Life and Faith 2.3

a. The timeline of the Bible from the Old Testament to the New Testament to the Bible itself.

b. Cultural principles of the ancient Mediterranean world

c. Cultural principles distinctive to the Old Testament and New Testament

d. History and Culture in interpretive action

Video One

Welcome to “Cultures in and of the Bible.” This four-part video series will introduce you to the basics of the historical timeline of scripture and to some of the social norms and worldview elements that characterize the cultures that we encounter in the pages of scripture. Let’s begin with a basic timeline of the major events that occurred over the course of the writing of the Old and New Testaments. We’ll refer to this graphic [insert] as a basic framework for this discussion. There are just a few key dates the you need to know (I’ll signal this for you). More importantly, we want you to have a sense of the primary events that shaped the world of the Bible, when books of the Bible were written in relation to these key events, and the order of the events. We will dive in at the beginning and work our way through history.

History begins with creation, but we’re not going to try to attach a date to that. Genesis (the first book of the Bible) gives us an account of creation, not a first-hand account from a human eyewitness but two second-hand accounts inspired by the Holy Spirit. While traditions in Genesis reach back to earlier oral storytelling, scholars often place the writing of Genesis (and the following 4 books—The Pentateuch) in the time of Moses, perhaps sometime in the 1200’s BC (Before Christ) or BCE (Before the Common Era – You will see both abbreviations out there, and remember that BC or BCE dates count down to zero). Traditionally, the great Jewish leader and prophet Moses has been identified as the author of the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), though other scholars dispute this and date all of these books later. Genesis narrates the story of the ancestors of the people of Israel: Abraham & Sarah, Isaac & Rebekah, Jacob & Leah and Rachel (and Bilha and Zilpa), and Joseph. These families are usually placed in the broad range of 2000-1500 BC with a lot of debates about the exact dates. Then we have the infamous 400 years of slavery in Egypt followed by the dramatic events of the Exodus and Conquest, where God brought the people of Israel out of Egypt and into the promised land (the date of these events is famously debated as occurring either in the mid 1400’s or the early 1200’s BC). This is followed by the period of the Judges and then David becomes king shortly after 1000 BCE (that’s a date you should know). After a brief period of united monarchy, God’s people split into the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom ruled by separate lines of kings. As God’s people continued to disobey and as geopolitical forces grew and changed, the Northern Kingdom was conquered and carried into exile in by the Assyrians 722 BC and the Southern Kingdom faced the same fate from the Babylonians in 586 BC (that’s another date you should know). Much of the Old Testament is concerned with this part of Israel’s history: 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and many other prophets deal with the monarchy period. As world powers and policies continued to change, parts of God’s people returned to Judea starting in 539 BC. The latest books of the Bible deal with the exile and return from exile such as Ezekiel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Zechariah.

The chart gives the impression that nothing of much importance occurred during the 400 years between the testaments, often called the “Intertestamental Period,” but that is far from the case. Historically, the Jewish people were ruled and persecuted by successors of Alexander the Great who parceled out his vast empire. This led to the Jewish revolutionary movement known as the Maccabean Revolt (167-160 BC), which resulted in a brief period of Jewish self-rule. But not too much later, the Romans take over the region of Palestine in 63 BC, and this is the situation we find when we arrive in the New Testament. An important development in this era was the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures or the Tanak into Greek, a work known as The Septuagint (which means “The 70,” based on the legend of its origins). This period is also the time of many books found in Orthodox and Catholic Bibles, known as the Deuterocanonical books: The Wisdom of Ben Sira, 1-4 Maccabees, Tobit, and several others. Thus, several key events occur in this period that are crucial to understand the events of the New Testament Era.

This brings us to the New Testament era. This begins at approximately “0” AD (which stands for the Latin “anno domini” or “in the year of the Lord,” referring to the birth of Jesus, or you will also see the abbreviation CE for the “Common Era”). One key piece of organization to remember is that while the books of the New Testament present events in a rough chronological order (e.g., Jesus before the Apostle Paul) the actual writing of those books is much more complicated. It is widely believed that most (or all) of Paul’s letters were written at least 20 years before any of the gospels. In fact, James which appears right near the end of the New Testament was perhaps the first of any of the books written. The New Testament era is dominated by the Roman Empire. The life of Jesus and the ministry of the early church occurs right on the heels of the “Pax Romana” or “Roman Peace” an ideal (and somewhat idealized) time of growth and flourishing in the Roman Empire as a whole, which was led during this era by Caesar Augustus (formerly known as Octavian). Throughout this time, Judea was a Roman province run by client kings appointed by Roman emperors (such as Herod) and a series of Roman governors (such as Pontius Pilate). There were still Jewish priests in the temple and regional Jewish political leadership (in the body known as the Sanhedrin) but the Jewish people were a colonized people. When the story of the New Testament leaves Judea in the expansion of the church and the ministry of Paul, we are still within the bounds of the Roman Empire, though now in areas like Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) and Achaia (modern Greece) which had more Greek influence. This Greek influence is commonly called “Hellenistic” (“Hellas” is the Greek word for “Greek). Thus, this period of the New Testament is often assigned to the “Hellenistic-Roman Period.” A key date of this era that you need to know is the tragic destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans in 70 AD/CE. This was a catastrophe that would reshape the life of the Jewish people. The latest writings of the New Testament are usually dated to the end of the first century AD/CE.

To close out this history, let’s cover the history of the Bible itself. How did we get this set of 66 books? The 39 books of the Old/First Testament come from Jewish tradition revered and preserved by the Jewish people over the millennia. These books were gathered together in what came to be known as a “canon” (a Latin word for a standard or measuring stick) through practice and debate over the years 200 BCE to 200 AD. Most of the books (e.g, the Pentateuch or Isaiah) were quickly and widely accepted while a few others (e.g., Ecclesiastes or the Song of Songs) were debated and canonized later. The early Christians seem to have used this widely accepted but not finalized set of inspired books but also seem to have valued the books added in the Septuagint that had no Hebrew precursor (like the Wisdom of Solomon). The books of the Christian canon emerged in much the same way. Early Christians formulated a set of books that fit certain criteria: they were connected to apostles (apostolicity), they taught orthodox theology (orthodoxy), the were old enough to be traced back to the apostolic era (chronology), and they were widely used in the churches (catholicity—“atholic” here meaning something like “world-wide”). Again, many of these books were accepted easily and early (such as the Gospels) while a few others (like Hebrews and James) were more debated and delayed. Lists of New Testament books begin to appear in the 200s AD, but a letter by Bishop Athanasius in 367 articulates the 27 books of the New Testament that we have today. Soon after, Latin became the dominant language of the Roman Empire (rather than Greek), and Saint Jerome translated the Old Testament (with the additional books of the Septuagint) and the New Testament into Latin—a version of the Bible known as the Vulgate. This version held sway until the time of the Renaissance and the Reformation when interest in the original languages re-emerged. The Reformers rejected the added books of the Septuagint, giving us the familiar Bible of 66 books that Protestants use today. Though again the Catholic and Orthodox branches of the church have kept those additional “Deuterocanonical” books as part of their inspired scriptures. While this is some messy history, Christians believe that the Holy Spirit was at work, guiding scribes and leaders to recognize and preserve the inspired words of the Bible throughout history for the sake of the church and the church’s message to the world.

Video Two

In this video, we will explore the cultural worlds (yes, plural) of the Old Testament. We will begin with a few topics that are true for both the Old Testament and New Testament eras. While there are differences to be observed in history, language, and culture, most of both the Old Testament and the New Testament take place in the interconnected world of civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea. We will look at five aspects of this shared ancient culture in this video and then some distinctive cultural characteristics of the Old Testament and New Testament eras in particular. You may note that many of these are in pairs (e.g., Honor & Shame), showing how various extreme are handled in ancient culture. Also, these have partially been selected for how they highlight key differences between ancient culture and contemporary North American culture. We will look at the following 5 items: Social Structure & Subsistence, Traditional Cultures, Kinship & Hospitality, Purity & Pollution, and finally Politics & Religion.

First, the social structure of the ancient world falls out rather differently than what we think of in our own society in America. We commonly think of a socio-economic picture that has a small peak of the very rich at the top that broadens to a wide middle/white-collar class and then narrows down again at the bottom from the working poor to the homeless and destitute—Kind of a diamond shape or a bell curve with most people falling into that “middle class” range. The social structure of the ancient world was much more of a pyramid. There were still a small number of wealthy elites but then not much of a middle class at all (this would have been limited group of skilled artisans and functionaries). Then, there was a large group of “subsistence poor”—peasant farmers, day laborers, and the like. Then a large bottom layer made up significantly by slaves and the poor and destitute as well. Mike—Some graphics here would be great. In our day, we don’t think of most people as struggling to survive, but in the ancient world the lack of medical services and proper diet along with the risk-laden lives of those who worked the land or depended on dangerous employment meant that death was often just a bad harvest or a bad accident away. That is nothing to say of the many slaves (often prisoners of war) who worked in the worst conditions, like mining, where death was a daily reality. We often need to shed our middle-class sensibilities when reading scripture and think from the position of those whose place in life was much more limited and precarious than ours. As an example from the Bible, we can cite the desperation of Naomi in the book of Ruth. Her family is forced to leave Israel because of a famine, then her husband and two sons die, and then she and her daughter-in-law must emigrate back to Israel when another famine hits.

Second, we need to appreciate the fact that ancient Mediterranean cultures (not unlike some cultures around the world today) were highly traditional cultures. That meant that they lived an worked in the same way over dozens of generations. Today, many of us live with technology and work at jobs that our grandparents couldn’t have dreamed of. We view change as (largely) good and are accustomed to rapid development and novelty. In the ancient world, change was looked upon with suspicion. The world was viewed as stable, passing along ancestral tradition was both a duty and the only way to live in the world. Farming practices, bread making, family structures and so on remained the same within (and often across) cultures over hundreds and hundreds of years. Innovation was a threat that could tear families and groups apart, and changing to something that might work better couldn’t be risked in a world of survival and subsistence. As an example from the Bible, we can cite the accusation that the early Christians were “turning the world upside down” by preaching about Jesus in the Roman world (Acts 17:6).

Third, kinship was the glue that held most ancient societies together. We call this kinship rather than “family” because it often extended out in more complicated threads than our notion of the nuclear family to include alliances by marriage and distantly related relatives (this explains why Abraham wants a wife from his own kin for his son Isaac in Gen 24). Kin were the bearers of culture and thus crucial to people’s survival. To put it bluntly, if someone was in your kinship circle they could and should be trusted, but if not then you should be suspicious of them. Now, this could lead to a very hostile society, so the power of kinship was balanced by the sacred duty of hospitality. In both Jewish and Greek culture, welcoming strangers and providing for them was commanded by the gods. For people in this day, your identity, your security, and your work was determined and provided by your family in most cases. You are who your family is (rather far from our notions of individual identity and autonomy). As an example from the Bible, take Genesis 46:34 where Joseph tells his family to tell the Pharoah that they are keepers of livestock just like their ancestors and so they are to ask to settle in a certain area of Egypt because the Egyptian kin-group finds shepherds distasteful.

Fourth, we come to the paired notion of purity and pollution. Purity marked those things that are safe, good, and orderly. Pollution was a dangerous violation of that order. We find purity all across the various laws of the Israelites: eat only certain foods, avoid people with flaky skin, maintain the boundaries of the sanctuary, etc. Purity created boundaries that people saw as keeping them safe from dangerous forces of the world—disease, enemies, and the divine. Pollution was deviation and difference, a violation of boundaries—very dangerous stuff. This could be the boundaries of our bodies (the mouth), the boundaries of time (like the Sabbath), boundaries of buildings (like doors), boundaries between sacred and profane, and so on. Life was normal and good—Pure. So death and dead bodies were a pollution—something that had to be handled in specific and careful ways and something from which one had to be purified. Acts 10 is a good biblical example, for it portrays an analogy between unclean foods and unclean people. God instructs Peter to eat from a sheet full of unclean animals (lizards, seafood, insects). Peter is revulsed at this and say that no “unclean” thing has ever entered his mouth. Later Peter makes the connection that God is teaching him something about interacting with a non-Jewish “unclean” people group, the Gentiles (see the kinship connection). Just as God commanded him to eat unclean food, so now Peter is to take the gospel to this unclean group of people, but it is risky and hard for him to do so.

Fifth and finally, we come to politics and religion. In the United States, we have enshrined the separation of church and state in our Constitution. We recognize that religion still influences our politics (and that our system allows for that), but we conceive of these as two separate institutions. It was not this way in the ancient world. While one could differentiate between a king, and a priest, and a prophet, the king was often chosen by God and had prophets or priests in his court. Israel’s monarchy was constituted by God, and in the Roman world most emperors were said to share in the “divine genius” during their life and were then deified upon death. One could find shrines to Roman emperors alongside shrines to Zeus or Artemis. The Sanhedrin, the highest political body of the Jews in Judea, was made up of leading members of priestly families and other religious leaders. So, politics and religion were tightly woven together in the ancient Mediterranean world, with each one supporting and informing the other.

That’s our survey of several cultural principles that characterized the ancient Mediterranean world, encompassing the eras of both the Old Testament and the New Testament. In our next lecture, we will look at a few aspects distinctive to the two testaments.

Video Three

Welcome back to part three of our Cultures in and of the Bible series. In the last video, we looked at a series of cultural principles that broadly characterize the Mediterranean culture shared across the Old and New Testaments. However, there are some difference between the two testaments and the worlds that they intersected with, and we will take a look at these in this video.

We start with the Old (or what the book of Hebrews calls the “First”) Testament. The people of Israel are often associated with Semitic culture and classified as being part of the Ancient Near East. However, Semitic culture had a lot of contacts with broader Arab culture, and could be classified better as Western Asia since the strip of land that contains Palestine was often influenced or controlled by powers that lie to the east in modern day Syria, Iraq, and Iran. We should remember that some innovations that we consider key to the development of culture: agricultural developments, the use of iron, legal codes, and other things emerge in the early days of the stories of Israel’s ancestors.

The stories of the patriarchs (Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and so on) strongly reflect the nomadic and shepherding life of the Israelites. It comes through as well in the traditions of the wandering of Israel in the desert after the Exodus. This way of life continues the characterize the people of Israel for hundreds of years to come, but we also see changes in this way of life as well, especially with the conquest of Palestine, the settling of cities, and the creation of a central, capital, temple-city in Jerusalem under David and Solomon.

Similar transitions can be seen in the tribal organization of the people of Israel, deep traditions stretch back to root Israel as a confederation of 12 tribes who conquered and settled the land of Palestine under divine direction. We see tribal organization and tribal tensions throughout the first five books of the Bible. But the formation of the Israelite monarchy creates a structure that downplays the looser tribal confederation. The tensions of the tribes of Israel and the more centralized governmental leadership in Jerusalem continue through to the exile. After the exile another transition happens, as Israel moves from being a small, independent kingdom to being a province under the colonial control of larger empires. Thus, the very meaning of calling Israel a “nation” changes dramatically across the Old Testament.

Finally, one of the aspects of the Old Testament that many people find strange is the prominence of ritual, temples, and sacrifices. It helps to associate these with the principle of purity and pollution that we discussed before. Temples served as good ways to mark of and guard the domain of the divine, which was so pure that it posed a danger to regular people (one of David’s men died instantaneously when he tried to stead the sacred ark of the covenant in a cart). Rituals and especially sacrifices were ways to deal with issues of pollution. The highly ordered and unusual activities of ritual helped to move people and things from a polluted status to a pure status. Quite strangely for us, blood was believed to have a purifying effect on people and things (e.g. blood was applied to items of the temple to make them holy and appropriate for use in rituals). Animal (and other kinds of) sacrifices were truly sacrifices in a world of subsistence and survival (remember that one too?)—people spent their limited and very valuable resources to restore order in their world and between the divine and human spheres.

The New Testament moves our focus to the west. The influential center of the world is no longer in Babylon to the east but in Greece and Rome, with Judea lying on the far eastern edge of the Roman Empire. While this is still part of the larger Mediterranean world, we now encounter more of the elements of Hellenistic and Roman culture.

The predominant cultural principle in this era was honor and shame. In contrast to our more individualized emphasis on self-esteem and guilt, honor and shame were determined socially. A person’s honor was largely determined by their position in and evaluation by the people around them. Honor came in three primary forms. The first and most important was ascribed honor—that is honor that one gets from one’s birth, kinship, and home. If you are born in a certain place to a certain family, you get a certain amount of honor. The second kind of honor is attributed—this is honor granted to you by a superior, say when you are recognized for doing a good deed. The final kind of honor is achieved—honor that you go out and earn in contest (usually verbal contests) with other people. When you best them, you gain some honor. Shame is a failure to preserve one’s honor and comes upon a person when your social group evaluates you as violating its norms (like “pollution”) or acting like outsiders. While it may disturb us, the ancient world naturally attached honor to men (who carried kinship lines and acted honorably in public) and shame to women (who were more associated with home and were viewed as weaker and vulnerable). Whenever, you come to a biblical passage try to put yourself in this framework of honor and shame, considering the social contests that are going on to preserve one’s honor and guard against the weakness and strangeness that would be considered shameful.

Two other dynamics characterize the way that this predominant honor and shame cultural system operated. The first is “limited good.” In contemporary American culture, we tend to think of everyone having the opportunity to succeed in the world. However, people of the ancient world thought of good as limited. If you gain something, you have to take it from someone else. It is a zero-sum game. If you win honor in a debate, someone else loses it. If you make a lot of money, that means someone else is going without. This has led anthropologists to characterize the ancient Mediterranean as an “agonistic” culture, where “agonistic” means to struggle or wrestle. Thus, people viewed social and economic interactions as an ongoing struggle for honor and resources in a world where both of these were limited. It was honorable to do well in such situations, but one shouldn’t do too well or one begins to shamefully deprive others of the basics they need to survive.

Finally, the Hellenistic-Roman economy was built upon a system of patrons and clients, not employers and employees. In our time and place, we think of employees putting in time and being owed their wages and benefits by employers. However, in the ancient world wealthy and honorable patrons gave out benefits and gifts to their various clients. Those, clients were then obligated to offer support and gratitude to their patron (which increased the patron’s honor). These patron-client relationships were traditional and often rooted in kinship. Generations of families would be linked as patrons and clients. Clients of elite patrons could also become patrons of other clients lower down on the social ladder, thus forming a stable, even rigid, socio-economic system that reinforced itself.

That’s a lot of mind-bending information about several ways in which the worlds that we encounter in scripture were informed by cultures rather different than ours. In the fourth and final video in this series we will look at a couple of examples to illustrate how these principles work in the pages of scripture.

Video Four

Welcome back to the fourth and final installment on our series “Cultures in and of the Bible.” In this video, we will be looking at a couple of examples in scripture, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament, to see how some of these cultural principles might help us understand what we read there more authentically.

As our first example, let’s take a look at a passage from one of the prophets of the Old Testament, Micah 5:1-4. This is a passage that the New Testament picks up and applies as a prophecy to the birth of Jesus. It speaks to that and to many other things in Micah’s day as well. Here it is:

Marshal your troops now, city of troops, for a siege is laid against us. They will strike Israel's ruler on the cheek with a rod. 2"But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans1 of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times." 3Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor bears a son, and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites. 4 He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.”

You can see the issues of subsistence and survival here. There is fear of the coming siege against the city of Jerusalem by foreign powers at the beginning of the passage, and the resolution at the end features the people “living securely” under God’s chosen ruler in the land. Honor & shame come out in the act of striking Israel’s rule on the cheek. This is an act meant to visibly shame the ruler of the people after they have been conquered. We see the tribal organization of Israel in the location of Bethlehem Ephrathah, which is described as small among the “clans” of Israel. Here we also see one of God’s regular habits of reversing human assessments of honor and shame. Even though this is a small (and so less honorable) clan, God will bring a great ruler out of it. We also see the preference for tradition here. This ruler is not some “new” person freshly appearing on the scene, but rather one “whose origins are from of old, from ancient times”—it is what is old that is truly good. God reaches back into the past to bring out a saving ruler. We can see the mixed national history of Israel here too. Clearly, the nation has been settled into cities with references to sieges and Bethlehem, and God’s people are now threatened by those international powers (here, the Assyrians). But the shepherding traditions are there too, for the leader of the people chosen by God is depicted as a “shepherd” –one who tends the flock of God’s people. This is a political leader but one chosen by God and aiming to restore God’s people. What this leader does is restore the kinship connections of the people, helping “the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites.” So, the cultural principles of the ancient world saturate this brief passage. Knowing them helps us to understand what is going on in Micah’s prophecy and understand how the people of his day would have heard it as well as understanding a bit about the unexpectedly low origins of Jesus the Messiah.

The next passage is one of the many stories of Jesus healing people in the gospels. It is the story of a woman with a crippling disability as found in Luke 13:10-17:

10 On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, 11and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. 12When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, "Woman, you are set free from your infirmity." 13Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. 14Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, "There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath." 15The Lord answered him, "You hypocrites! Doesn't each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? 16Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?" 17When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

Again, several aspects of ancient Mediterranean culture fill in this story. The gospel writer sets us in a pure and ordered time and place. This even occurs on the Sabbath (the weekly order of time) and in the synagogue—a sacred place dedicated to worship and study. However, into this place comes a woman who had been crippled “by a spirit” for years. This holy time and place is polluted by this evil and unclean spirit. We see the daily influence of the spiritual here as the woman’s condition is not attributed to disease or injury but to a spirit. Jesus frees the woman from her “infirmity” (not from the “spirit,” so perhaps it was a disease/injury after all). Jesus acts in public to free the woman, but then the leader of the synagogue is angry. Why? Because Jesus has violated the orderliness of the time and place by doing work which ought not be done on the Sabbath according to Jewish law, which represents deeply ingrained cultural norms. Note that as a leader this man is a political-and-religious leader who probably acted as a patron among the local community. He seeks to casts Jesus as a shameful violator of their cultural boundaries, and he is in a position to do so. Jesus responds with a verbal challenge, citing other traditions of Israel about the care of animals. Again, Jesus cites tradition to contest the synagogue leader’s interpretation of tradition because the wisdom of the people lies in what is old. Jesus also ascribes honor to the woman, identifying her according to her kinship connections as a “daughter of Abraham” who had been oppressed by Satan (so maybe it was a spirit). Such an honorable person should not bear such oppression. With this answer, Jesus achieves honor in the eyes of the people and all of Jesus’s opponents are humiliated. Here we see the agonistic struggle for honor in a word of limited good. Jesus gains honor and the synagogue leader loses it.

So there you have it. We have surveyed several of the cultural principles of the ancient world: Subsistence & Survival, Traditional society, Kinship, Purity & Pollution, and Politics & Religion. For the Old Testament we saw the additional principles of the changing of Israelite civilization, tribal organization, and the prominence of ritual/sacrifice. For the New Testament we added Honor & Shame, Limited Good, and Patrons & Clients. We wrapped this all up into a passage from the Old Testament and the New Testament that exemplified many of these cultural elements. We hope this will give you a deeper appreciation and understanding of God’s word as you seek to interpret it in your class assignments.