Episode 157: The Study Series—Reading the Bible as a Library, Not as a Book

When we look at the Bible as just one book with one kind of literature and don’t learn how to do “resets” based on what exactly we are reading, we can really misunderstand and misinterpret the text. What is Genre and why is it so important for understanding what different parts of Scripture are and aren’t useful for? How can we get into trouble when we try to make all of the Bible fit into one kind of box?

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Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I usually teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. But not right now, right now I am doing a series about how to not waste your time with bad study practices, bad resources, and just the general confusion that I faced when I started studying the Bible and was trying to figure out what to do and whose books I should read. Bottom line, I read a lot of nonsense and spent a ton of money on it. I am going to give you some basics on how to avoid a lot of the pitfalls, save money, maximize your time and effort, and get the most out of what you are doing.

Master book list can be found here and I will add to it as needed.

The Bible is a library and until we can really treat it as one we will read it wrong and will never be able to sanely handle questions of authority, inerrancy, and inspiration. Fundamentalism is especially guilty of setting across the board standards for the Bible that apply absolutely, unless it becomes inconvenient and this has led to people falling away from the faith when they cannot reconcile verses that are at odds with one another (and there are many, with good reason), or finding themselves needing to support ideas such as humans thinking and feeling with their heart, kidneys, and bowels or the concept of a flat earth supported by actual pillars, or one of the many material creation positions believers have come up with (with none proving satisfactory). But when we understand the Bible as literature, we can release it from our modern rules that would have been completely foreign and confusing to the original audience. I really ask you to be patient and bear with me if this is new information for you—I know how challenging it is. Remember that although everything in the Bible is for our benefit, none of it was written to our culture, in our language, or according to our rules of truth, accuracy, or intellectual conventions. All that fancy talk is just to state the plain truth that our ancestors changed the rules of communication long after the Bible was handed down and it is ludicrous for us to hold them responsible for stuff they had no reason to know, respect, or approve of.

An example a friend of mine brought to my memory this morning—when people ask why Abraham was treated with leniency in having married his sister when Leviticus 18 clearly outlaws it, how do we respond? The same way we would in modern society, actually. Nothing is illegal until suddenly someone decides to do something to make it illegal. The Covenant of Sinai wasn’t there in the Garden (where they had no knowledge of evil, only exposure to what is good), or for Noah, or for Abraham, or in Egypt. And we cannot retroactively hold someone accountable for doing something that was perfectly acceptable within that culture—namely, endogamous marriage. Marrying relatives, fellow clan members (and I am not talking about the Klu Klux Klan even if they might be more apt to…nevermind), was how ancient people consolidated resources. Family members were the only people who could really be trusted. Outsiders could be shamelessly lied to and it was even considered honorable to do so. Not by God, of course, but by other people. Outsiders didn’t deserve to be treated like insiders—something that Yahweh took steps to try to change later. This is why all of the patriarchs married close relatives. It was normal within their culture. They would have looked at us marrying virtual strangers from questionable extended families and would have been stunned.

Marrying close family members wasn’t a problem until God forbade it—and as far as we know, Abraham wasn’t even close to knowing who God is when he and Sarah were first married. We know that Terah and Nahor were both idol worshipers and so likely Abraham and Sarah were as well. I would also point out that when the instruction was given at Sinai, there was absolutely no command to dissolve marriages that were already in existence when the Law was given. Just as they were not held accountable for any idolatry or unclean eating or working on the Sabbath before the Exodus. It would have been unjust and cruel to do so and that is not how Yahweh operates.

In the same way, and back to the point, we now have modern rules for literature that we tend to filter the Bible through. We try to make historical narratives like Genesis into modern histories with accurate use of numbers, and the numbers of generations in a genealogy, lifespans, and all the little factoids lining up with archaeology—like an objective historian would be expected to today. We might look at polemical texts like Isaiah 44 and decide that they accurately represent the pagan mindset and lifestyle, not knowing that it is both a purposeful exaggeration and misrepresentation for the purpose of making their opponents look ridiculous. Or we might mistake the Genesis 1 Temple text (which was also a polemic poking fun at the pathetic gods of the nations) for a how-to manual for creating a universe. Or, as I have mentioned before, we might hold the ancient listeners to modern scientific standards of inquiry and try to force God into being a science teacher when He was really just condescending to their level of knowledge to be understood. We will treat the Sinai Covenant like a Hellenistic law code instead of ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature designed to help judges and kings make wise rulings when presented with difficult questions and unpleasant circumstances. But we’ll talk about those individually later.

Right now, I want to stress that the Bible isn’t a book, but instead of a library of sixty-six shorter works, most of which were initially given verbally in Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek long before being committed to writing. They were given to different people—people who were not authors but receivers of revelation which was then passed down through the generations by word of mouth as we discussed over the last three weeks. This is why we have so many different tones, and sounds and moods and functionalities in Scripture and why we cannot just sit and read it through without paying attention to intent, rhetoric, genre, and ancient rules of communication. We cannot read a Psalm like a Proverb or the words of a Prophet as we would a Historical Narrative. We have to look at whatever it is, and things can even change within a book—Exodus is a terrific example of this—and say to ourselves, “Okay, is this poetry or a wisdom saying or a prophecy or a narrative,” because it will change our expectations and what we can honestly do with the text. The story of the life of Abraham, for example, which I just began to teach the kids, has to be handled differently than Psalm 119, which is an ode to the Torah as a whole.

Reading about Abraham, Sarah and Lot is going to require me to take into account ancient Near Eastern law codes like Hammurapi, Lipit-Ishtar and others, as well as the contents of the Nuzi tablets and the Amarna Letters, as well as the wealth of knowledge from Ugarit. Those will give me a decent picture of the background of their lives. I will also benefit from a knowledge of geography. It will be important to know where Hermon, Bethel and the Negev are—as well as Ur, Egypt and Haran. Agriculture, animal husbandry, and the flora and fauna are important. Ancestor worship and the very important concept of hospitality are indispensable. That’s because this is historical narrative—history presented in narrative form as a story and not just boring facts and figures. Understanding the way that the surrounding cultures told the life stories of their important ancestors will also help us to understand why they said this or that the way that they did. People in historical narratives are going to do what they do because of their beliefs and understandings and unless we know what they knew (or thought they knew), we can get the wrong idea. Like, for example, assuming that the sin of Sodom was homosexuality when Ezekiel rightly points out that it was oppression. Gang rape isn’t the same as homosexuality. Homosexuality is outlawed in Lev 18:22, but not in the Sodom account. Knowing how the ancient world looked at male-male sexual relations changes how we read that story.

When we read the first eleven chapters of Genesis, we find ourselves colliding with the myths of the ancient Near Eastern world. And by myth, I define that as an origin story of something otherwise unexplainable to a pre-scientific culture. How does the sun travel across the sky? Obviously, someone is either in a boat or a chariot pulling it around. Why is the sky blue? Obviously, there has to be a solid dome with water on top of it because sometimes it leaks through or someone opens a window. Myths helped ancient people try to understand something they couldn’t explain and truly, they are quite clever! And God used these sorts of questions to teach the people in the wilderness about how different He is than the gods of the Egyptians and Babylonians. Why were we created—the people of the nations say we were created to be slaves to serve the gods! Genesis 1 gives us a God who worked for us, to create an environment that gives us everything we need to survive and thrive. And one who has already blessed our fertility so we don’t need to go to a fertility deity for that. And He has rested here, taken up residence to reign over all the earth so we don’t have to think of Him as distant and uncaring. Why did that terrible flood happen—the Babylonians say that their gods did that because people are too annoying and they decided to just kill them all so they could get some sleep! But Yahweh presents Himself as a God who is only concerned with stopping sin and oppression. Why are there so many languages—were different kinds of people really created by different types of gods? Yahweh, instead, tells them a story that is entirely unique in all of the ancient world, that all people are descended from the same people and place. And instead of a god who decided to just confuse the languages to be cruel, like the Assyrian God Enki, Yahweh divided the languages in order to prevent the people from getting in over their heads with being able to do too much too fast (according to Gen 11).  If we read these chapters like we read the stories of the patriarchs, we’ll have problems and we will miss what Yahweh is teaching about how unique He is.

The Psalms are some of the most brutally honest literature ever written by anyone, anywhere. In fact, they can be really cringe-worthy. The Psalms aren’t all the same kind of literature either, it’s a book of one hundred and fifty songs. And they can be just as different as placing hip hop next to rock and roll next to opera. Okay, maybe not quite that different. Psalm 1, for example, is a song celebrating the blessings of obeying God. Psalm 7 has David begging God to kick his enemies’ collective butts. Psalm 8 is just purely praising God with no strings attached. There are many kinds of these Psalms. Some were only sung when a new king had his coronation. Others were sung daily at the Tabernacle or Temple. Some Psalms start out accusing God of neglecting the suffering and end with praising Him for rescuing His people. One of the last ones says that anyone who smashes the heads of the Babylonian babies against the rocks is, like, blessed. Dude, so messed up. The Psalms are like this because they are honest—they are not supposed to be accurate. They aren’t supposed to faithfully represent how God feels about things or about us, but they are the honest feelings of the people going to God in their times of trouble and triumph and sadness and joy. Sometimes they will contain glimpses of the future, like Psalm 22, or rebukes against idolaters, like Psalm 115 but they are always brutally honest.

Proverbs are wisdom sayings and they can be infuriating sometimes. Do we answer a fool according to his folly or not? The answer changes from verse to verse and so neither piece of advice can be considered authoritative. And this is on purpose because with wisdom literature, the answer to most questions is, “it depends.” It depends on whether the fool you are confronted with is humble and just a well-meaning simpleton or a foolish, arrogant blowhard who won’t listen no matter what you say. Correcting the former bears good fruit in their lives, as long as it is done in a loving and gracious way, but correcting the latter is like spitting into a strong wind.

The Prophets are often a smorgasbord of different genre and rhetorical types. Exhortation is huge in the prophetic books because exhortation was their #1 job. Exhortation is a fancy word that means “urging someone or a group to do or not do something.” When the prophets told the people to give up their idols, to stop oppressing their neighbors, to trust God instead of going to the Egyptians for help, etc. that wasn’t just telling them what not to do but encouraging them to cling, cleave, and to follow Yahweh exclusively. Sometimes, prophets would speak of future events like the coming of the Messiah, or an end to exile, or in terms of eschatology—dealing with the end days, the world to come, the gathering of the nations, etc. Sometimes the prophets will speak in parables and allegories and all of these different things have to be understood for what they are and are not. We really have to know what we can and can’t make doctrine out of—what was meant for doctrine building and what was meant to make us think. In addition, we also have to be very careful to identify what was for a specific audience and what is for us. The raising up of Cyrus to send the Jews home was for them. Isaiah 53, that was definitely for all the world because it describes the ministry of the suffering servant.

What about the first century teachings? The Hellenistic influence drastically changed the ways that the Jews communicated ideas and also how they lived—sometimes for the better and sometimes not. We see birth narratives—something almost unheard of in the Hebrew Scriptures—in Matthew and Luke, encomium—which are speeches that celebrate and promote an individual as worthy of honor. Yeshua takes the rare parable of the prophets and turns it into an art form—a third of his teachings are parables. He also speaks in allegories, and in prophetic pronouncements of exhortation and prediction of the future. Teachings are something very Hellenistic and related to the workings of the philosophical schools of the Greco-Roman world. They emphasized following a teacher in order to become like that teacher and to be able to repeat his teachings. In the Gospels and Acts, we see historical narratives again but now within an entirely different world context. The science and beliefs about a lot of things have changed, and Yeshua is not just Moses, part 2, He is something completely unique and authoritative in His own right.

Entirely unique to the first century teachings are the epistles—letter from apostles to various congregations and individuals. Although the Hebrew Scriptures would sometimes briefly include a short letter within a larger book or story, we have people like Paul, Peter, James and Jude writing longer treatises actually teaching people how to live out the day to day life of believers—in specifics—while living in polytheistic, Imperial Cult cities where Aristotelian Household Codes are the law and slavery was a fact of life built into the culture of every Empire on earth. Never before had long distance instruction been required on such a large scale, requiring correction and guidance to be given in writing perhaps even before a single Gospel account was ever penned. These have to be read in ways that no other genre of Scripture had been before and we do violence to the Word when we try to do otherwise.

The last genre type that I will touch upon is the apocalypse—a form of symbolic writing that cropped up during the intertestamental period and owes a lot to Persian and Hellenistic modes of thinking. An apocalypse was always written to a suffering community who was in danger either of compromise with Empire or needed to be encouraged while suffering for standing firm in the truth, against the powers that be. Angelic figures would pull aside the “curtain” that separates our world from the heavenly realms and the author would be shown how the battles they are facing looked from God’s point of view—where empires took the form of ravenous beasts and God’s judgment was larger than life and His final victory assured and promised. Apocalypses were the propaganda literature of the ancient Jewish world and as David DeSilva, a noted Revelation scholar, points out—even a Roman official of moderate intelligence would know exactly what it was about and how badly Rome and the Emperor and Imperial Cult worship was being skewered because the symbolism, although confusing to us, was transparent to them.

Added into all of that, we have the art of hyperbole (exaggeration), poetics, puns, metaphors, courtroom drama, the quoting of non-Biblical writings and fiction, and all manner of rhetorical devices that made memorization easy and helped the ancient audience begin to grasp the nature and character of Yahweh, pitting Him against and contrasting Him with the gods of the nations. This was what it looked like when God chose to graciously and mercifully make Himself known to His creation. He spoke to them, in their language, according to their manner of communication, playing by their rhetorical rules and even accommodating their culture and belief in order to begin a conversation that would find its climax in Yeshua’s life, ministry, death and resurrection—which showed us exactly who and what He is without the metaphors or accommodations.

And I realize this can be distressing but I want to point out that you don’t need much of this in order to read the Sermon on the Mount or Galatians 5 or I Cor 13 or I John to find out our obligation to love and sacrifice for each other. You don’t need context to feed the poor or preach the good news or lead someone to salvation or to do any of the weightier matters of mercy and justice. Scholars aren’t needful in the truly heavy lifting of the Kingdom. However, scholars help the Body to not create oppressive doctrines, hierarchies, or to misread Scripture in ways that have led to genocide, enslavement, and all sorts of evils. Everyone has their place, and we are all important. A person hungry and cold on skid row doesn’t give a flying fig for how to read Mark 13 in context. But this information is important for people who want to teach what things in the Bible mean. Very important. Context protects us and those with whom we interact so that we won’t cherry-pick and proof text in order to find what we can get away with doing to one another in ways that fall WAY short of love.

Next week, we’ll talk about metaphor and what we should and should not do with it and what does and doesn’t count as metaphor—and the purpose of metaphor in understanding God’s nature.