Discussion forum 2

Discussion Prompt: 

 Darrell Back said, "You are never going to understand what these stories in the Gospels and Acts are doing without learning more about the culture of first-century Judaism.  It is just not going to happen.  If we simply read the stories without taking that step, we will superimpose our cultural scripts on the stories and change them into something they were never intended to be."   

Consider the above quotation, the class discussion and readings from sessions 1 and 2 from both textbooks.  

1) How did the Gospel writers view and interpret the Old Testament?  2) What is the role of literary and historical context in studying Scripture?  300 words count