Category Archives: Biblical interpretation

Feeling foolish about wisdom literature

7 Replies

Counting on the Kitchen to be a safe place for honest reflection, I’m going to share something I feel a bit foolish about. I’m troubled by wisdom literature.

I don’t know what to do with it. I’ve pointed out before that I don’t think reading every line as a commandment from God works. We pick out a command here or there to apply, but we skip the ones that make us uncomfortable. We cite this truism or that truism, but we avoid the ones that, well, just don’t seem true.

Interestingly enough, Song of Solomon bothers me less than other books, partly because there isn’t much there that we extract and try to apply as law. Job gives us a narrative, which helps our Western minds, and points to the end of the book as the part where the real truths are found. (Though that doesn’t stop us from using a quote here or there if it furthers an argument)

Ecclesiastes is somewhat the same way; it seems to be a progression towards real understanding at the end, although divine truths are mixed in with the human elements along the way.

What about Proverbs? Even as we work our way through all of the literary devices (hyperbole, synecdoche and all of those other words we learned in English class), we still detect a real humanness to some of what’s said.

What about Psalms? Some of the Psalms are easy, but some are quite difficult. An obvious example are the imprecatory psalms, where the writer calls down curses on his enemies. Other psalms seem to present a “good people get good things, bad people get bad things” theology that doesn’t fit with other parts of the Bible (like the book of Job!). Yet the Psalms are quoted heavily in the New Testament; Peter even says that Psalm 2 was spoken by the Holy Spirit through David! (Acts 4:25)

So how should we read wisdom literature? How do we understand “inspiration” as applied to such books? How do we know when we’re hearing the voice of God and when we’re hearing the voice of man?

The Bible doesn’t play by our rules

9 Replies

Continuing yesterday’s discussion, I need to emphasize that I’m NOT (edit, 11:55 a.m.) denying the historical nature of the Bible. I’m saying that the Bible was written differently than we might expect or even want.

Here’s why:

  1. The Bible wasn’t written to record history. I know I’ve said that, but it needs to be emphasized. Look at the book of Genesis. We blow through centuries of the world’s existence, then come to a screeching halt when we get to Abraham. We stroll through his life and that of the next few generations. Then in Exodus we blow by several centuries before stopping again at Moses. It’s not the story of everyone; it’s the story of certain people that shaped the formation of the nation of Israel.
    At first glance, the stories from the books of Samuel and the books of Kings are repeated in the books of Chronicles. But they’re not. The first four books were written to a nation in exile, explaining how they ended up in exile. The last two were written to a nation that was rebuilding. Chronicles emphasizes the covenant and the temple, because the people were being called to rally around those two elements. It’s not just history about the different kings. It’s the history that’s needed to teach.
  2. The Bible was written in a way that fit its original context. It wasn’t written for Westerners. It wasn’t written to satisfy the modern mind. It doesn’t treat facts the way we treat them. Numbers are more symbolic than they are quantitative. When one writer says 7000 were killed and another says 70,000, we say it’s an inaccuracy. They don’t see it that way. The 7 is symbolic as are the thousands. Lots of people were killed in an impressive victory (perfect, even, with the numeric symbolism).
  3. The Bible expresses things within the understanding of its readers. We know that the sun doesn’t really rise nor set. The ancient readers didn’t know that. We know the earth doesn’t have four corners; they weren’t aware of that. Much has been made of people finding scientific clues in the Bible, but I think that’s a misguided effort. God wasn’t teaching them natural science. He was teaching them how to live according to His covenant.

Others express these concepts much better than I. I lay them out to show my current understanding of inspiration and revelation, that they intentionally occurred within human contexts, adapting themselves to those contexts. When we try to force them to play by the rules of our context, we find that they don’t always oblige.

When the Bible doesn’t meet our expectations

16 Replies

Getting back to some of our discussions of late, I want to talk a bit more of our expectations of the Bible. Included in that, I guess, are our expectations of inspiration or of the results of inspiration.

One common view is that every detail mentioned in the Bible must be precise or the Bible can’t be considered to be an inspired book. One verse that fuels that view is Matthew 5:18: “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” In the language of the King James, Jesus says that jots and tittles are important, that every stroke of the Law must remain unchanged. (In my experience, this is a key passage for King James Onlyists, who argue that every word must remain unchanged. None of them tell me why that doesn’t apply to the Tyndale version or the Bishops’ Bible; apparently version inspiration skipped from the Textus Receptus to the KJV)

From this stems the view that every scientific fact mentioned in the Bible must be 100% true, every historical detail must be 100% accurate, every geographical description must be 100% precise.

In my view, this is an attempt to make the Bible something that it never declares itself to be nor was intended to be. God wasn’t trying to teach ancient man modern science. Jesus can call the mustard seed the smallest of all seeds without obliging Christians to argue with the scientists who can point to numerous smaller seeds. Jesus was speaking within what those people knew and understood.

In the same way, because the thrust of the Bible was not to provide a historical record but was instead to teach religious truths, we can have varying accounts of the same incident. Take, for example, the description of the setting of one of Jesus’ miracles, as seen in three different gospels:

“And as they went out of Jericho, a great crowd followed him. And behold, there were two blind men sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was passing by, they cried out, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!”” (Matthew 20:29–30)

“And they came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”” (Mark 10:46–47)

“As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”” (Luke 18:35–38)

If we just read these three accounts as they are, we have to deal with some interesting things. Just on the location and number of blind men, we get no agreement:

Matthew: Leaving Jerusalem, two blind men
Mark: Leaving Jerusalem, one blind man
Luke: Entering Jerusalem, one blind man

If we want to force the Bible to be precise in every detail, then we have to do some gymnastics here. Maybe Jesus was entering new Jericho as he left old Jericho (yes, I’ve heard that one argued). Maybe there were two men, but Mark and Luke just chose to speak of one of them. Maybe these are three separate incidents in which almost the exact same thing happened.

Or maybe we need to accept that the intent of Matthew, Mark and Luke wasn’t to write a history book or a biography, but a gospel. Maybe we need to adjust our expectations of the Bible and its content.

Inspiration, inerrancy, infallibility

20 Replies

As much as I hate to validate a tangent, the comment thread from yesterday touched on something important. Interestingly enough, Patrick Mead has been writing on the same subject: how should we understand inspiration?

Patrick explains in yesterday’s post:

When I was a boy and up until I was in my late 20s I only heard one version of how we got our Bibles. I was told that every single word came directly from the mouth of God (via the Holy Spirit). There was no input from the human writers. They were merely stenographers for the Spirit. As an illustration of this my father and other ministers would bring up the story of Balaam’s donkey. “God didn’t just give that donkey an idea and let him express it in his own words” they would say. And they said that the exact same mechanism was involved in writing the Bibles – Jeremiah, Peter, Paul, and Amos all wrote down what they were told to write, word for word.

I have talked with many people who think that the Bible was dictated, word for word, by the Holy Spirit. Any perceived humanness is the Spirit’s attempt to make the Bible more understandable, they say.

Patrick does a good job of reminding us that this view of the Bible arose with fundamentalism in the 19th century. It is a child of modernism, an attempt to make the Bible fit the scientific method.

So what do we expect of this holy book? If it is inspired, what does that mean? Terms get tossed around like inerrancy and literality. Patrick describes the Chicago Statement on inerrancy:

It says, in part, “Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individuals’ lives.” It goes on to state that the Bible’s words came directly from God and are, therefore, completely moral and without error in everything it affirms – historically, scientifically, and theologically.

Is that what inspired means? Does every detail in the Bible have to be correct for the Bible to be inspired? I have some thoughts on the subject, but I’d like to hear yours. How much room for “human error” is there in the text of the Bible?

Misrepresenting the Bible (2)

13 Replies

Yesterday we had an interesting discussion based on some thoughts about people quoting biblical interpretations as if they were biblical quotes. Once we are one step removed from the text, we use that interpretation as a launching point for new interpretations.

  • “Since the Bible says the Old Testament was nailed to the cross, we know that…”
  • “Given that the Bible says Christians must obey all laws, then…”
  • “Seeing that the Bible has commanded us to take up a collection every Sunday…”

Maybe part of the solution is what we talked about last week, spending more time reading God’s Word and less time expounding on it. We’ve got to get back to the original starting point… even if we end up at the same place!

  • “Colossians says that the written code that was against us was nailed to the cross. I think that’s talking about the Old Testament, so…”
  • “Paul talks about submitting to the authorities. Part of how we do that is by obeying the laws those authorities create. Therefore…”
  • “Paul talked to the Corinthians about setting aside money each week as a collection for the church in Jerusalem. This would seem to mean that we should also have an offering each week. That’s why…”

As Travis pointed out, this would seem a bit wishy washy to some. People want the preacher to speak with authority. I disagree with them. I want God’s Word to speak with authority. I will do my best to help people understand what that authoritative word has to say, but I want them to be aware that I am a fallible expositor of that word. (None of my regular readers needs to be reminded of that!)

Do you have better suggestions? How can we avoid imposing our interpretations on the text itself?