It is interesting to me how quickly we settle into an idea and then just assume it as reality. As "westerners" we often find it difficult to leave a concept or philosophy once we have accepted it as true. Recently, I have started rethinking the value of that part of our understanding of how things work.
Here is what I mean... When we start accepting ideas or concepts that are passed down to us over centuries of church tradition, we begin to lose the need to truly wrestle with or understand where they came from and why they are important. Now that the church as we understand it is about 2,000 years old (give or take) there is a huge body of literature out there to be read concerning doctrine, concepts, philosophies, and ideas.
My concern: are we really wrestling with the text in regard to these ideas? Or are we just accepting them as truth?
When did it become okay that a walking, talking snake has a conversation with a woman and we say - cool. Or for that matter - that there was a tree that had fruit on it that possessed the knowledge of good and evil, even though we know that Eve was aware of good and evil because she told the snake that she couldn't touch the fruit even before she ate it...
Or that God provided a plant for shade for Jonah when he already had a tent for shade and the text says that God did this in order to "drive the evil from Jonah." But we don't translate it that way and we seem to be okay with just moving on and not wrestling with the implications of what the text actually says.
The questions could go on and on... God is jealous? Punishing the sins of the father to the 3rd and 4th generation? really? God sends his people to wipe out nations? Then says blessed are the peace makers? When we just look at the text and let it speak, it gets dirty in a hurry!
Why did we stop asking questions of the text, and begin to just accept doctrines, ideas, concepts and philosophies? When did that become okay? And you can hear it in the way people talk about Scripture.
"Well, I think this..."
"Where is that in the text?"
"Well, I am not good with 'book, chapter, and verse.'"
A tangent (but not really)... I have heard for a long time that we need Spiritual relationships in our lives. And I believe that this is absolutely true. We are hardwired for deep, spiritual, abiding connection with others. But the logic behind this conversation typically revolves around some part of us needing one another for the crises in our lives so that we don't have to walk through them alone.
While that is a great point - and true - it is not the best use of spiritual community to sit around and wait for crisis to hit someone so that we can pounce on them like a starved cougar and make a spectacle of the event.
I believe that the best use of spiritual community is to wrestle with the text - daily. Not to talk about and debate ideas, philosophies, concepts, and doctrine. But to truly chew the text and ask the difficult questions that don't make sense. How is your spiritual community defined?
Someone once said that the Bible does not give up her treasures to one who does not dig deeply. Perhaps the biggest issue facing the church and her future really amounts to her willingness to re-engage the text in a serious way.
May we be a community of people who take the text seriously. And may your conversations be those that wrestle with the real issues of the text, not just the surface stuff of ideas. May we get our hands dirty and find treasure hidden in the fields in which we dig.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
My wrestling match...
So, I have come to some conclusions that I have no contingency plan for. No one prepared me for this and I am a little upset because I think I have been robbed a bit by those who handed information down to me concerning the Scriptures and how they fit together and how I am supposed to understand what I am reading in the Bible.
First, a little background... around 250 years before the time of Christ, a group of Rabbis got together and translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. This made total sense because the world spoke Greek at the time and it was a way that the rest of the world could see the tremendous gift that God gave to the world through the writing of what we affectionately refer to as "the Old Testament." This became the standard for how Jewish teachers communicated the Hebrew Bible in a cross-cultural context for 3 centuries.
This translation - we call it the Septuagint - heavily influenced all the conversations about the Scriptures from that time forward and that has some profound implications for those of us who want to try to understand what the Bible means.
Paul, who wrote 15 of the 27 books of the new testament, wrote everything we have of his in Greek. Paul was not Greek, he was Hebrew. But he wrote in Greek to help a cross cultural context understand who Jesus is and how we relate to Him.
Question: Where did Paul learn his Greek? And when expressing theological or biblical truths in Greek, where did he learn what words to use and how to use them? The obvious answer would be that he learned how to talk about God in Greek from the Septuagint.
On the surface, that doesn't sound all that profound. But dig a little deeper and we are going to see some huge ramifications that may very well push some hard buttons. If the Septuagint is the standard for expressing Hebrew thought in Greek, then it is not enough to do a Greek word study when we read the New Testament. We must also trace that word back to how it was used in the Septuagint and find its Hebrew equivalent because it is there that we understand what reality Paul or any other New Testament writer for that matter is trying to convey. And, when that concept doesn't exist in the Hebrew Scriptures, we often see Paul making words up. He often sticks words together that have never been done before because he is trying to convey an idea that has no basis or understanding in what he has previously studied.
Quick example: Hebrews 7:18 says that there was an "annulment" of the preceding commands (the Law) because of its weakness and unprofitableness. Annulment is a strong word. In a legal sense, it means that the old Law (Torah) has been done away with. So, if the writer of Hebrews (we will say Paul) understands this Greek word from the Septuagint, then we need to see where it is used, and what is the Hebrew equivalent. The Greek word - "athetesis" - is only used onetime in the septuagint and that is found in 1 Samuel 24:11.
A translation of the Septuagint says this: And behold, the skirt of thy mantle [is] in my hand, I cut off the skirt, and did not slay thee: know then and see to-day, there is no evil in my hand, nor impiety, nor rebellion; and I have not sinned against thee, yet thou layest snares for my soul to take it.
The word for rebellion here is the same Greek word. And it translates the Hebrew word "pesha" which means rebellion or transgression.
My thought: Paul is not trying to say that the New covenant "annuls" the Old covenant. From his understanding of how to communicate theological ideas from the only source for greek that would have given him that ability, he is saying that the Old Covenant created a rebellion that the new covenant can resolve through Christ. It does not, however, undo or annul what the old covenant does. It expands and unpacks it further.
Maybe this idea has some deeper more profound implications than we originally thought...
First, a little background... around 250 years before the time of Christ, a group of Rabbis got together and translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek. This made total sense because the world spoke Greek at the time and it was a way that the rest of the world could see the tremendous gift that God gave to the world through the writing of what we affectionately refer to as "the Old Testament." This became the standard for how Jewish teachers communicated the Hebrew Bible in a cross-cultural context for 3 centuries.
This translation - we call it the Septuagint - heavily influenced all the conversations about the Scriptures from that time forward and that has some profound implications for those of us who want to try to understand what the Bible means.
Paul, who wrote 15 of the 27 books of the new testament, wrote everything we have of his in Greek. Paul was not Greek, he was Hebrew. But he wrote in Greek to help a cross cultural context understand who Jesus is and how we relate to Him.
Question: Where did Paul learn his Greek? And when expressing theological or biblical truths in Greek, where did he learn what words to use and how to use them? The obvious answer would be that he learned how to talk about God in Greek from the Septuagint.
On the surface, that doesn't sound all that profound. But dig a little deeper and we are going to see some huge ramifications that may very well push some hard buttons. If the Septuagint is the standard for expressing Hebrew thought in Greek, then it is not enough to do a Greek word study when we read the New Testament. We must also trace that word back to how it was used in the Septuagint and find its Hebrew equivalent because it is there that we understand what reality Paul or any other New Testament writer for that matter is trying to convey. And, when that concept doesn't exist in the Hebrew Scriptures, we often see Paul making words up. He often sticks words together that have never been done before because he is trying to convey an idea that has no basis or understanding in what he has previously studied.
Quick example: Hebrews 7:18 says that there was an "annulment" of the preceding commands (the Law) because of its weakness and unprofitableness. Annulment is a strong word. In a legal sense, it means that the old Law (Torah) has been done away with. So, if the writer of Hebrews (we will say Paul) understands this Greek word from the Septuagint, then we need to see where it is used, and what is the Hebrew equivalent. The Greek word - "athetesis" - is only used onetime in the septuagint and that is found in 1 Samuel 24:11.
A translation of the Septuagint says this: And behold, the skirt of thy mantle [is] in my hand, I cut off the skirt, and did not slay thee: know then and see to-day, there is no evil in my hand, nor impiety, nor rebellion; and I have not sinned against thee, yet thou layest snares for my soul to take it.
The word for rebellion here is the same Greek word. And it translates the Hebrew word "pesha" which means rebellion or transgression.
My thought: Paul is not trying to say that the New covenant "annuls" the Old covenant. From his understanding of how to communicate theological ideas from the only source for greek that would have given him that ability, he is saying that the Old Covenant created a rebellion that the new covenant can resolve through Christ. It does not, however, undo or annul what the old covenant does. It expands and unpacks it further.
Maybe this idea has some deeper more profound implications than we originally thought...
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