Anthropology talks about a concept called tempocentrism, the belief that your own time represents the norm and that all other times are to be judged by it. It’s never easy to escape the trap of tempocentrism. To put it bluntly, we think we’re smarter than everyone else that’s ever lived.

Part of that, I guess, is the influence that evolutionary concepts have on us. We believe that society is progressing, moving forward, growing far beyond what it used to be. Therefore, our ideas are inherently better than those of people from other times.

It’s not easy to reconcile this view with a high view of Scripture. If you approach the Bible tempocentrically, you either have to believe that God revealed things to the ancients that they had no hope of understanding or you have to think that some of the things expressed in the Bible are just wrong. The liberalism of the 19th and 20th century held to the latter of those views; they sought to sort through the “mythology” in the the Bible to find the truth. This led to the “search for the historical Jesus,” among other quixotic quests.

Contemplation of Jewish cosmology led me to all of this. To put it bluntly, the Jews believed in an active spirit world which expressed itself in the world we know. Spirits, demons, angels, false gods… these beings existed and affected our world. When God led the Israelites out of Egypt, he triumphed not only over Pharaoah, but over Pharaoh’s gods as well. (Exodus 12:12) Witchcraft was forbidden, not because there was no truth to it, but because it involved dealing with ungodly powers. When Daniel was visited by an angel, in response to his prayer, the angel said that he had been delayed “by the prince of Persia.” (Daniel 10:13) Paul says that, by eating food sacrificed to other gods, Christians can enter into fellowship with demons. (1 Corinthian 10:20–21)

All of these things, and many more, reflect a view of the world that is far different from the modern view. Do we write it off to the inferiority of ancient understanding? Do we chuckle and say, “Yes, yes, they believed such silly things”? To what degree do we adjust our own worldview based on the worldview of God’s people in ancient times?

I want to explore this a bit more, but I want to hear from you. Whose worldview is inadequate, theirs or ours? Or is there a middle ground?