Category Archives: particularism

The Contemporary Context of Scripture

This sixth installment of my response to a beloved former student’s question concerning the authority of Scripture deals with the third context in which one must set Scripture in order to hear God’s Word in the words. In addition to the cultural context that produced the text and literary context in which one finds the words, one must also attend to the contemporary context in which readers find themselves.  The two-fold challenge involves avoiding the danger of assuming that the intellectual and cultural world of the Bible corresponds perfectly to contemporary circumstances, on the one hand, and failing to allow the biblical perspective the opportunity to critique modern assumptions, on the other.

Often, the problem manifests itself in the supposed conflict between biblical faith and modern science.  The authors did not have, could not even anticipate, and therefore could not incorporate into their writings, the vast knowledge about the universe revealed to us by modern science. The Bible nowhere claims that it reveals the summation of knowledge about the world. But, then, nothing in the Bible indicates that its authors wished to give instruction in mathematics, biology, chemistry, geography, anthropology, physics, etc. Sometimes the Bible reflects understandings of these aspects of reality that are manifestly wrong. The ancient Israelites were not good mathematicians.  According to the biblical account of the construction and furnishings of Solomon’s temple, Solomon “made the molten sea; it was round, ten cubits from brim to brim, and five cubits high, and a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference” (1 Kgs 7:23 = 2Chron 4:2-5).  Using the formula c=πd (circumference equals π times the diameter) results in a value of 3. for π (30= π10, 30/10 = π).  The ancient Israelites were not good zoologists.  “You may eat all clean birds. But these are the ones which you shall not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the osprey…the hoopoe and the bat” (Deut 14:11-18 par. Lev 11:13-19, RSV). Bats are mammals, not birds. The ancient Israelites were not good anthropologists. The so-called “Table of Nations” in Genesis 10 lists the descendants of Noah, in the biblical view the ancestor of every human being after him, through his three sons.  Japheth became the ancestor of “the coastland peoples” along the southern and eastern Mediterranean; Ham became the ancestor of the peoples of northern Africa; and Shem became the ancestors of the Semitic peoples, including the Israelites, the Aramaeans, and the Mesopotamians. The Table of Nations does not name the ancestors of the northern Europeans, the Asians, the aboriginal Australians, or the aboriginal Americans – because the author of the Table of Nations knew only the Fertile Crescent.

This circumstance is not a problem for believers unless they are unwilling to “harmonize” the ancient and the modern, so to speak.  The Bible intends to tell the story of God’s relationship with a community of faith, not to teach science. Worldviews change continually as people acquire more information and understanding. I can understand that the ancient Israelites could not compute π; the decimal point had not yet been invented. Nonetheless, I do not want to fly in an airplane designed using biblical math.

The need to harmonize modern and ancient worldviews does not always apply, however. On many questions, especially regarding matters of wisdom, faith, and righteousness (cf. 2 Tim 3:15-16), the worldviews of ancient Israel and the early church stand against modern understandings and practices.  For example, the world that produced the Bible knew nothing of modern hyper-individualism.  Instead, Scripture reflects the high cultural value placed on “the people of God” and “the body of Christ.”  The Scripture that speaks well of only three (David, Hezekiah, and Josiah) out of all the kings of Israel and Judah and that asserts “Jesus is Lord!” (in contrast to the confession of loyalty to the emperor “Caesar is Lord!”) cannot be reconciled with Christian nationalism.  The Bible that commissions God’s people to be “light” to the world and that calls for loving others, even Samaritans and those who hate us, as we love ourselves, does not support protectionism, isolationism, or any actions that manifest lack of empathy – personally, communally, or nationally.

The supposed conflict between the faith and science surfaces especially with regard to the Bible’s creation accounts and viewpoints on cosmology and evolution. The situation provides an opportunity for a couple of case studies that will demonstrate how biblical interpretation benefits from careful attention to all three of the contexts involved in reading Scripture.  These case studies will constitute the final installment of this series.

The Literary Context of Scripture

This fifth installment in my response to a former student will discuss the second context that good biblical interpretation must take into account.  In addition to the cultural context that produced scripture, a given passage of scripture must be understood in terms of is literary context beginning with its immediate surroundings and extending to the entirety of Scripture. The failure to do so will certainly result in misinterpretation or the absolutization of a given text over against other texts in Scripture and contrary to the tenor of Scripture as a whole. Often this sort of privileging one text over others betrays inconsistency, incoherence, and bias on the part of the interpreter. In other words, observance of the literary context of scripture requires criteria applicable across Scripture that take seriously all Scripture as authoritative without rigidity.

A few examples should demonstrate the importance of this principle. The first installment of this series has already discussed the case of Job’s friends, whose speeches addressed to Job sound orthodox and pious, except that in the context of the whole book of Job, they stand under God’s negative evaluation expressed at the end of the book (Job 42:5). Yes, often we have to read to the end if we want to understand the message of a biblical book.  Memory verses can mislead.

The case of Ezra’s decree that Jewish men in post-exilic Judah must divorce their foreign wives and disown any (entirely innocent!) children that resulted from the union illustrates the need for setting a given text in the context of the whole Bible. Two issues intertwine here: divorce and particularism. Upon returning to Yehud (Judah) with the mandate of the Persian King Artaxerxes to regulate religious affairs there (Ezr 7:25-26), Ezra, whose priestly pedigree traced all the way back to Aaron (7:1-5) discovered that some among the populace had “not separated themselves from the people of the lands with their abomination,” but had intermarried with “Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites” (9:1-2, RSV). The discovery prompted Ezra to offer a lengthy prayer of confession (9:3-15), in which he alluded to Deut 7:1-5. The Deuteronomy text prohibits Israelites from intermarrying with a list of peoples closely aligned with the list in Ezr 9:1-2 suggesting that the motivating factor for Ezra was adherence to Deuteronomy.

Several factors argue against claiming Ezra’s decision as a precedent with respect to divorce, and certainly not to mass divorce. There is reason to question whether Ezra’s efforts to honor Deut 7:1-5 may not have violated Deut 24:1.  To be sure, Deuteronomy permits a man to divorce his wife “if … she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her….” In the rabbinical debate over the precise connotations of “indecency,” the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel held contrasting positions. Shammai argued that “A man may not divorce his wife unless he has found her guilty of sexual misconduct…,” while Hillel maintained that “(He may dismiss her) even if she has merely spoiled his meal….” (Sifre, Piska 269). Nothing in the Ezra case suggests that the wives divorced were guilty of sexual misconduct. Nothing suggests that the husbands involved wanted to divorce their wives for any reason, including their cooking! Of course, Christian readers of Ezra 9-10 will also want to include the New Testament as context. Probably in reference to Deuteronomy 24, Jesus prohibits a man from divorcing his wife “except on grounds of unchastity” (Matt 5:32; 19:9, RSV). Luke’s version omits the exception (16:18).  Paul warns against being “unequally yoked” (2 Cor 6:14-18), but he does not require divorce, which would contradict the teachings of Jesus.

Similarly, the particularism evident in Ezra’s abhorrence of intermarriage with non-Jews presents its own difficulties.  First, by Ezra’s day many of the peoples listed in Deuteronomy 7 and Ezra 9 no longer survived as identifiable people groups. Second, Deuteronomy expresses an interest in protecting religious purity, not ethnic identity. Third, the book of Ezra does not record that God issued a directive to Ezra that he should require 84 men (10:18-43) to turn their backs on their wives and children. Instead, Ezra himself drew an inference from scripture that may not have been entirely apt. Fourth, and most importantly, Ezra relied on a single text instead of the broader testimony of Scripture. Joshua 9 records the incorporation of the Gibeonites into the covenant people.  Tamar and Rahab were Canaanites, Ruth was a Moabite, and Bathsheba was a Hittite, yet all were in the direct lineage of David, and thus of Jesus (Matt 1:3, 5, 6). Further, Ezra failed to take into account the promise stated in Isa 56:3: “Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people.’”

Isaiah 56 figures prominently in another example of the need to put scripture in the context of scripture. Deuteronomy 23:1 explicitly prohibits eunuchs from entering “the assembly of the Lord.” Yet, in a later time, Isa 56:4-5 promises, not only foreigners (see above), but also faithful eunuchs the contrary: “For thus says the Lord: ‘To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off.’” Again, Christian interpreters of will want to put these texts in context with the New Testament.  Acts 8:26-40 records the account of Philip’s encounter with an Ethiopian eunuch – thus, both a foreigner and a eunuch – on the Jerusalem-Gaza road, whom ironically Philip found reading from the book of Isaiah. In response to the eunuch’s question, Philip explained “the good news of Jesus” and the eunuch asked immediately to be baptized. So, Philip baptized him (vv 36-38). Careful readers of the Bible do not absolutize single texts. The words of the Bible can become the Word of God when we pay wise attention to their context in “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).

A Revealed People

Eph 3:1-20

A sermon preached for Ginter Park Baptist Church, Richmond VA, 1/10/2021

Up a Couple of Steps (Isa 2:1-5)

A sermon preached at Ginter Park Baptist Church, Richmond VA 12/1/19

Go to Shiloh (Jer 7:12)

“Do not trust deceptive words, saying ‘The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these [stones]’.”  Jer 7:4, my translation

Sometime in the outgoing seventh century BCE, God sent Jeremiah to the temple in Jerusalem to warn the Judeans that, unless they changed their behavior, God would unleash the Babylonians to conquer. The venue for Jeremiah’s message proved to be as significant as the words themselves. Early in the sermon Jeremiah apparently quoted a Continue reading Go to Shiloh (Jer 7:12)

Too Eager to Exclude

Ezra 9:1

The idea of divine election, while central to the biblical witness, can be dangerous if misunderstood.  Political rhetoric this election cycle has called attention to the undercurrent of exclusionary sentiment flowing throughout the U.S. population.  Events abroad surrounding the Syrian refugee crisis attest to the universal character of this sentiment.  Everyone, even believers, it seems, wants to exclude someone from access to something and somewhere.

Continue reading Too Eager to Exclude