Historical and Cultural Context for the New Testament

Years ago, I read an article about how some Japanese toilets have special built-in features, including electric seat warmers.  I thought this was weird.  I would not want to sit on a warmed toilet seat and I didn't understand why someon else would.  I couldn't explain it further than thinking to myself that different people feel differently about different things.  Many years later, I talked to friend who had returned to the U.S. after spending some months living in Japan.  He told me that the Japanese did not heat their entire homes.  In cold seasons, they would heat the space they were staying in, or just their beds at night.  After learning that, I was able figure out for myself why a Japanese person would want a seat warmer on their toilet.  In an American, climate-controlled house, a room-temperature toilet seat is about 70 degrees Fahrenheit.  A warmed toilet seat would be unpleasantly warm; to me it would feel like someone had just been sitting on the seat.  Though I fully accept that other people use the same toilet seats as me, I don't like to be reminded of the fact.  Now, what if room temperature is 50 degrees?  Suddenly, the toilet seat warmer made sense to me.

So what does this have to do with the Bible?  It shows that context matters.  If you want to understand why people in other cultures do what they do, it helps a lot to understand their circumstances.  This goes doubly when people aren't just separated from you by distance and borders, but also by long stretches of time.  I like to think the Bible mostly speaks for itself, but really there's a lot in it that might not make sense to a modern reader.  In recent years, I've got into reading about the historical and cultural context of the Bible, expecially the New Testament.  It's been so helpful to me in making sense of difficult parts that I think everyone who seriously wants to understand the Bible should do it.  The following are some books that I recommend to anyone who wants to learn about the historical and cultural context of the New Testament.  None are very long and I don't think any require much background apart from the Bible itself and some general knowledge of the Roman empire.

Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke  by Kenneth E. Bailey

You may have heard in a sermon that it's important that the father of the Prodigal Son runs to his son when he returns because in traditional Middle Eastern cultures, it's undignified for a grown man to run.  Ok, maybe not, but in my experience those kinds of facts appear in sermons every once in a while.  If you had, you might wonder where that bit of information from came from.   The answer is the late Kenneth E. Bailey.  Bailey wrote several books that interpret parts of the Bible using his knowledge of Middle Eastern culture and customs as well as his knowledge of ancient Middle Eastern Bible translators and commentators.  Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes are two of the earliest of these books, combined into one volume.  In them, he explains how Jesus' contemporaries would likely have understood several of Jesus' parables.  Not only that, he analyzes the structure of the parables, showing that their sentences are arranged deliberately in known rhetorical forms.  I love these books and consequently I love Kenneth Bailey.  There is so much insight to be had from them. 

Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus by Joachim Jeremias

A wide-ranging book about... Jerusalem in the time of Jesus.  Lots of information about the size, structure and economy of Jerusalem and other interesting things like trades and Jewish marriage customs.  Perhaps most useful for understanding the New Testament are the sections about Jewish religious groups.  They explain who the Pharisees and the Sadducees were, and who those "scribes" were that Jesus was arguing with in the Gospels.

Josephus: Thrones of Blood

This is an abridgement and paraphrase of two of Josephus' books: The Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War.  In these books, Josephus writes for a Roman audience, giving an account of the history of the Jewish nation from the times of the Herods to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.  The modern language of this paraphrase makes it easier to read than the older English translations, and it's not a long book.  It's good for understanding the political climate that Jesus and his disciples lived in.

Slaves, Citizens, Sons: Legal Metaphors in the Epistles by Francis Lyall

In this book, Lyall explains Roman, Greek and Hebrew law pertaining to slavery, citizenship, sonship, inheritance and adoption.  Dry stuff?  No, because it's useful for understanding what Paul means when he writes about being adopted into God's family, being "sons of God", being a "bondservant of Christ", etc.  It's also interesting to see how some things that so many modern people take for granted, like the fact that laws apply to all individuals in a society, just weren't so in the ancient world, especially Rome.  In Roman law, only free men (usually heads of households) were subject to law.  Everyone else -- women, children, slaves and unemancipated sons -- were considered to be property and therefore considered to be "objects" as far as laws were concerned.

The Old Testament Apocrypha

For most of my life, I never read the Apocrypha or thought much about them.  But then I read N. T. Wright's series, "Christian Origins and the Question of God".  In these books, he references them so often that I had to read them to know what he was talking about.  Most were boring to me.  2 Esdras is strange.  I found Ben Sirach's proverbs to be interesting; some are good, but others are worldly and self-interested.  Some are even contrary to what Jesus taught, which reinforces my Protestant belief that it should be canonical.  Even so, these books were read by Jesus' contemporaries and are likely to represent their worldview.  Also, they fill in some of the gap between Old Testament and New Testament history.

Litany Writer

Here's an MS Excel spreadsheet that take scripture references, looks them up on Biblegateway.com and writes them to an MS Word document.  I made it to help my dad write litanies, but it's also good for looking up several passages of scripture at once.  To use it, you'll need MS Office and you'll need to enable macros in Excel.

• Download Litanier.xls

A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing

An Ig Nobel-winning study showed that, on average, people overestimate their ability, and the most incompetent people overestimate their ability the most, both in absolute terms and relative to their peers. I dabble a lot in subjects I don't know much about. I even read the aforementioned study and thought it was very well-presented, and its arguments in favor of the hypotheses were well-formed, even though I am not a psychologist and my knowledge of statistics is vague. Which makes me wonder just how competent I really am. According to the study results, if I believe I'm in the 3rd quartile of competence, I'm probably right, so maybe I'll say I think I am in the 3rd quartile just so people will have to assume I'm better than average.

Dabbling a lot in subjects I'm no expert in and reading lots of Wikipedia articles probably makes me broadly informed but rather fallible, which I don't like so much; I'd rather be narrow-minded but always acutally right. Even so, I'm too curious not to try to figure stuff out on my own. So discovering a website that displays the Greek New Testament with a pop-up window for every word which lists translations, a definition and (best of all!) the word's grammatical attributes, opens up a whole new world of trouble for me to get into. I don't know ancient Greek nor any accepted methods for translating Biblical texts, but I'm definitely going to have to fool with this a bit. I promise not to publish my own version of the Bible or propagate any heretical readings of The Gospel of John, if that makes things any better.

Some Interesting Biblical Cross-Referencing

From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

--Matthew 27:45-46

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?

2 O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, and am not silent.

3 Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the praise of Israel.

4 In you our fathers put their trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.

5 They cried to you and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not disappointed.

6 But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by men and despised by the people.

7 All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads:

8 "He trusts in the LORD;
let the LORD rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him."

9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you
even at my mother's breast.

10 From birth I was cast upon you;
from my mother's womb you have been my God.

11 Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.

12 Many bulls surround me;
strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.

13 Roaring lions tearing their prey
open their mouths wide against me.

14 I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
it has melted away within me.

15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death.

16 Dogs have surrounded me;
a band of evil men has encircled me,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.

17 I can count all my bones;
people stare and gloat over me.

18 They divide my garments among them
and cast lots for my clothing.

19 But you, O LORD, be not far off;
O my Strength, come quickly to help me.

20 Deliver my life from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dogs.

21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;
save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

22 I will declare your name to my brothers;
in the congregation I will praise you.

23 You who fear the LORD, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!

24 For he has not despised or disdained
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.

25 From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
before those who fear you will I fulfill my vows.

26 The poor will eat and be satisfied;
they who seek the LORD will praise him—
may your hearts live forever!

27 All the ends of the earth
will remember and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him,

28 for dominion belongs to the LORD
and he rules over the nations.

29 All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
those who cannot keep themselves alive.

30 Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.

31 They will proclaim his righteousness
to a people yet unborn—
for he has done it.

--Psalm 22

Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty." A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus' lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, "It is finished." With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

John 19:28-30