Contradiction: Photo by topastrodfogna
In part one I drew attention to the problem that this verse seems to contradict what Paul himself approves and to some funny things going on in and around the verse. Here I’ll focus on my reason for mentioning this, how we should respond when a Bible passage seems to contradict what the same author says or does elsewhere…
Photo by Chicago Man
Perhaps no Bible text illustrates the dangers of a simplistic reading of Scripture than 1 Cor 14:34.
If we tear this verse from its cotext,1 and then read it as if the Bible were “God’s instruction manual for life” and even worse read it also literally then we are in trouble! The verse (in the fairly literal NET)2 reads:
the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak. Rather, let them be in submission, as in fact the law says.
The verse is full of oddities.3 Not the least of which is that in 1 Cor 11:4-6 Paul assumes that both women and men will pray and prophesy, and in this same chapter 1 Cor 14:4-5 suggests the same thing, and that this is indeed in the public meeting (cf. v.4). Paul seems to be contradicting himself!
What is going on, and how should we interpret such passages?
Yeah, right! (Photo by swanksalot)
Well,the end of the world has passed, again 
That’s the second time this year! It is the Bible that causes all the problems. or ratheit is bad reading of the Bible that causes all the problems. No book is more commonly misread than Revelation. Christians keep wanting it to predict tomorrow. And boy, do they get tied in knots!
But a simple direct dose of the KIIC principle would cure them… Keep It In Context, that’s all you have to do. Ask how the message would sound to the writer and intended receivers of the message.
Here is the audio: Decoding Revelation: the KIIS principle
Who is that girl? Gustave Doré (1832-1883) from Wikimedia
Ruth is a lovely story, it’s humour is1 gentle and subtle. Part of the subtlety is that most (though not all) of the signs of humour are missing. However, I think we are intended to smile in at least two ways in the portrayal of the characters.
For this entry in the humour series I am repeating my podcast on chapter 2, where I think several of the signs are present, if subtly:
The other candidate is the use of direct speech to characterise, and since it is even less overt I’ll just point to the file for those who want to listen: Anyway here’s my candidate for humour in Ruth: Direct speech in biblical narratives
So, here’s the link to the audio: Ruth is from Moab, Boaz is from Bethlehem
Photo by jaaron
David Ker, in one of the posts that stimulated this series, poses the serious and significant question: given the cultural gulf that separates us from the authors of Scripture how can we be sure something we see as funny tickled ancient Hebrew funny bones?
Spotting humour is easier in speech than writing, and spotting humour is difficult across cultures. Anyone who has worked in a different culture knows how people’s “sense of humour” is to a considerable extent culturally determined.
There’s a whole academic discipline studying such questions, and several biblical scholars have put these studies to work. For we have such a cross-cultural written case everytime we think something in Scripture is funny!
In his paper F. Scott Spencer “Those Riotous – Yet Righteous – Foremothers of Jesus: Exploring Matthew’s Comic Genealogy.” In Are we amused?: humour about women in the biblical worlds, edited by Athalya Brenner, 7-30. Continuum, 2003, lists some attempts to approach such questions and arrives at a list of clues that humour is present. I have modified his list:
So, here’s the link to the audio: Signs of humour: especially in written texts across cultures
In some Bible passages as atheists and others who want to avoid the claims of God are quick to point out God sounds like a Dalek.
Deut 7:2 is a typical case.
When the LORD your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy. (NLT)
Here God demands that Israel exterminate all the Canaanites. What’s going on? Is the God of the Bible (or at least the Old Testament agenocidal maniac?
This is part one of a series, so it will only deal with part of the answer. You will have to watch out for the other parts for a fuller treatment. The really difficult takes more than five minutes
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This clay tablet contains a letter from a local ruler in Canaan to Pharaoh (Original in Pergamon Museum, photo by Tim Bulkeley)
In our student exegesis assignments we ask them to state the intended meaning for the ancient hearers, ideally in one sentence, maybe two, never more than 50 words. They commonly have two problems. The first is being brief I have a Sansblogue post on writing tightly that helps address this issue. Their second problem is that they often tend to forget that the text ever had ancient hearers!
Yet the Bible is a record of communicative acts, and communicative acts are always contextual. Some “holy books” (like the Qur’an?) are believed to be timeless and decontextual, some (like the I Ching) are thought of as magical or quasi-magical, but the Bible is “just” a complex communicative act.
It’s a very complex one, according to Christians, since it involves the Holy Spirit communicating with people in all sorts of times and places, through human acts of communication at particular times and places. That’s what some hermeneuts1 call the double agency of Scripture. But doubly agented texts are not unusual – all messages (except written or electronic ones) have double agency.
So why is the notion that an Old Testament text was addressed to ancient Israelites, and/or ancient Judaites or Jews, before it was addressed to modern Christians so difficult?
Other podcasts on this topic already include:
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I have not focused these 5 Minutes on how Is 53 speaks so clearly about Jesus, it is the Old Testament passage that is most clearly, directly and simply fulfilled in Christ. But that status should not make it paradigmatic for undedrstanding how Jesus fulfills Scripture. For more on that (and there is nothing on that in this podcast 
see What DOES “fulfil” mean? And other podcasts on this topic here.
Instead in this audio talk I want to focus on reading the prophets. The prophets are problematic today, in part because Christians sometimes make them seem more like Nostradamus than Nathan, but even more because these books do fit Yancey’s friend’s description: “weird, confusing and all sound alike”. In these five minutes I’ll mention two key tools background (“context“) and hearing the “voices”.
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William Blake: The Ghost of a Flea
Prophets and prophecy: the most misunderstood part of OT, “mysterious messengers”. A random chunk from a prophetic book will offer a confusing, seemingly muddled, confusion of vivid picture language. Yet, three simple principles can (usually) unlock the mystery and allow the prophets to speak:
As I’ll explain briefly in this podcast these three principles can cause mere fortune tellers to become evangelists, and their mysterious messages to become a call to convert, to change our behaviour, to redeem our world…
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Wadi Qelt, Judean Desert, with St George's monastry by Ester Inbar, available from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:ST
Perhaps the best known and popular psalm among both Jews and Christians but not easy to categorise, except that it expresses trust in God. The imagery makes even better sense when some geography and culture is understood:
For more on this see also my “Psalm 23 in context”
