To better understand people, we need to hear their “back-story”— it is the same with God and his story. The bible is God’s revelation of himself and his attributes through his interactions with his people.
My passion to understand the background of the Old Testament (OT) started about fifteen years ago when Bible teacher Ray VanderLaan came to speak at our church. There were many passages in the Old Testament that seemed confusing to me— almost as if I were watching a movie half way through. VanderLaan’s teaching opened the scriptures to me in 3-D and helped me to see the whole story! My pursuit for deeper understanding continued after sitting in a Sunday school class on Genesis with Dr. John Walton who started each class by saying, “remember, the Bible is written for us, but not to us”.
It became clear to me that if we do not seek to understand the backdrop of the ancient worldview of the OT, we will distort the text with presuppositions from our own worldview and cultures. We tend to assume that other societies are just like our own and need to set aside our worldview to make room in our minds for how Israel would have understood the text. If we don’t make this room—we will fill in the gaps with our own modern culture and cognitive environment.
Though I agree with Dr. Walton’s comment, “there are frequent occasions in which the meaning of the text will not be immediately transparent to us…[Comparative studies] may then be necessary in order to discern the meaning of the text.” (pg. 39-40), I feel it is important that we do not canonize the culture of Israel. We must instead understand that God used it as a vehicle to communicate the message of the truth of his character and his plan for humanity. Richter writes, “if we are going to understand the content of redemptive history…we will need to understand the vehicle (i.e., the culture) through which it was communicated” (pg. 23).
Dr. Richter perfectly states it: “our objective as Christians is to understand the story of redemption, the Bible. More than anything else we want to hear the words of the Biblical writers as they were intended and claim there epic saga as our own. To accomplish this, we need to get past the great barrier—that chasm of history, language and culture that separates us from the heroes of our faith” (pg. 15)
Some of the vital differences in culture of the Ancient Near East (ANE) that we need to be aware of in our understanding of the text include aspects such as identity—in our modern culture we think of identity in a very individualistic way but people of the ANE thought in terms of clans or tribal identity. Even institutions such as marriage were different as well as the concepts of Kingship, worship and law.
Study of the background of the ANE gives us a window into how Israel may have been thinking as they heard the scriptures. Comparing some of the ANE texts can also help us fill in the gaps of the perceptions of the Israelites and how they may have been influenced by these myths from the world around them.
One example Walton gives in his Seedbed Video teaching “What is the ANE?” regards this passage from Joshua 10:
12 Then Joshua spoke to the Lord on the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the Israelites, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, be silent and stand still at Gibeon, and you, moon, in the Valley of Ajalon!
13 And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation took vengeance upon their enemies. Is not this written in the Book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of the heavens and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day.
14 There was no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man. For the Lord fought for Israel.
Walton makes the observation that this text is not talking about physics since they did not even think the sun and moon were objects— (they perceived them as lights), but that perhaps Joshua knows the myths and superstitions of his enemy and that they engage in the practice of celestial divination. Joshua knows his enemy will perceive that sun and
moon standing still as a dark omen. As we can see— the theology of the text does not change with this insight—God is still glorified as verse 14 states “For the Lord fought for Israel”.
The use of background studies should be used to deepen our understanding of and confidence in the biblical text, not undermine or discredit it. Background studies can help us consider the genre of the text in order to perceive the author’s intent. Comprehending the author’s intent— what he is trying to say and how will the audience perceive it—is also an essential ingredient in interpreting the text theologically.
Background studies can illuminate the text but at the end of the day—God has inspired scripture in a way that we can have basic understanding of the theology of the Bible without further background study. But as we have also seen, the use of background context studies does indeed enhance our understanding of the Bible and of who God is and the way he designed us to live.
In closing, we can see in the biblical text that God often uses the literary styles of the culture to contextualize his revelation of who he is and his epic story of redemption. Dr. Scott Moreau defines contextualization as “the art of translating ideas into a particular situation, place or culture” (Moreau pg. 19). Through understanding the ways God used their context to communicate—we can better understand what he is saying to us as well. I do feel background studies are important to understanding the Bible, but with the help of
the Holy Spirit—the basic theological truths of who God is and his story of redemption stands for itself without further background knowledge.
WORKS CITED
1) Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin, 1929, http://murals.wbtla.org/war-and-trade-in-the-land-of-the-bible.html
2) Richter, Sandra L. The Epic of Eden: a Christian Entry into the Old Testament. IVP Academic, 2008.
3) Walton, John H. Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible. Baker Academic, 2018.
4) Moreau, A. Scott. Contextualization in World Missions Mapping and Assessing Evangel- ical Models. pg. 18. Kregel Acad., 2012.
Finding My Way Home 