{"id":3322,"date":"2013-02-02T00:31:03","date_gmt":"2013-02-02T08:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=3322"},"modified":"2013-02-02T00:32:30","modified_gmt":"2013-02-02T08:32:30","slug":"culture-and-the-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2013\/02\/02\/culture-and-the-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture and the Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"

God is interested in communicating to his people and he chose to do so through literature. And he chose to do it through a specific culture. Sometimes, that culture is very, very alien and hard to comprehend. Consider this peculiar passage from Genesis:<\/p>\n

\nHe also said to him, \u201cI am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.\u201d <\/p>\n

But Abram said, \u201cSovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?\u201d <\/p>\n

So the LORD said to him, \u201cBring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.\u201d <\/p>\n

Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11\u00a0Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. <\/p>\n

As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13\u00a0Then the LORD said to him, \u201cKnow for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.\u201d <\/p>\n

When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18\u00a0On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, \u201cTo your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates\u201419\u00a0the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, 20\u00a0Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, 21\u00a0Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.\u201d (Genesis 15:7-21)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thus, when Abraham asks in Genesis 15, \u201chow do I know I\u2019ll inherit this land\u201d, God answers his question in a way that makes no sense to modern readers: he tells Abraham to split some animals in half and lay them in parallel rows. Then, God appears as a smoking firepot walking between the animal pieces.<\/p>\n

\tA modern reader will look at this and go “huh?”<\/p>\n

\tBut for the original readers living in ancient Israel, it made perfect sense. You see, Abraham had asked for a guarantee, and what God did was sign a contract. Take a look at Jeremiah 34:18-19:<\/p>\n

The men who have violated my covenant and have not fulfilled the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will treat like the calf they cut in two and then walked between its pieces. The leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the court officials, the priests and all the people of the land who walked between the pieces of the calf…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sometimes the culture shock from reading the Bible hits us square in the face and we’re forced to confront the alien situation. Too often, the way we confront it is to duck and move on–nothing to see here–and just shrug and forget about it. Other times we see a situation in the Bible and we interpret it through the lens of our own culture and thus entirely misunderstand the point. I leave you with just a few things to consider when you read the Bible:<\/p>\n

1. Monarchy is pretty much the norm in the Bible, along with tyranies of various sorts. Western democratic ways of governing are completely alien. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the President of the United States is the equivalent of a monarch or emperor. When the Bible talks about obeying the king, the closest thing in the U.S. that matches that is the Constitution. “We the people” are the actual source of power and governing; our elected representatives are just that: our servants who work for us. We can criticize and fire them if we feel like it.<\/p>\n

2. There is no concept of the separation of powers in the Bible. The executive, legislative and judicial branches are usually all embodied in a single individual. For instance, we call Deborah, Samson and Gideon, for example “judges” and speak about the “Book of Judges.” The English word “judge” is actually a poor translation, though now traditional. Instead, think of them as warlords, like the tribal warlords in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

3. Cities of Refuge for those guilty of killing someone to flee to; avenger of blood hunting them down to kill them in vengeance. There is no such thing as police, jails, or juries. Instead, there was blood vengence. Think the Hatfields and the McCoys, or rival gangs. Or the classic line from the movie, Princess Bride<\/em>: “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”<\/p>\n

4. Concepts of marriage and sexual relations are a bit different in the Bible. Polygamy is common and is never prohibited. There are such things as “concubines” which are secondary wives, primarily used for sex. (see Exodus 21). If a man dies childless, his brother or next closest relative was obligated to marry the widow and make babies in order to carry on the dead man’s name.<\/p>\n

These are merely a few of the major cultural differences between 21st century America and ancient Israel. Consider: the people in the Old Testament were mostly either farmers or shepherds. Very few modern Americans live or work on farms today. During the time of Saul, we witness Israelite culture transitioning from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. The Bible predates the industrial revolution by thousands of years. Clocks, the necessity of precision in measurement were all unknown concepts to the people of the Bible. There comprehension of the workings of the universe were very limited. Only after about 600 BC was it common knowledge that the Earth was a sphere. No one knew about electricity. Travel was on foot, by carriage, or on the backs of animals. Communication was slow. <\/p>\n

Of course most people reading the Bible today understand these things; but it’s very easy to forget and to impose our modern sensibilities, concepts and values. Additionally, consider that the questions you have, the issues that are vital to you, may not at all be what troubled and concerned the authors of the Bible, or their original audience. In fact, the Bible may not answer your questions at all. The Bible is God’s sufficient<\/em> revelation to the human race. It is not his complete<\/em> revelation to it. If you want to know how to fix your car or install a new printer, to pick obvious things, you’ll have to look for the answers elsewhere. Likewise, if you want to know what Jesus looked like, you have to accept the fact that the people at the time didn’t care. They had other questions instead.<\/p>\n

Send to Kindle<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

God is interested in communicating to his people and he chose to do so through literature. And he chose to do it through a specific culture. Sometimes, that culture is very, very alien and hard to comprehend. Consider this peculiar … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,3,15,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3322"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3322"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3324,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3322\/revisions\/3324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}