Tag Archives: interpretation

Ethical Interpretation of the Bible: Case Studies

creation, Genesis, imago Dei, interpretation, monotheism, science and religion,

This seventh and final installment of my response to a former student concerning my understanding of the authority of scripture will offer an extended case study of Genesis 1-2 to demonstrate how biblical interpretation benefits from careful attention to all three of the contexts involved in reading Scripture.

We begin for reasons that will soon become apparent with the literary context. An attentive reader of Genesis 1 and 2 will quickly recognize that they constitute two, distinct accounts. The world of Genesis 1 is watery; Genesis 2 begins with a world in which there are yet no sources to water the ground. The order of creation varies: in Genesis 1, God creates the components of the world in a hierarchical order, beginning with energy and substance and culminating in the creation of human kind in God’s likeness (plants, animals, human kind); Genesis 2 says nothing about the creation of the material world and God’s creative activity begins with Adam, after which God planted plants and then “formed out of the ground” all the animals and birds as potential partners for Adam (man, plants, animals, woman). As depicted in Genesis 1, God speaks the universe into existence; as depicted in Genesis 2, God “plants,” “forms,” and performs surgery.

So, which version tells the story ‘correctly’? Since the authors and editors of the book of Genesis were probably as capable of reading the text carefully, they almost certainly recognized the differences.  Yet, they still included both versions in the book of Genesis. Clearly, they meant for readers to take seriously both accounts and, just as clearly, they meant for readers to find significance, not in the differences in details concerning God’s “methods” or sequence, but in the fact that both accounts contribute to the truth.

If one asks what each account has to say about God and about humankind, their complementarity comes into view.  Genesis 1 depicts a transcendent God beyond the world, yet calling it into being, directing the forming universe like a conductor leading an orchestra. In contrast, Genesis 2 (and 3) depict(s) an imminent God who walks in the garden (in the cool of the day), who plants trees, who shapes clay. Apparently, when confronted by two creation accounts, the editors/compilers of Genesis did not see them as exercising competing truth claims about God’s nature and character.  Instead, they recognized that each spoke an important, but partial, truth.  The transcendent God is also with us (Immanuel).

Similarly, Genesis 1 portrays the creation of human kind as God’s crowning act and human beings as bearers of the “image and likeness” of God in the world.  According to Genesis 2, on the other hand, human beings are little more than animated clay figurines, living dirt balls. Indeed, the continuation of the account in Genesis 3 makes it clear that humans are dirt and they return to dirt, that God formed Adam/humankind (Hebr. adam) from the earth (adamah).  Are human beings noble creatures, created “a little lower than angels” (Psa 8:5) or fallible, transient mortals?  The best understanding, of course, balances human dignity and human frailty (cf. Ecc 3). We are like God, but we are not God.

A second context, the cultural context, can also shed light on the thrust of Genesis 1, in particular.  Since the late 19th century, scholars have recognized the close similarities between the Mesopotamian creation story known as the Enuma Elish and Genesis 1.  The earliest surviving manuscripts of Enuma Elish date to the 13th century BCE, and thus is probably older than Genesis 1. The likeliest explanation for the similarities is that, while exile in Babylon, the author of Genesis 1 became familiar with the Mesopotamian account of how Marduk created the world.  As important as the similarities may be (a watery chaos at the outset, seven steps of creation, etc.), the differences announce the theological intentions of the Genesis account. Chief among them are:

Enuma Elish                                                                Genesis 1

Marduk conquered Tiamat (chaos monster)               The one God spoke the cooperative world

in a battle between the gods                                       into being

Humankind made from the body of a rebel god        Humankind created in God’s image

            to serve the gods                                                         to represent God in the world

The gods are part of the universe                                Components of the universe are not deities

            (sun, moon, and stars, for example)

Thus, if one reads Genesis 1 with Enuma Elish in the background, as the first readers of Genesis would have done, one can hear in it assurances that the world is not in chaotic rebellion against God, that it does not rest on violence, that human beings are not the stuff of rebellion.  Put positively, Genesis 1 asserts that the one God created a good (see vv 3, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), indeed a very good (v 31) world. God placed in it human kind to bear God’s image and to exercise responsibility for it as God’s deputies, as it were.

Finally, of course, interpretation of the Bible requires setting it in relation to its contemporary context.  Regarding Genesis 1, this process immediately raises the specter of the relationship between faith and science. What is true?  Did God create the universe (in 7 ‘literal’ days) or did the universe we know come about through the Big Bang and evolutionary processes over the course of 13.8 billion years? The question involves a binary choice like those concerning the nature of God (transcendent or imminent) and human beings (noble or frail).  Close examination of Genesis 1 reveals that its interests relate to ‘who’ and ‘why’ (in the sense of purpose, not causation) questions and not at all to ‘how’ questions.

Remarkably, Genesis 1 describes God’s role in creation without reference to any physical act of God. Instead, in a series of phases, God wills elements of the world to be, observes that they have become, and evaluates them. According to Genesis 1, this state of nothing except potential becomes something through God’s performative word. In stark contrast to the creator gods of the world’s mythologies, the biblical God does nothing in this account except to express volition. The backbone of the Genesis account consists of a series of statements God makes about the components of the universe, in each case before these components have come into existence (vv. 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26). All but the last employ the peculiar Hebrew verb form, with no counterpart in English, known as a “jussive,” which expresses the speaker’s will in the third person. Significantly, Genesis 1 reports that the components of the cosmos came into being, not because God caused them in any physical manner, but because God willed, authorized, enabled, or required them to come into being. God did not participate in the physical process as the first cause and, thus, from within existence. Rather, to employ Paul Tillich’s phrase, God was and is “the Ground of Being,” the will upon which beings can exist.

In contrast to the creation of light, in which case God occasioned its existence merely by expressing the wish that it exist, five moments of creation involve creaturely agency as the direct means of creation through the emergence of higher order from lower. The waters under the firmament “gather themselves together” (yiqqāwû) and the dry land “appears” (tērā’eh) in response to God’s wish (v 9). God authorizes the earth to cause (tadšē’) the herbage and trees to sprout (v 11). Similarly, the waters are to “teem” (yišrĕṣû) with life (v 20), and the earth is to “bring forth” (tôṣē’) land life in its various kinds (v. 24). John Polkinghorne (“Scripture and an Evolving Creation,” 165) calls attention to the descriptions of the creative agency of natural processes in parallel with statements that God “made” components of the world (vv 11, 20–21, and 24–25). Taken together, vv 20–21 offer an instructive amplification of the process. The author of Gen 1 has God first express the will for the existence of aquatic and avian life (v 20), then specifies that God created (bārā’) the giant sea creatures (v 21), and finally “blessed” all this life by endowing them with the capacity for pro-creation and enjoining them to fill their habitats with life (v 22). This capacity extends creaturely agency to subsequent generations of living things. Summarizing wonder at this cooperation between God and God’s creation, the nineteenth-century theologians Charles Kingsley and Frederick Temple reacted to Darwin by observing that God cleverly created a world in which “creatures would make themselves” (cited in Polkinghorn, 169).

Finally, I will offer some “principles” in summary but in no ranking:

  • It is very important to distinguish between the human and the divine components of the Bible.
  • It can be misleading to absolutize a specific passage of scripture.  The context of the whole of God’s revelation, especially in Jesus Christ, is much more revelatory and authoritative. Here it is important to pay attention to what a text says explicitly, but also to what a text does not say.
  • The virtue of humility is a chief desideratum for biblical interpreters.
  • Always operate with transparent motives, logical consistency, and coherency.  Do not pick choose among texts. Do not employ purely subjective criteria.
  • Takes care not to canonize either ancient culture or contemporary culture. We, too, will almost certainly one day be seen as having been bound to our culture and blinded to God’s direction.
  • Scripture is both fixed and living.  No one in my neighborhood owns an ox, so no one is likely to call on me to help get an ox out of a ditch, but all manner of opportunities to help another human being out of difficulties present themselves almost daily. Does the biblical prescription concerning oxen pertain to cars with flat tires.  Paul said that the letter kills while the spirit gives life.
  • Attention to trajectories can be helpful. Deuteronomy 14-15 call upon Israelites periodically to release slaves because God once delivered them from slavery.  I wish the text had drawn the logical conclusion that a God who delivers slaves does not want those delivered slaves to turn around and enslave others. It did not, however. Paul, who could write that in Christ there is neither “slave nor free,” could not bring himself to insist to Philemon, therefore, that it is simply incompatible for a Christian to own another person.  I wish that Paul had done so, but he did not.  Nonetheless, the trajectory is clear.  In the light of Exodus and Easter, slavery is contrary to God’s character and will. The Bible never quite gets to this explicit statement.  On this and many other issues, the contemporary interpreter of scripture can trace the direction in which the Bible points and extend it further, heralding love, life, and liberty!

The Cultural Context of Scripture

creation, family, Genesis, imago Dei, interpretation, revelation, women, ,

This, the fourth installment in my response to a former student, turns attention to the second axiom that can provide a guardrail against reading into Scripture our own preferences, namely careful attention to the three contexts against which any biblical passage should be read: the cultural context it reflects, the literary context in which it is situated, and the cultural context of its reader. Scripture is culturally and historically rooted. The individuals who composed the various sections of the Bible quite naturally reflected the worldviews, the cultural practices, the societal norms, the crises, etc. of the times in which they lived. Interpreters of scripture should not automatically assume that these cultural and historical contexts, in themselves, convey any information concerning the will or character of God. Often such cultural artefacts trouble contemporary readers of the scripture. If, however, we recognize them as such, we can forgive the ancients for being ancients. (One day our descendants will look back on us with horror, or, if we’re lucky, pity.) Examples abound.

  • The author of Genesis 1 shared with the Egyptians, the Assyrians, and the Babylonians (remember that Abraham came originally from Ur in Mesopotamia) a cosmology that envisioned a solid dome suspended above the earth, separating the space beneath it from the waters above (Gen 1:6-8).  The Hebrew word translated “firmament” in the KJV (raqiya`) comes from the world of the metal-smith and means “a thing hammered into a shape.” The ancients had no concepts of the vast expanse of space, of the difference between stars, planets, and moons, or of a solar system. The Bible does not want to tell us to replace what we know today with ancient ideas.  Instead, with the author of Genesis 1, we can assert that the existent universe (regardless of its shape) is God’s good creation.
  • The ancient Israelites lived in the midst of cultures that practiced polygamy. It was a given, so the Israelites practiced polygamy. God did not endorse the practice. God did not inspire or require them to do so. Neither, however, as far as the Bible records, did God prohibit the practice until, arguably, the New Testament era. Consequently, we should regard biblical polygamy as a cultural artefact, not a vital component of the scriptural witness.
  • For the ancient Israelite, the death of a man before he could father children posed a compound threat. He would be without memory, his heritage would revert to another line of the family, and his wife would be without means of support. They found a solution, so-called levirate marriage, in which a younger brother of the deceased married the widow and the first child conceived in that marriage was considered the child of the deceased in a legal fiction. Even those who claim to interpret the Bible “literally” recognize the culture-bound nature of this practice and the texts that call for it (Deut 25:5-10).
  • Patriarchy functions as a substrate in both Testaments because it characterized the cultures of the world in which Israel and later the Church came into existence. As early as Genesis, however, the Bible undercuts the idea that gender hierarchy conforms to God’s will. God created humankind in God’s image; both male and female reflect God’s likeness (Gen 1:26-27).  According to the account of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib, God did so because God recognized that Adam was alone.  God decided to make Adam a nigdo (Gen 2:18, 20), a unique Hebrew word comprising a preposition that means “opposite, over against” with a pronoun that means “him/his” and that functions grammatically here as a noun.  Although many translations render it “helper,” which hints at a secondary or subservient role, it ‘literally’ means “his opposite” or “his counterpart.” In fact, the Genesis 2 account explains that, because of the way God created Eve, a man leaves his parental home and “cleaves” to his wife – not the other way around. A range of other texts about prominent women in the Hebrew Bible contribute to a critique of the notion that gender hierarchy represents God’s intention:  Deborah, Jael, Huldah, etc.
  • Examples of culture-boundedness appear in the New Testament, too, and one of the clearest examples also reflects a patriarchal substrate. The author of 1 Tim 2:8-12 wrote:

I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; also that women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion. Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. (RSV)

Perhaps the first thing one should note in this text involves the fact that, as discussed in the first installment of this blog series concerning 1 Cor 7:25-26, the author reports his own position and practice:  “I desire,” “I permit.” He makes no claim to be proclaiming a divine mandate.  Second, as mentioned in the immediately preceding installment, the text notably expresses as much concern for women’s appearance as it does for their silence. The description of a well-dressed and well-coiffed woman speaking before a group of men calls to mind the hetairai or “courtesans” known in the Hellenistic Mediterranean world. Paul elsewhere expressed concern that Hellenistic converts who came from unsavory backgrounds (“And such were some of you,” 1 Cor 6:11, RSV) take care to distance themselves from their pasts. In our culture, expensive clothing, fashionable hairstyles, pearl necklaces, and rhetorical skill do not encode “courtesan,” although we might agree with Paul that Christians who wish to represent a holy God to the world may wisely give some attention to appearances.  Third, as I will discuss at greater length in the next installment, 1 Tim 2:8-12 should also be read in the literary context of the entirety of scripture, including Paul’s statement concerning the equality in Christ of Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female (Gen 3:28).

While, in many cases, we should not and cannot replicate the assumptions and practices that constitute the background for many biblical texts, the fact that ancient culture shines through biblical texts does not negate their capacity to become Word of God for us. They are not, or need not be, merely historical artefacts.  Instead, interpreting scripture well requires us to undertake ‘cultural translation,’ as it were. If we transpose the thrust of a given passage into a comparable contemporary context, we will find that an insight into God’s will and character or a principle for human conduct sounds across the ages.