Read the Old Testament narratives (stories) in their original context first
You may think 'doh...yeah...obvious!!' But it is very easy for us to read into scripture what really isn't there. I suggest that we do this in three ways primarily:
1. Firstly we read scripture as if it was specifically written to us. Fee & Stuart (2003) put it like this:
"Perhaps the single most useful bit of caution we can give you about reading and learning from narratives is this: do not be a monkey see, monkey do reader of the Bible. No biblical narrative was specifically written about you" (p105).
Even with the divine help of reading scripture through the Holy Spirit's guidance that does not take away from the fact that narrative scripture - and particularly Old Testament narrative - was written to a particular people with a particular world view. If we read scripture with a primary attitude of 'what is God saying to me today through this passage' we miss what God was saying for the original hearers. This causes us to often miss out on a great deal of truth the Bible can teach us.
2. Secondly we can read our theological doctrines into scriptural narrative. This is very common particularly in evangelical and charistmatic churches (I would suggest!). The teaching cab be focused primarily on application rather exposition. We might decide we have a certain doctrine say on healing or the atonement. We would then pick scriptures that back our theology on that and conveniently ignore those which don't (please I am generalising in order to get the point accross!).
3. We often read New Testament theology into Old testament narratives before looking at its original context for the Hebrew people. What do I mean by this? In many ways we cannot avoid reading the Old Testament in light of our understanding of the gospel. Since we were born after Christ came we have a different understanding of God and of salvation. Also many of the New Testament disciples and apostles like Paul quoted Old Testament passages in their writings showing the links between Old and New. However it is still important to read the Old Testament narratives in light of the context for the original hearers before bringing our New Testament theology and gospel straight in there. For examples the narrative story of Joseph is primarily about Joseph, the narrative story of Job is about a figure called Job. You may laugh! But us evangelicals we can go 'no it's actually all about Jesus' because we see the links between Old Testament characters and the personhood of Christ. But if we do that without looking at the original context we again often miss out other truths and might I suggest make some severe theological errors.
So what are the dangers of the above?
1. We can be in the danger of reading scripture very selectively. Those scriptures that support our theological doctrine or worldview we accept and those we don't we conveniently skip.
2. If we ignore the worldview of the time and it's historical anbd literary context we can actually read Old Testament narratives and totally miss the point! Scary thought.
3. We can read scripture rather selfishly - what is it saying to me? What is it saying to support my doctrine? What is it saying to my church? Don't get me wrong application of scipture to contemporary contexts is important but firsty we look at its context for the original hebrew hearers who had a completley different worldview to ours.
So here are a few things to recognise when reading Old Testament Narratives which I've taken from Fee & Stuarts book 'How to read the Bible for all its worth (2003, p106).
- An Old Testament narrative usually does not directly teach a doctrine
- Narratives record what happened - not necessarily what should have happened or what ought to happen every time
- What people do in a narrative is not necessarily a good example for us
- All narratives are selective and incomplete
- Narratives are not written to answer all our theological questions
- God is the hero of all biblical narrative!
But the key is I think we do the above because we do not have access to suitable materials in order to study the bible affectively. Please don't think you have to go to Bible college in order to be able to read the Bible in its historical and cultural context. Sometimes its about knowing the tools out their to help us out. Just as a GP doesn't know all the medications and their side-effects off by heart but they have the appropriate reference books to hand.
Two excellent books written by Biblical scholars and which are great staples to have and also very accessable reads are.
'How to read the bible for all its worth' by Gordon D Fee & Douuglas Stuart (2003)
(please note if you have an older copy it is worth getting the latest addition as they have made many changes, particular in relation to biblical translation)
'How to read the Bible book by book' by the same authors (2002)
The great thing about Fee and Stuart is that they are bilbical scholars primarily and not theologians. Also each specailises on different parts of the bible - one on New Testament and the other Old. Furthermore they also have a reference section at the end of the first book mentioned above. This adds a great list of other commentaries you can get hold of e.g. Gordon Wenham who is a key biblical scholar on Genesis.
Good stuff! What does this do to your reading of the first few chapters of Genesis?
ReplyDeleteAn aside: I fear that it is not a question of "not having access to suitable materials". Many people don't even bother to look for help: if you have the Holy Spirit you don't need any man to explain anything to you (1 John 2:27)
As you hint: there's a verse to justify anything, if you squint hard enough.
Thanks for this post. I have often thought about this but to have it put together like this is really interesting. So many of us are quite guilty of taking the Old Testament out of context
ReplyDeleteGlad its helpful Esther. As to Genesis 1 I think it does change how we look at it and I will be blogging on that - when I'm brave enough to address it!
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