All the Pieces (2)

But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. 2 Peter 1:20-21 NASB

Interpretation – Yesterday we noted that Peter assumes the validity of the Pharisees’ concept of divine inspiration. The writings of the prophets are God’s word. We pointed out that unless we recognize where Peter got that idea, we really don’t understand why he says this or what he means by it. We concluded that it is crucial to read the apostolic material within the context of the times, and this means knowing what the rabbis taught and how it influenced the thinking of the disciples.

Now we can outline a method of our own.

When we attempt to understand what God is teaching through the authors of the Bible, we have to include all the pieces. This means we cannot work solely within the canon. The authors didn’t do that, so how can we? What we need to do is to capture as best we can the ideas that were circulating during the times that these men wrote because the way that they heard God and the way they expressed that message was conditioned by their own understanding of the world, the Scriptures and the theological perspective of their culture.

This should not be a surprise. It is the way we would approach any other historical material. The problem we encounter is that because it is the Bible, we are often inclined to think of it as elevated above all other writings in both method and content. We fall victims to the idea that God delivered timeless truths, and therefore, the cultural settings of the authors have no bearing on the results. In other words, we treat the Bible as if it were independent of human transmission, as if it were a book that somehow floated down from heaven (in pieces, of course) so that no human thinking was actually a part of its formation. We act as if the Bible is like the golden tablets of the angel Maroni delivered to Joseph Smith in 1823. But it isn’t! It is the product of God’s action through men, and it displays all the cultural, linguistic and structural characteristics of any other ancient literature. Its message might be divine, but its delivery is human.

This means that we are required to pay attention to the culture of the men who wrote it. If we want to understand Genesis, for example, we will need to seriously consider the background of Egyptian mythology, not the arguments of William Whiston. If we want to understand Isaiah, we need to know the history of Babylon and its military actions. If we want to understand Yeshua, we will need to know the works of the Sages and the rabbis. We cannot ignore the cultural milieu of the men who penned the Scriptures.

But, of course, we can. We can hold the view that Scripture alone interprets Scripture. We can close the door to all the cultures that surrounded Israel. We can dismiss anything “Jewish” from our view of the apostles (after all, they were all Christians!) and we can go on pretending that the Holy Spirit will whisper the truth in our ears so that we don’t need to study anything except the Canon (a collection of books that a religious authority has deemed the only collection required for faith and practice – oh, and by the way, who told you that?).

Let me suggest another approach. First, every author of every book has a human history. This means that the cultural assumptions of the author make their way into the text because that’s what the author thought about the world. This does not mean that God didn’t communicate to that author. It simply means that God communicated to the author in ways that the author could understand, i.e., in the language and thought patterns of the author’s own culture. I cannot understand Moses unless I understand Egypt and the ancient near East. It’s as simple as that.

Secondly, every author was either Hebrew or Jewish or deeply involved in the Jewish way of life. Therefore, I cannot understand any of the Bible without a Hebrew/Jewish perspective. Let me put it bluntly. Christian views (those ideas that are distinctly Christian) are not part of the thinking of Hebrews/Jews. If my exegesis results in interpretation that can only be understood from a Christian perspective, I am probably wrong. Whatever I determine to be the meaning of the text must be acceptable to the Hebrew/Jewish view of God and His world in at least the first century and before. This does not imply that contemporary Judaism is the standard. It states only that the exegetical touchstone cannot dismiss the thinking of Jews in the first century or earlier. For me to understand this part of the puzzle, I must know the rabbinic material. To claim otherwise is not only to deny the role of historical scholarship but also to assert an implicit anti-Semitism.

Finally (for now), while we cannot dismiss the role of the Spirit, history alone teaches us that reliance on the Spirit to bring us to truth is the most dangerous of all exegetical methods. More men and women have died because someone heard the voice of God speaking “truth.” History flows with the blood of those killed in the name of God’s leading. It’s time to set aside this position as untrustworthy, if for no other reason than that men are subject to their own fallacies when it comes to internal voices. Pray about a text if you must, but do the homework before you tell me that God has given you the answers.

History, culture, language, setting, literature, influences and ethnic perspective. Examine these. Then let’s talk about what a text means.

Topical Index: interpretation, 2 Peter 1:20-21, hermeneutics