse prospective disciples with enormous demands, for the purpose of testing them and acquiring only the most worthy disciples. Many Palestinian Jews were poor, but few were homeless; Jesus had given up even home to travel and was completely dependent on the hospitality and support of others.

The man who wants to bury his father is not asking for a short delay: his father has not died that day or the day before. Family members carried the body to the tomb shortly after its death and then remained at home for seven days to mourn. The man could be saying, as in some similar Middle Eastern cultures, “Let me wait until my father dies someday and I fulfill my obligation to bury him.” The other possibility is that he refers to his father’s second burial, a custom practiced precisely in this period. A year after the first burial, after the flesh had rotted off the bones, the son would return to rebury the bones in a special box in a slot in the wall. This son could thus be asking for as much as a year’s delay.

One of an eldest son’s most basic responsibities was his father’s burial. Jesus’ demand that the son place Jesus above the greatest responsibility a son could offer his father would thus have defied the social order: in Jewish tradition, honoring father and mother was one of the greatest commandments, and to follow Jesus in such a radical way would have seemed like breaking this commandment.

But while the second inquirer learned the priority of following Jesus, the third learns the urgency of following Jesus. One prospective disciple requests merely permission to say farewell to his family, but Jesus compares this request with looking back from plowing, which would cause one to ruin one’s furrow in the field. Jesus speaks figuratively to remind his hearer of the story of Elisha’s call. When Elijah found Elisha plowing, he called him to follow him, but allowed him to first bid farewell to his family (1 Kings 19:19-21). The Old Testament prophets sacrificed much to serve God’s will, but Jesus’ call here is more radical than that of a radical prophet! Although we must beware of others who sometimes misrepresent Jesus’ message, we must be willing to pay any price that Jesus’ call demands on our lives.

12. God’s Friends Rejoice in Luke 15:18-32

The religious elite were angry with Jesus for spending time with tax-gatherers and sinners; after all, Scripture warned against spending time with ungodly people (Ps 1:1; Prov 13:20). The difference, of course, is that Jesus is spending time with sinners to influence them for the kingdom, not to be shaped by their ways (Lk 15:1-2).

Jesus then turns to the story of the lost coin. If a woman had ten coins as her dowry, the money she had brought into her marriage in case of divorce or widowhood, she was a very poor woman indeed: ten coins represented about ten days’ wages for the average working man … She thus lights a lamp, but in this period most lamps were small enough to hold in the palm of one’s hand, and these did not provide much light. So she sweeps with a broom, hoping to hear it tinkle–and finally, she finds it! Her friends rejoice with her, just as God’s friends rejoice with him–implying, again, that perhaps the religious elite are not among God’s friends (15:8-10).

Jesus then turns to the story of the lost son. The younger son says to his father, “I want my share of the inheritance now.” In that culture, the son was virtually declaring, “Father, I wish you were dead”–the epitome of disrespect. The father was under no obigation to divide his inheritance, but he divided it anyway; the elder brother would have received two thirds and the younger one third. Under ancient law, by dividing the inheritance the father simply was telling them which fields and items each would get after his decease; the son could not legally spend the estate before then. But this son does it anyway; he flees to a far country and wastes his father’s years of work. In the end, however, reduced to poverty, he has to feed pigs … If the young man were involved with pigs, he would be unclean and not even be able to approach fellow Jews for help!

But the young man decides that he would rather be a servant in his father’s house than starve, so he returns home to beg for mercy. His father, seeing him a long way off, runs to meet him. In that culture, it was considered undignified for older men to run, but this father discards his dignity; his son has come home! The son tries to plead that he might be a slave, but the father ignores him, instead calling for the best robe in the house–undoubtedly his own; and a ring for the young man’s finger–undoubtedly a signet ring, symbolizing his reinstatement to sonship; and sandals for his feet–because most servants did not wear sandals, the father is saying, “No, I will not receive you as a servant! I will receive you only as my son!” The fatted calf was enough food to feed the entire village, so he throws a big party, and all his friends rejoice with him.

So far the story has paralleled the two stories that preceded it, but now Jesus goes further … [The elder son] is now disrespecting his father just as much as the younger brother had earlier! “I have been serving you,” he protests (15:29), thereby revealing that he saw himself as a servant rather than a son–the very role the father refused to consider acceptable (15:21-22).

The religious elite despised the “sinners” who were coming to Jesus, not realizing that their hearts were no better. The sinners were like the younger brother, the religious elite like the older one. All of us need Jesus; none can be saved without God’s mercy.

13. The First Gentile Christian in Acts 8:26-27

Since Samaritans were considered half-breeds (8:4-25), this African court official is the first fully Gentile convert to Christianity (though probably unknown to most of the Jerusalem church, 11:18).

Here a particular African empire is in view. While we might confuse “Ethiopia” here with modern Ethiopia, that is probably not in view. That kingdom, Axum, was a powerful east African empire and converted to Christianity in the early 300s, in the same generation the Roman empire converted. The empire here, however, is most likely a particular Nubian kingdom of somewhat darker complexion, south of Egypt in what is now the Sudan. “Candace” (kan-dak’a) seems to have been a dynastic title of the Queen of this Nubian Empire; she is mentioned elsewhere in Greco-Roman literature, and tradition declares that the queen-mother ruled in that land. (Ancient Greeks called all of Nubia “Ethiopia.”) …

This Nubian court official was probably a Gentile “God-fearer.” When meant literally–which was not always the case (Gen. 39:1 LXX), eunuchs referred to castrated men. Although these were preferred court officials in the East, the Jewish people opposed the practice, and Jewish law excluded eunuchs from Israel (Deut. 23:1); the rules were undoubtedly instituted to prevent Israel from neutering boys (Deut. 23:1). But eunuchs could certainly be accepted by God (Isa. 56:3-5, even foreign eunuchs; Wisd. 3:14). An Ethiopian “eunuch” in the OT turns out to be one of Jeremiah’s few allies and saves his life (Jer. 38:7-13). This African court official was the first non-Jewish Christian. Such information may be helpful in establishing that Christianity is not only not a western religion, but that after its Jewish origins it was first of all an African faith.

14. Paul preaches to Philosophers in Acts 17:22-31

Paul “contextualized” the gospel for his hearers, showing how it related to their own culture without compromising its content. (Today we often err on either one side or the other–failing to be culturally relevant, or failing to represent accurately the biblical message.) Paul speaks to two groups of philosophers present, Stoics and (probably a smaller group) Epicureans; his faith held little common ground with Epicureans, but the Stoics could agree with a number of Christian beliefs …

But while Paul was eager to find points of contact with the best in pagan thinking for the sake of communicating the gospel, he also was clear where the gospel disagreed with paganism. Some issues might be semantic, but Paul would not ignore any real differences. Although philosophers spoke of conversion to philosophy through a change of thinking, they were unfamiliar with his Jewish and Christian doctrine of repentance towards God (17:30). Further, the Greek view of time was that it would simply continue, not that there was a future climax of history in the day of judgment, in contrast to the biblical perspective (17:31). Finally, Greeks could not conceive of a future bodily resurrection; most of them simply believed the soul survived after death. Thus Paul’s preaching of the resurrection offended them most (17:31-32). But in the end, Paul was more interested in winning at least a few of these influential people to genuine faith in Christ (17:34) than in simply persuading all of them that he was harmless and shared their own views.

15. Paul Adapts Ancient Family Rules in Ephesians 5:21-6:9

Some people used Ephesians 6:5-9 alongside Greek, Roman, and Arab discussions of slavery to support the kind of slavery practiced in the Americas, but a simple knowledge of the nature of the slavery Paul addressed would have disproved their understanding of the passage. Others even more recently have used 5:22-33 to treat wives in disrespectful and demeaning ways, which also misinterprets the entire tenor of the passage.

This passage addresses an ancient sort of writing called “household codes,” by which Paul’s readers could try to convince their prospective persecutors that they were not subversives after all. In Paul’s day, many Romans were troubled by the spread of “religions from the East” (such as Egyptian Isis worship, Judaism, and Christianity) which they thought would undermine traditional Roman family values. Members of these minority religions often tried to show their support for those values by using a standard form of exhortations developed by philosophers from Aristotle on.

From the time of Aristotle onward these exhortations instructed the male head of a household how to deal with members of his family, especially how he should rule his wife, children, and slaves. Paul borrows this form of discussion straight out of standard Greco-Roman moral writing, even following their sequence. But unlike most ancient writers, Paul changes the basic premise of these codes: the absolute authority of the male head of the house.

That Paul introduces the household codes with a command to mutual submission (5:21) is significant. In his day it was customary to call on wives, children and slaves to submit in various ways, but calling all members of a group (including the pater familias, the male head of the household) to submit to one another was unheard of.

Most ancient writers expected wives to obey their husbands, desiring in them a quiet and meek demeanor; sometimes a requirement for absolute obedience was even stated in the marriage contracts. This made sense especially to Greek thinkers, who could not conceive of wives as equals. Age differences contributed to this disparity: husbands were normally substantially older than their wives, often by over a decade in Greek culture (with men frequently marrying around 30 and women in their teens, often early teens).

In this passage, however, Paul adapts the traditional code in several ways. First, wifely submission is rooted in Christian submission in general (in Greek, 5:22 even borrows its verb “submit” from 5:21); submission is a Christian virtue, but not only for wives! Second, Paul addresses not only husbands but also wives, which most household codes did not. Third, whereas household codes told the husbands how to make their wives obey them, Paul simply tells husbands how to love their wives. Finally, the closest Paul comes to defining submission in this context is “respect” (5:33). At the same time that he relates Christianity to the standards of his culture, he actually transforms his culture’s values by going so far beyond them! Paul addressed Greco-Roman culture, but few cultures today give precisely the same expressions of submission as in his culture. Today Christians reapply his principles in different ways for different cultures, but these principles still contradict many practices in many of our cultures (such as beating a wife).

No one would have disagreed with Paul’s premise in 6:1-4: Jewish and Greco-Roman writers unanimously agreed that children needed to honor their parents, and, at least till they grew up, needed to obey them as well. At the same time, Greek and Roman fathers and teachers often instructed children with beatings. Paul is among the minority of ancient writers who seem to warn against being too harsh in discipline (6:4). (Greek and Roman society was even harsher on newborn children; since an infant was accepted as a legal person only when the father officially recognized it, babies could be abandoned or, if deformed, killed. Early Christians and Jews unanimously opposed both abortion and abandonment. This text, however, addresses the discipline of minors in the household, as in the household codes.) Disobedience might be permitted under some exceptional circumstances (e.g., 1 Sam 20:32), but Paul does not qualify the traditional Roman view on children’s submission as he does with wives and slaves, since the Old Testament also mandated minors’ submission (Deut 21:18-21).

Finally, Paul addresses relations between slaves and slaveholders. Roman slavery, unlike later European slavery and much of (though not all of) Arab slavery, was nonracial; the Romans were happy to enslave anyone who was available. Different forms of slavery existed in Paul’s day. Banishment to slavery in the mines or gladiatorial combat was virtually a death sentence; few slaves survived long under such circumstances. Slaves who worked the fields could be beaten, but otherwise were very much like free peasants, who also were harshly oppressed and barely ever were able to advance their position socially, though they comprised the bulk of the Empire’s population. Household slaves, however, lived under conditions better than those of free peasants. They could earn money on the side and often purchased their freedom; once free they could be promoted socially, and their former slaveholder owed them obligations to help them succeed socially. Many freedpersons became wealthier than aristocrats. Ranking slaves in some wealthy households could wield more power than free aristocrats. Some nobles, for example, married into slavery to become slaves in Caesar’s household and improve their social and economic position! Household codes addressed household slaves, and Paul writes to urban congregations, so the sort of slavery he addresses here is plainly household slavery.

Some have complained that Paul should have opposed slavery more forcefully. But in the few verses in which Paul addresses slaves, he confronts only the practical issue of how slaves can deal with their situation, not with the legal institution of slavery–the same way a minister or counselor today might help someone get free from an addiction without ever having reason to discuss the legal issues related to that addiction. The only attempts to free all slaves in the Roman Empire before him had been three massive slave wars, all of which had ended in widespread bloodshed without liberating the slaves. Christians at this point were a small persecuted minority sect whose only way to abolish slavery would be to persuade more people of their cause and transform the values of the Empire (the way the abolitionist movement spread in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain). Further, even if this specific letter were intended as a critique of social injustice (which is not the purpose of this particular letter, though that topic arises in other biblical passages), one would not start such a critique with household slaves, but with mine slaves, and then both free peasants and agrarian slaves. Even a violent revolution could not have ended slavery in the Roman Empire. In any event, what Paul does say leaves no doubt where he would have stood had we put the theoretical question of slavery’s abolition to him: people are equals before God (6:9), and slavery is therefore against God’s will.

16. Jesus Rebukes the Self-Sufficient in Revelation 3:15-18

Laodicea became an important Phrygian city in Roman times. It was capital of the Cibryatic convention, including at least 25 towns. It was also the wealthiest city in Phrygia, and especially prosperous in this period. It was 10 miles west of Colosse and its rival city was Phrygian Antioch. The city reflected the usual paganism of the larger Mediterranean culture … The church seemed to share the values of its culture, an arrogant self-sufficiency in matters including its prosperity, clothing and health, all of which Jesus challenges in 3:17-18 …

The one sphere of life in which Laodiceans could not pretend to be self-sufficient was their water supply! Laodicea had to pipe in its water from elsewhere, and by the time it arrived it was full of sediment; Laodicea actually acquired a bad reputation for its water supply. Jesus comments on the temperature of the water: they were lukewarm, neither cold nor hot. This does not mean, as some have suggested, that hot water was good but cold water was bad; Jesus would not want the Laodiceans “good or bad,” but only good. Cold water was preferred for drinking, and hot water for bathing (also sometimes drunk at banquets), but the natural lukewarmness of local water (in contrast with the hot water available at nearby Hierapolis or cold water of nearby mountains) was undoubtedly a standard complaint of local residents, most of whom had an otherwise comfortable lifestyle. Jesus is saying: “Were you hot (i.e., for bathing) or cold (i.e., for drinking), you would be useful; but as it is, you are simply disgusting. I feel toward you the way you feel toward your water supply–you make me sick.”

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The above examples of cultural background are merely samples, but hopefully they have given you an appetite for more. Background sheds light on each passage in the Bible. This is a goal, of course, not a matter on which each interpreter will always agree. Paul recognized that we “know in part and prophesy in part” (1 Cor 13:9)–some texts remain obscure to us (but we have plenty of others to keep us busy till we can understand the obscurer ones). Until Jesus returns, we will never know everything, and we need to be charitable in our disagreement with others whose conclusions differ from our own. That brings us back to some of our earlier comments: focus on what is most central and hardest to dispute, and deal with details only as you are able afterward.

Tomorrow: Genre in the Bible – an introduction

Understanding biblical background — selected examples

In yesterday’s post we read Dr Craig S Keener‘s lesson on discovering more about biblical background in Scripture.

Today, continuing with the second part of Chapter 6, Bible Background, he gives us a variety of examples to illustrate his points.  This is a long chapter, and I shall excerpt only a few salient points over the next two days, so, please be sure to read it in full to grasp the full meaning.

I have learned much from Keener’s introduction to hermeneutics in Biblical Interpretation and am certain that you will, too.  Some conscientious pastors — as true shepherds — transfer this knowledge to their congregations from the pulpit every Sunday.

However, many other clergy ignore it for these reasons: ‘it’s too difficult for people to understand’, ‘it’s my (legalistic) way or the highway’ or — quite simply — ‘Scripture is dead except for a few favourite “golden rule” and “social justice” passages’.  Yet, none of this is true, as Keener — and many other orthodox theologians, present and past — ably demonstrate.

The research below and in tomorrow’s post reveals interesting insights into the Christmas story, the Lord’s Prayer and the Crucifixion. For those among us (myself included) who find the parables perplexing, Keener sheds light on their cultural and legal background. Finally, as Keener used this course to teach students in Nigeria, readers will also find fascinating connections to Africa in both the Old and the New Testaments.

Emphases below are mine.

Examples of Background

Here we provide only a few limited samples concerning the use of background …

1. The New Word in John 1:14-18

Modern writers have proposed many valuable aspects of background for the “Word,” but probably the most obvious is what the “Word” was in the Old Testament: God’s word was the law, the Scripture he had given to Israel. John probably wrote his Gospel especially for Jewish Christians. Opponents of these Jewish Christians had probably kicked them out of their synagogues and claimed that they had strayed from God’s Word in the Bible. Far from it, John replies: Jesus is the epitome of all that God taught in Scripture, for Jesus himself is God’s Word and revelation …

Whole book context explains the point here more fully. God’s glory is revealed in various ways in Jesus (2:11; 11:4), but the ultimate expression of God’s glory here is in the cross and the events that follow it (12:23-24). We see God’s heart, and most fully understand what God was like, when we look at the cross where God gave his Son so we could have life.

2. Worship “in the Spirit” in John 4:23-24

Ancient Judaism often focused on the Spirit’s work in inspiring prophecy. The Old Testament speaks of inspired, prophetic worship (e.g., 1 Sam. 10:5), especially in David’s temple (1 Chron. 25:1-6). To “worship God in the Spirit,” then, may involve trusting the Spirit of God to empower us for worship truly worthy of our awesome God. Given the general belief that the prophetic Spirit was no longer active to this extent in Jesus’ day, Jesus’ words would have struck his contemporaries forcefully.

3. God’s message in the Tabernacle

Egyptians built temples differently than Mesopotamians; because the Israelites had been slaves in Egypt used in building projects, they undoubtedly knew what Egyptian temples looked like. They would have known about portable tent-shrines used in Egypt and Midian, as well as about the structure of Egyptian temples (and palaces), with an outer court, inner court, and the innermost shrine, the holiest place. God chose a design with which the Israelites were familiar so they could understand that the tabernacle they carried through the wilderness was a temple.

Some aspects of the tabernacle parallel other temples, and the parallels communicate true theology about God. In the tabernacle, the most expensive materials were used nearest the ark of the covenant: gold was more expensive than copper, and blue dye than red dye. These details reflect an ancient Near Eastern practice: people used the most expensive materials nearest the innermost sanctuary to signify that their god should be approached with awe and reverence. The tabernacle uses standard ancient Near Eastern symbols to communicate its point about God’s holiness …

Some features of the tabernacle contrast starkly with their culture. The climax of other ancient Near Eastern and northern African temples was the image of the deity, enthroned on its sacred pedestal in the holiest innermost sanctuary; but there is no image in God’s temple, because he would allow no graven images of himself (Ex 20:4) … God communicated his theology to Israel even in the architecture of the tabernacle, and he did so in cultural terms they could understand. (Some of the modern interpretations of the colors and design of the tabernacle are simply guesses that have become widely circulated. The suggestions we offer here represent instead careful research into the way temples were designed in Moses’ day.)

4. Why Sarah used Hagar’s womb and later expelled her

As an Egyptian, Hagar may have been one of the servants Pharaoh gave to Abraham and Sarah several years earlier (Gen 12:16). (Some of those Egyptians would have been from southern Egypt or Nubia.) In passing, we should note what the presence of Egyptian servants of Abraham implies for the matter of some African elements in Israel’s ancestry. Abraham later passed his entire estate on to Isaac (25:5); when Jacob went down to Egypt with “seventy” people in his immediate family (46:27), this number does not include all the servants who also went with him, who were presumably retained as slaves when the Israelites were later enslaved (Ex 1:11). This means that the later Israelites included much Egyptian blood, in addition to the two half-tribes of Joseph (Gen 41:50).

But returning to the matter of Hagar: in some ancient Near Eastern cultures, if a woman could not bear her husband a son some other way, she might have her servant do it for her. So Sarah, following some assumptions of her culture, had Abraham get Hagar pregnant (16:2-3). In such cases, however, it was understood that the child would be legally the child of Sarah; but Hagar began to boast against Sarah as if she were better than Sarah (16:4).

After Isaac is born, Sarah finds Ishmael mocking him (21:9), and she realizes that Ishmael’s presence threatens the birthright of the son God had promised, Isaac. According to some ancient Near Eastern customs, if Abraham had regarded Ishmael as his son, Ishmael would be treated as his firstborn. The way to prevent this was to free Hagar before Abraham’s death, and send her and Ishmael away without the inheritance (21:10). 

It was Sarah’s initial suggestion that got Hagar in trouble, Hagar’s arrogance that perpetuated it, but in the end, Sarah did act to preserve God’s promise that she had endangered by her previous suggestion to Abraham. With the exception of Jesus, all biblical characters, including Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, were flawed in some ways; but understanding the customs of their day helps us better understand the decisions Sarah made.

5. Matthew 2:1-16

… Magi were a caste of Persian astrologers–that is, they practiced a profession explicitly forbidden in the Old Testament (Deut 18:10; Is 47:13). The term is actually used in Greek translations of the Old Testament to describe Daniel’s enemies who wanted to kill him! One of their jobs as Magi was to promote the honor of the king of Persia, whose official title was “king of kings and lord of lords.” But these Magi come to honor the true king of kings born in Judea. Matthew thus shocks his Jewish-Christian readers by telling them of pagans who came to worship Jesus, implying that we cannot predict beforehand who will respond to our message; we must share it with everyone ...

Most troubling of all, however, are the leading priests and scribes (2:4). These were the Bible professors and leading ministers of their day. They know where the Messiah will be born (2:5-6), but do not join the Magi on their quest … And a generation later, when Jesus could no longer be taken for granted, their successors wanted him dead (Matt 26:3-4). The line between taking Jesus for granted and wanting him out of our way may remain rather thin today as well. Especially when background helps us learn more about the characters in this narrative, it warns us in stark terms not to prejudge who will respond to the gospel–and not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought.

6. Keeping God’s Word in Matthew 5:18-19

… One could not say, “I am righteous because I do not kill, even though I have sex with someone I am not married to.” Nor could one say, “I am godly because I do not steal, even though I cheat.” All of God’s commandments are his word, and to cast off any is to deny his right to rule over us, hence to reject him. Thus Jesus was saying in a similarly graphic way, “You cannot disregard even the smallest commandment, or God will hold you accountable.”

7. The Kingdom [Lord's] Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13

… Jesus used some things in his culture, which was already full of biblical knowledge. Jesus here adapts a common synagogue prayer, that went something like this: “Our Father in heaven, exalted and hallowed be your great and glorious name, and may your kingdom come speedily and soon…” Jewish people expected a time when God’s name would be “hallowed,” or shown to be holy, among all peoples. For Jewish people, there was a sense in which God reigns in the present, but when they prayed for the coming of God’s kingdom they were praying for him to rule unchallenged over all the earth and his will to be done on earth just as it is in heaven. Jesus therefore taught his disciples to pray for God’s reign to come soon, when God’s name would be universally honored.

To ask God for “daily bread” recalls how God provided bread each day for Israel in the wilderness; God is still our provider. To ask God to forgive our “debts” would stir a familiar image for many of Jesus’ hearers. Poor peasants had to borrow much money to sow their crops, and Jesus’ contemporaries understood that our sins were debts before God. To ask God not to “lead us into temptation” probably recalls a Jewish synagogue prayer of the day which asked God to preserve people from sinning. If so, the prayer might mean not, “Let us not be tested,” but rather, “Do not let us fail the test” (compare 26:41, 45).

8. Enemy Soldiers Torture and Mock Jesus in Matthew 27:27-34

… Roman soldiers were known for abusing and taunting prisoners; one ancient form of mockery was to dress someone as a king. Since soldiers wore red robes, they probably used a faded soldier’s cloak to imitate the purple robe of earlier Greek rulers. People venerating such rulers would kneel before them, as here. Military floggings often used bamboo canes, so the soldiers may have had one available they could use as a mock king’s sceptre …

Spitting on a person was one of the most grievous insults a person could offer, and Jewish people considered the spittle of non-Jews particularly unclean …

Normally the condemned person was to carry the horizontal beam (Latin patibulum) of the cross himself, out to the site where the upright stake (Latin palus) awaited him; but Jesus’ back had been too severely scourged beforehand for him to do this (27:26). Such scourgings often left the flesh of the person’s back hanging down in bloody strips, sometimes left his bones showing, and sometimes led to the person’s death from shock and blood loss. Thus the soldiers had to draft Simon of Cyrene to carry the crossbeam. Cyrene, a large city in what is now Libya in North Africa, had a large Jewish community (perhaps one quarter of the city) which no doubt included local converts. Like multitudes of foreign Jews and converts, Simon had come to Jerusalem for the [Passover] feast. Roman soldiers could “impress” any person into service to carry things for them. Despite Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 16:24, the soldiers had to draft a bystander to do what Jesus’ disciples proved unwilling to do.

Crucifixion was the most shameful and painful form of execution known in the Roman world. Unable to privately excrete his wastes the dying person would excrete them publicly. Sometimes soldiers tied the condemned person to the cross; at other times they nailed them, as with Jesus. The dying man thus could not swat away insects attracted to his bloodied back or other wounds. Crucifixion victims sometimes took three days to finish dying.

The women of Jerusalem prepared a pain-killing potion of drugged wine for condemned men to drink; Jesus refused it (cf. 26:29). The myrrh-mixed wine of Mark 15:23, a delicacy and possibly an external pain reliever, becomes wine mixed with gall in Matthew; cf. Ps. 69:21 and the similarity between the Aramaic word for “myrrh” and Hebrew for “gall.” Even without myrrh, wine itself was a painkiller (Prov 31:6-7). But Jesus refused it. Though we forsook him and fled when he needed us most, he came to bear our pain, and chose to bear it in full measure. Such is God’s love for us all.

9. Adultery and Murder in Mark 6:17-29

Herod Antipas’s affair with his sister-in-law Herodias, whom he had by this time married, was widely known. Indeed, the affair had led him to plan to divorce his first wife, whose father, a king, later went to war with Herod because of this insult and defeated him. John’s denunciation of the affair as unlawful (Lev. 20:21) challenged Herod’s sexual immorality, but Herod Antipas could have perceived it as a political threat, given the political ramifications that later led to a major military defeat. (The ancient Jewish historian Josephus claims that many viewed Herod’s humiliation in the war as divine judgment for him executing John the Baptist.)  …

Although Romans and their agents usually executed lower class persons and slaves by crucifixion or other means, the preferred form of execution for respectable people was beheading. By asking for John’s head on a platter, however, Salome wanted it served up as part of the dinner menu–a ghastly touch of ridicule. Although Antipas’s oath was not legally binding and Jewish sages could release him from it, it would have proved embarrassing to break an oath before dinner guests; even the emperor would not lightly do that. Most people were revolted by leaders who had heads brought to them, but many accounts confirm that powerful tyrants like Antipas had such things done …

10. A New King’s Birthday in Luke 2:1-14

… A tax census instigated by the revered emperor Augustus here begins the narrative’s contrast between Caesar’s earthly pomp and Christ’s heavenly glory. Although Egyptian census records show that people had to return to their homes for a tax census, the “home” to which they returned was where they owned property, not simply where they were born (censuses registered persons according to property). Joseph thus must have still held property in Bethlehem. Betrothal provided most of the legal rights of marriage, but intercourse was forbidden; Joseph was courageous to take his pregnant betrothed with him, even if (as is quite possible) she was also a Bethlehemite who had to return to that town. Although tax laws in most of the Empire only required the head of a household to appear, the province of Syria (then including Judea) also taxed women. But Joseph may have simply wished to avoid leaving her alone this late in her pregnancy, especially if the circumstances of her pregnancy had deprived her of other friends.

The “swaddling clothes” were long cloth strips used to keep babies’ limbs straight so they could grow properly. Midwives normally assisted at birth; especially since this was Mary’s first child, it is likely (though not clear from the text) that a midwife would have been found to assist her. Jewish law permitted midwives to travel a long distance even on the Sabbath to assist in delivery.

By the early second century even pagans were widely aware of the tradition that Jesus was born in a cave used as a livestock shelter behind someone’s home. The manger was a feeding trough for animals; sometimes these may have been built into the floor. The traditional “inn” could as easily be translated “home” or “guest room,” and probably means that, since many of Joseph’s scattered family members had returned to the home at once, it was easier for Mary to bear in the vacant cave outside.

Many religious people and especially the social elite in this period generally despised shepherds as a low-class occupation; but God sees differently than people do. Pasturing of flocks at night indicates that this was a warmer season, not winter (when they would graze more in the day); December 25 was later adopted as Christmas only to supercede a pagan Roman festival scheduled at that time.

Pagans spoke of the “good news” of the emperor’s birthday, celebrated throughout the empire; they hailed the emperor as “Savior” and “Lord.” They used choirs in imperial temples to worship the emperor. They praised the current emperor, Augustus, for having inaugurated a worldwide “peace.” But the lowly manger distinguishes the true king from the Roman emperor; Jesus is the true Savior, Lord, bringer of universal peace …

Tomorrow: More examples illustrating the importance of Bible background