“In
the past God spoke to our ancestors at many different times and in many
different ways through the prophets. In these last days he has spoken to
us through his Son. God made his Son responsible for everything. His Son is the
one through whom God made the universe. His Son is the reflection of God's
glory and the exact likeness of God's being. He holds everything together
through his powerful words. After he had cleansed people from their sins, he
received the highest position, the one next to the Father in heaven.”
Hebrews 1:1-3 (GW)
Hebrews 1:1-3 (GW)
Guidelines
for reading the Bible: Part Two
1.
Recall that the best way
to define “God breathed” and “inspired” is by attaching that inspiration
to the writers of the biblical texts.
God inspired the authors of the Bible. Christians
do not believe that God dictated his words to the authors (as Muslims believe of
Mohammed), nor do Christians believe that the inspiration resides in the
inspiration of the reader.
2. Therefore I believe that
God inspired whoever wrote Hebrews to tell us Jesus is the lens through which we
should read the rest of scripture. Obviously
the writer to the Hebrews is referring to the Old Testament.
Therefore,
everything you read in the Old Testament must be read asking yourself,
“how did Jesus fulfill or rework, live out and explain, affirm or redefine
what we read in the Old Testament, especially its most violent sections?
3. How then do I reconcile
non-violent Jesus with what appears to be an Old Testament God who used
violence? Sometimes it seems
like republican believers cite the Old Testament in favor of capital punishment
or military interventions or other uses of lethal force while democrat believers
cite the Jesus texts of the New Testament.
What
to do?
Remember
that God inspires the writers and that those writers wrote in a certain cultural
context using certain idioms, certain styles of writing that were commonly used
in the author’s setting. Doing
this helps us to read the bible as it was intended to be read.
Example
When
you read about the God-commanded invasion of Canaan led by Joshua the impression
given is one of God ordering the massacre of a 1,000’s of innocent men, women
and children. The massacres
seems brutal and without provocation (although see Gen. 15:16) and they make God
look like a moral monster.
So,
did the conquest of Canaan happen exactly as described?
Shouldn’t we expect the text to read exactly like we would read an
account of a military campaign today? Some
Christians think the answer is yes. Others
say no, it all depends on how you think the author wrote and how he intended the
text to be read by those who would read it.
For
example, if the author of the Joshua conquest accounts used typical ancient near
east forms of writing which include describing military victories using the
common literary style of the day
describing Ancient Near Eastern warfare, then we would expect the description to
be exaggerated include some or much hyperbole. Furthermore when
we consider other customs, uses of language, and the findings of archeology it
is possible to conclude that Jericho was probably a military outpost of perhaps
100 soldiers, with a few servants (Rahab) but otherwise without women and
children. We could therefore
conclude that these God-initiated battles were against a Canaanite military
first line of defense, in other words a battle against soldiers not
‘innocent’ civilian families.
This
brings us back to the question, which is, “what was the author doing and
intending when he wrote the conquest accounts?
Was he writing straight history as in an account of the American invasion
of Baghdad, or was the author writing an account of the conquest of Jericho, Ai
and the rest, kind of like a historical novel which tells us history, but uses a
literary style with embellishment that emphasizes a specific point, namely that
God is more powerful than the Canaanite gods and on the side of his People and
that credit for the conquest belonged to God not people?
Sometimes
those who believe the former use these conquest texts to justify American
military intervention overseas which leave tens of thousands of men women and
children dead. Sometimes some used
them to justify Christian conquest of Europe, and later, crusades in the Middle
East. On the other hand those
who read these texts literarily (see
above) might be less quick to find in these texts a justification for
foreign military intervention which takes the lives of so many women and
children.
BACK
TO THE BIG POINT: Personally I
learned and have concluded that both positions are held by Bible believing
Christians who believe in the full inspiration of scripture.
The question is not which group of Christians is more faithful or are
more Bible believing. Both
groups are simply doing their best to get the Bible right.
That’s the job of the faithful Bible reader.
For
more:
follow on Twitter @jefflampl
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