History and Prophecy
The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkiah, of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, 2 to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah . . . Jeremiah 1:1-2a NASB
Came – How do you read the Bible? Obviously I am not asking about the physical process. I am asking about your interpretative assumptions when you read the text. What framework do you use to understand the text? Let me offer some suggestions, and some implications.
Most of us read the Bible according to our cultural heritage. We subconsciously add framework to the text. This framework is filled with doctrinal assumptions, traditions, personal experience and history. But it is our framework, not necessarily the framework of the author. Principal among these assumptions is our view of the authorship of the Bible. We believe, as a matter of faith, that God is the final author and therefore, all of the text reflects a uniform and transcendental perspective. In other words, since God wrote it all (through human persons), He has a consistent message in all the text so that the individual details of any particular human writer are ultimately inconsequential. They can be ignored because the timeless and eternal God is the actual author. If we read the text with this framework in mind, then we (perhaps unconsciously) ignore the actual historical and cultural setting of the human writer and view the text as if it too were timeless and eternal. The typical doctrine of inspiration and inerrancy retains this assumption, as does replacement theology. Understanding the actual Jewish culture and history of the writer isn’t necessary in order to read the text.
But what if this entire framework is wrong? What if reading the Bible is like reading any other ancient literature? Even if YHVH motivated the writers to record their experiences with Him, they still wrote in the context of their culture and their history. That means we must know when they wrote and what their cultural issues were if we are going to understand their message. In other words, God spoke in human history, not transcendentally. To make sense of the message, we need to know what the people were thinking at the time the message was delivered.
This seems like a simple little correction. In fact, one can hardly object to this line of inquiry. But the implications are enormous. What this means, among other things, is that the message of the prophets depends on when they lived and what was happening at that particular time. For example, Jeremiah prophesied over a forty year period. A lot of political and social changes occurred during that period. Those changes are reflected in changes in his prophecy. What he said at the beginning of his ministry is not the same as what he said at the end of his ministry because the environment changed. His prophecies are contingent upon the actual historical setting. In other words, God speaks into the world of the original audience and what God says changes as the environment of the audience changes. Here’s the lesson: the Bible is not your history. You can’t read it as if it were written to you. Unless you know what was happening to the original audience, you won’t know the real message. You can apply the text to something in your life if you feel led to do so, but that isn’t that same as what the text means. Furthermore, since the Bible is a collection of God’s interactions with the original audience over thousands of years, the original audience also changes. Every book requires a new investigation of the audience and its history. What Jeremiah says to Israel when Assyria was in power is not the same as what he says to Israel when Babylon ascended. The word of YHVH came clothed in the events of the day.
It’s a daunting task.
But if we don’t do this, we are inevitably persuaded that the Bible is our book, containing transcendental messages without the interference of human conditions. We turn the Bible into a spiritual Boy Scout Handbook.
I’ve tried to make this point when we investigated the early texts of Genesis. All those stories were not written for the people in the stories. They were written for the children of Israel after they came out of Egypt. Therefore, the vocabulary in the stories is vocabulary that makes sense to this audience, not the actors in the stories. For example, the prime directive, to “subdue” the earth, makes no sense to Adam in the Garden, but it makes perfect sense to the children in the wilderness. The serpent in the Garden isn’t a snake. It’s a symbol of the power of Pharaoh and opposition to YHVH. The text must be read as the original audience would understand it. Crushing the head of the serpent is not Messianic until it becomes Messianic when an audience thousands of years later applies it to their circumstances. And so it goes.
Joseph Klausner[1] attempts to investigate the actual historical setting of each of the biblical books that contain Messianic ideas. He shows that the idea of the Messiah depends on the social-political situation at the time of the writing. While there are general themes across the books, the particulars are contingent on the audience. Do you know what was happening to the writer in those Messianic verses? “ . . . a passage of Scripture . . . does not create a new idea; but the new idea, which is already emerging, finds proof and support in the Scriptural passage.”[2] The idea comes first, growing out of the ethos of the time. Then men run to the Scriptures to find proofs. It’s paradigm thinking at work.
Are you listening? Is your Bible couched in your historical assumptions, or is it a collection of material from a galaxy far, far away? How do you read the text?
Topical Index: Jeremiah 1:1-2, inspiration, prophecy, history, Joseph Klausner
[1] Joseph Klausner, The Messianic Idea In Israel From Its Beginning To The Completion Of The Mishnab (Macmillan, 1955).
[2] Ibid., p. 485.
The best example of this for me is to consider that BC (BCE for the PC) folks used the revelation that they had to look forward to the Messiah’s first coming. (This caused a good deal of confusion because they could not tell, for example, what applied to His first advent vs. His second.) Here on the other side of that advent, we read backwards and see (hindsight being 20/20, so they say) not only the prophetic portrayals for Him differently (starting right there with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John who got to have that fun first) than the folks who got it handed to, but also the entire economy of the Israelites as being one huge ongoing picture of that coming. The people lived the picture, from that highly symbolic deliverance to the design for the wilderness sanctuary, even though those pieces of the puzzle could not see then what is so easy for us to see now.
I can see, however, that confusion is potentially there today. At that first advent, the temptation was to expect the prophecies of the Second Advent to be fulfilled by the First. Set up for disappointment. But we are not out of the woods yet, for we could be tempted to apply the prophecies of that First Advent to the Second, even though both are almost complete opposites. Messiah Ben Joseph is a very different coming than Messiah Ben David, for example. We, reading the prophecies surrounding that yet-to-be Second Coming have a lot of the same difficulties and confusion that people have always had, I think, when trying to figure out future prophecy. For one thing, we know we are supposed to be involved in the fulfillment, but it can be hard to figure out what we are supposed to do.
I consider the Bible as the first interactive interface. How we read it affects how it turns out. This affects how I pray and how I make choices every day, as well as how I read the text. In that Book, the readers matter, too: not only the first audience, but all audiences. Seder, anybody?
It is difficult for me to join the discussion at this time, I will be reading as the content comes in. My expectations are high. This is a very needed subject.
I get that the first few chapters of Genesis aren’t literal and the concept that we often wrongly impose our cultural bias on the text, but in your example aren’t the Israelites in the desert imposing their cultural assumptions on the text if they interpret the serpent in the garden as a symbol of Pharaoh?
And so the juices start flowing. Moses did not ‘invent’ history, that’s for sure. There are some who speculate that he wrote Genesis before he came back to Egypt. His father-in-law, Jethro, as a priest of the Most High would have known the stories, too. The people might have been disregarding their history (the word “remember” comes to mind) but the ancient mind was so capable of memory, as a whole, who needed to write? AND, if the serpent was some sort of flying dragon (of which there were many species) it would explain dragon and serpent worship the world over. My suspicion is rather that it was Pharoah who was copying. But I have said that before, and I am not the only one who sees it that way. It would make more sense. Unless, of course, everybody had immediately forgotten everything in their past. Now, how likely is that?
Yes, of course they are, but since they are the original intended audience, why wouldn’t we expect that to be the case? If we want to know what the text originally meant, isn’t this the direction we have to go? We can later say, “Ah, but now we see it differently,” but before we get there we must first know what it meant to the people who heard it first.
Absolutely. The first important audience.
While it’s certainly clear that times, cultures and circumstances greatly affected
the various writers over the ages, can it not be said that God in His Word has yet
woven a miraculous thread of revelation and inspiration that can and does speak
profoundly to today’s audience of billions of people around the world?
Of course we can say that. But our objective here is exegesis. Not application. So we are interested in what it meant to the original audience as a way of understanding what it might mean to us.
Skip, even though we are not the Israelites, when God takes us through a wilderness journey of Exodus into learning to walk with Him one day at a time, there are things we can learn from the Israelites situations (looking at it from their circumstances) that may be similar that we can lean on for comfort. Personally, I am so thankful to the Lord to have allowed all the mess in families that we see in its opening book and even looking at the Patriarchs who battled through their flaws and still made it into the “Hall of Faith,” because, I don’t know how I would have been able to walk through what He’s given me as a journey. Thank God they weren’t all perfect! I am also grateful for people like you and others who have opened the Word in its historical richness. I think the more were willing to be taught, the deeper insight and wisdom the Lord brings. I have been blessed!
Yes fortunately we can apply all of these lessons to our own lives. That’s part of the purpose of having such human lessons in Scripture. But that’s different than exegesis sense exegesis is the attempt to understand what it meant to the original audience. We need both. We will continue to pursue both.
Perhaps God spoke in human history, AND transcendentally.
Perhaps all of history is His-story.
Perhaps He ever lives to make intercession for them..
Perhaps the One who spoke, still speaks.
Perhaps the Bible is not the “Book of the Month,” but rather the “Book of the Ages.”
Perhaps the “the word of God remains alive and active. [Perhaps it is still] Sharper than any double-edged sword, [perhaps] it [still] penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; [perhaps] it [still] judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4.12)
I know from our home group discussions, everyone frames their comments on their framework. The good news is that they see correction and direction for their own daily living a life as a believer. As the leader, I would love to be able to help them look at the Scripture as you described. So WHERE do I go to get the contextual and cultural commentary on that book in Scripture?
Hello Dennis, is it true that when Jeremiah spoke it was while Judah had its last kings Joiah,and through until King Zedkiah . The kingdom of Judah ended in the exile most of the people went to Babylon. Prophet was also a priest in the territory of Benjamin. Some say he was very lonely because of his message being so unpopular. Maybe these comments possibly facts will help the digging whether they be right or wrong facts or not. May we be richly blessed and rewarded for seeking with all of her heart the character given to Jeremiah and the Lord that he spoke about peace to all shalom.
Brett just a thought, who is popular today when you talk the true from alternate view. Not spiritualistic nor doctrinal, or even underpinning fear. Try telling someone you agree with what they are reading but need to emphasis the fact that one verse from 54 does not explain the other 53 it just sets the framework for further scrutinization.
Then again a prophet enjoyed no acknowledgement from his own people… Did Skip not remind us that to be loved by God is a tough lifestyle.
The word came, Skip I agree with your deduction of cultural influence. The question I have is how did the word come… Another human being, mental enlightenment, a thought trail that would not stop, a vision a dream etc.
How did people accept others when they claim the word came yet they cannot prove it.
Or is there a trust relationship between the prophet and the audience and how was this established.
This would tell me more of how the word came Esther than how it was affected by the lifestyle being addressed…
Of course it’s only the hungry or the desperate maybe they’re the same. I was only going from the text delivered two verses after that point maybe I misunderstood do we go that far into the chapter? Help me out if I’m wrong.
“Proof” is a very modern, Western idea. The prophet does not come with proof. He comes with conviction and the assumption that those who hear will be confronted by the holy God whom he represents. This does not always happen, but you don’t find the prophets “proving” that they carry God’s message. In that culture, there is an expectation of prophetic revelation, something we do NOT have in the modern world. Weitzman notes:
“ . . . prior to the modern world people had a clear sense that there were certain things they were not supposed to know because such transgressive understanding would lead them astray or violate the limits that God imposed on his creatures. We’ve lost that sense in the modern world. . . . The religious institutions that once reined in curiosity have lost their authority in Western secular culture. It is now widely assumed that the pursuit of wisdom should be limitless.” p. 82. Radical changes in culture have eroded the ancient views of truth. The result is a basic rejection of transmission by revelation.
I understand that we need to understand how the ancient Hebrews understood their LANGUAGE, history and culture but I don’t understand how I am supposed to understand what they THOUGHT.
Isn’t it obvious the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes and Yeshua all had the same language and culture but thought very differently about certain statements in the exact same Tanakh?
I do not even know how a modern day American thinks. Nine of the most intelligent, highly educated lawyers in America often diametrically split 5 – 4 in how they think about what the authors of the Constitution meant, – and it was only written about 240 years ago.
Nothing changes under the sun.
I think it leads to endless and fruitless speculation if we desire to try to know what any particular person or group THOUGHT about what was spoken or written in the Tanakh. The only thing that matters is to try to know what God meant when He revealed His word. And I thank Skip for helping us do that everyday.
Actually, it’s not that hard. First, the language isn’t used without context, so we look to see how the words are used in other circumstances and in the surrounding cultures. This helps us understand the worldview of the audience, since they employ the same words. So, I know what you mean by DEMOCRAT because I see how you use the word in other contexts and I examine the cultural use of the term. BUT–I also look at how you BEHAVE when you use the term. That tells me a lot about your thought process. e.g., the incident of the golden calf (bull) is really an Egyptian ritual and assumes certain thinking about how the gods interact through their representations. Then I compare this with the other cultures to see if there are similar patterns, similar words (cognates) and I can pretty much tell what the thoughts are behind the descriptions. Frankly, we do this all the time (not always accurately, I admit) in conversation with someone else, particularly someone from a different culture.
I’m 100% sold on a historical-grammatical perspective for exegeting scripture.
One common thread throughout scripture is the Spirit of YHVH. Which is the same today as it was then and as it will be in the future. I do believe that the writers of the text are delivering the Holy words of our King. To His people then as well as His people for future generations. They have relevant meaning then, today, and forever.
The bible isn’t just a historical document written to a particular generation. We’re told far too often that it’s to be remembered, and done forever and throughout our generations, to those that are His people. Abraham is just as much our forefather as he is to the 12 tribes. The promises made to him about future generations apply to us as well.
I agree totally that it’s a daunting task to seek to understand the language, time, culture, and people it was written to. But, it’s more than just a worthy endeavour, it’s a necessary one. We should also keep in mind, however, it wasn’t just given as instructions to just the descendants of Jacob. It’s meant to be instructions (Torah) for all His people throughout history and into future time. And we can trust it and take it for what it says. Yes, I’m one of those that think the serpent was in fact, a serpent. Not a metaphor. What that looked like, I don’t know. But, I think it was a serpent of some kind nonetheless.
Okay let’s get into the mindset and the message and purpose in Jeremiah 31:31 does that go too far into the book?
Join the discussion
Mark, Once again you have written with such great understanding and wisdom. I think that I probably agree one hundred percent on Today’s. The scriptures you used are so necessary to our walk with the Creator of the Universe and all that is in it. Thank you so much!
A comment on important things in Houston, TX this Sunday: yes, the Super Bowl, and in my daughter/son-in-law’s home in one hour two men who love the Lord will be here to join other Godly people to help a Crusade of People work, ten hours a day through Sunday, to police, and protect young girls, and others from harm and protection. These two will stay with us, we do not know them at all, but it is a little like an Underground World Effort. They have driven from Minnesota taking no pay, using their vacation time to help out here. The prostitution rings, etc. are thriving at events such as this. Many are coming to help out in an organized effort to prevent as much as they can. Please pray for all Christian Workers’ protection during this time.
Thank you for your comment.
I will absolutely hold you, and those working in concert with you in your efforts, in my prayers. May the Lord bless you and may He protect the innocent people that are potential victims. I wish I could be there to help.
I try to make things simple for myself: There are only 2 “cultures”, Hebrew and Greek.
We have been brought up as slaves of the latter.
The key to get into scripture is to become a sojourner and cross over.
The events / time in the Scriptures are circular (spiral- I know Skip, you have explained this to me!) and everything happens over and over again. Messiah came, we messed up, and He have to come again.
I think we are often not taking Biblical events / instructions literal and personal enough.
Science is only now slowly catching up with Gen 1:
From outside the Creation Event (Big Bang), looking in, only 5 and some (24 hour) days have passed. From inside the event, almost 14 billion years have passed. Space-time laws / hypothesis explains this.
Gen.1:2 describe the “cosmic inflation” was controlled by the Ruach Elohim; how the universe was in a state of “plasma” in a “the vacuum of space” (unformed and void); followed by the “dark ages” (380,000 years to about 150 million years after the Creation Event) when light was trapped by gravity; then the “be” of this light, etc, etc.
If this is how amazing the Pashad of Gen.1 is, just think about the Sod!
In my opinion, the “snake” was a Seraphim / Dragon. Similar to the other Arch Angels? So maybe not all dragons are bad / evil.