A Stir of Echoes and Allusions In Scripture

 The more I read and study the Bible, the more I realize that it is a cross-cultural experience. The Scriptures were not written by 21st century Americans. God inspired 9th Century B.C. shepherds and 6th. century B.C. prophets and 1st century A.D. extremist rabbis, etc. to write to His people at a specific time in history for a specific occasion or purpose. It is still God's word for us today, but to hear it correctly we have to remember that God was delivering a message, firstly, to Israel (OT) then to Jews/Greek-speaking people throughout the Mediterranean basin (NT). As I have said before, for 1st century Jews the Scriptures were their "pop culture." We know song lyrics, lines from literature, movie quotes, snatches of wisdom--thousands and thousands of word pictures. The people of  the Bible were the same way.
  Lately, I have been reading Richard B. Hays' Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. His purpose is specific--he examines how Paul uses Scripture in his own writings (how he quotes, alludes to, and echoes what we know as the Old Testament). It has been an interest of mine for several years to examine how the NT uses the Old. In my work with Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Acts, I found many of the OT allusions or quotes to add fascinating depth to the passage when I examined the text being quoted or alluded to in its original context. Sometimes these allusions go right over our heads because the original authors assumed that their readers would be biblically literate. Hays fascinatingly walks the reader through Romans and bits of his other letters, showing that Paul was so steeped in the words of Scripture that he would often consciously allude to an OT passage (expecting the reader to know to what he was referring) but other times he may not have been so intentional yet the concepts, stories, words, etc were rolling around in his mind and came out (an echo). A somewhat modern example of this phenomenon may be Don McLean's American Pie: the more you know about rock 'n roll history the more you can pick out allusions.
 My wife has a friend who is known for using quotes in the wrong way. One day they were discussing a complicated situation when she said, "Oh what a tangled web we weave." My wife was confused by the reference to deception and asked, "When first we practice to deceive?" The friend said, "Oh is that the rest of the phrase?" But often people may use only part of a quote or phrase to refer to the whole when they know that the other person or persons they are talking to will know the rest. The writers of the Bible often did this too. The catch is that many of us fail to understand the full meaning of what is being stated because we are not as immersed in the world of the Scriptures as we could be.
  One of the helps to this is becoming more familiar with what my NT professor, Dr. M. Robert Mulholland, called the "Jewish Pool of Images." Next time, we will begin to examine what this "Jewish Pool of Images" might be and how it may become our pool as well.
   

Kissing Through A Veil--Thoughts On Learning Biblical Languages

 Recently, I was sitting in Starbucks, trying to study, when a man sat down next to me and struck up a conversation. Incidently, if you are an introvert and looking for a good way to witness, go to Starbucks with an interesting Christian book or your Bible and try to be left alone--they will come to you. After several minutes, he asked me if I had taken Hebrew. I told him that I had taken two semesters and unfortunately still wasn't very good at it. He then asked me if I truly saw it as beneficial outside of it being an interesting academic exercise? I replied that I did because it opened up incite into hebraic thought. I wish I would have been more articulate. I wish I had been more prepared. But looking back on my conversation I have more to say.

Jewish poet, Haim Nachman Bialik wrote that,"Reading the Bible in translation is like kissing your new bride through a veil." This is true. As I have worked on learning the original languages, the more I realize that no one translation has it all. If you do not feel called to learn Koine Greek or Biblical Hebrew, you should at least be reading several reputable translations. It all goes back to the idea that translation is interpretation to a degree. There are some instances where the syntax of a passage or the endings to certain words require a translator to untangle something in an interpretive way. Sometimes a word does not appear in the original language, but to make sense in English translators have to supply a word. Or sometimes a word can me several different things. An example of how this plays out can be seen in the work of Richard B. Hays who has proposed a subjective genitive reading of pistis Christou ("faith(fulness) of Christ") rather than "faith in Christ."

All of this to say: I don't believe that you have to be able to read the original languages to understand the Bible, but I do think that it is better to be able to read the Bible in its original languages. Kissing through a veil is better than no kiss at all, but if you can lift that veil it will be better!

It boils down to this: the Bible was not originally written in English, the world of the Bible was not 21st century American or anywhere else. So reading the Bible is somewhat of a cross-cultural experience. That is not to say that the Holy Spirit does not speak through the words of the Scripture directly to us in many ways or that the Bible does not speak universally in many ways. He can and does. Thank God! But the scandal of the particular is that the prophets, psalmist, apostles, etc. wrote their songs, books, and letters to certain people for a specific purpose and it is all too easy to impose our interests and purposes on the text. This topic is larger than mere linguistics but if we can lower one barrier to clearer understanding, shouldn't we try?

In the process of trying to track down my quote, I came across this interview with N.T. Wright, a theologian I had the privilege of meeting on one occasion. He speaks to some of these issues and some others. I felt it was well worth including here. Please share your thoughts.