Tag Archives: Biblical interpretation

Victims of our worldview

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Feeling particularly uninspired, I thought I’d share an article that I found interesting, which combines two ideas we’ve looked at recently:

  • how our worldview affects our interpretation of the Bible
  • the need to read the Bible looking for broad themes, rather than isolating individual passages

Found over at The Relentless Monk, the article is called “Are We ALL victims of our worldview?”

A few interesting quotes (for those lacking the time or patience to read the article):

  • “The problem is that we are all trapped in our presuppositions. Had my friend, or I, or the fundamentalist pastor down the street, been born in a different culture with different presuppositions about how the world works, what we see as the ‘plain meaning’ of anything would be different.”
  • “As I thought more about it, I realized that my friend was assuming that how he understood the text was, in fact, the way the author intended the text to be understood. From his perspective, things like symbolism, repetition, and literary structure were secondary, and few other people would notice them. He was assuming that what he saw as the plain meaning of the text was, in fact, it’s meaning. He was saying what we all say—that his presuppositions are the right ones.” (author’s emphasis)
  • “At the same time, however, my western worldview requires that what I believe be logical and consistent, and, in a general way, make sense.” (author’s emphasis)
  • “As I have learned more about the Bible, I have identified and rejected many of my past preconceptions, but I cannot imagine not holding Scripture to some standard of inherent logic. Is that logic some universal aspect of how humans understand truth, or is it, too, just a transient characteristic of my culture that is so ingrained that I will never be able to get out from under it?”

Interesting thoughts. Tell me what you think.

Finding the Wisdom in Wisdom Literature

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Having effectively quashed all discussion on this topic, I’ll move forward. In the general discussion of how to interpret the Bible, interpretation of wisdom literature warrants special attention. It’s just not as straightforward as some would make it out to be. When was the last time you heard a sermon on the evils of winking? (Prov 6:13; 10:10; 16:30) Read a tract on the dangers of sleep? (Prov 6:4-11; 20:13; 24:33-34) Posted on your Facebook wall the wonderful news that money is the answer to everything? (Eccl 10:19)

Wisdom literature requires special handling. I shared a bit yesterday from Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart. Let me this thought from Leland Ryken (with his son Philip and with James Wilhoit):

Because the wisdom writers primarily observe life, their utterances are not phrased with the same kind of divinge authority that the statements of the prophets have. The prophets speak the voice of God to people. The Bible’s wisdom teachers speak a word of testimony and observation to their fellow humans. (Ryken’s Bible Handbook, p. 271)

What we come down to is this: it seems difficult if not impossible to take every word of wisdom literature as having proceeded from the mouth of God himself. We have the long human speeches in Job, the contrasting viewpoints in Ecclesiastes, the elements in Proverbs and Psalms that seem to espouse viewpoints different from those provided in other biblical books. Can an inspired book contain human teachings? How do we separate them out from the divine proclamations?

In other words, how are we supposed to read wisdom literature?

Here’s my proposal, open for discussion and debate: I’m satisfied with seeing wisdom literature as a faithful telling of the reflections of godly men on God’s truths. Their place within the canon leads me to give them a weight that other human writings don’t have, but their humanness makes me evaluate every teaching in light of the rest of Scripture.

Is that fair?

Feeling foolish about wisdom literature

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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

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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

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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.