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?

1. Or for a podcast.
2. Even the NRSV is less literal here omiting the “the” before women, one of the oddities of this verse is that Paul seems to be talking about some particular women.
3. Another is the way most English translations make the first sentence a run-on from the verse before, though many MSS mark vv.34-5 off from the surrounding texts.

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:

• incongruity: found I’ll claim in the disparity of cultures between peasant farming Bethlehem and semi-nomadic herding Moab
• lighthearted mood – it’s harvest time and there’s a meal
• surprise – Ruth “happens” on the field of a suitable husband
• ingenuity (cleverness is often a mark of humour think of puns) – if it’s present it is in Ruth’s possible playing with words for servanthood, but that’s too technical for this post
• inferiority – Ruth is a foreign, young, woman; Boaz is a wealthy, older, man
• “inelasticity” (following Bergson) – does Boaz’ slight pomposity count?
• human pretension revealed in all its lack of glory! – not at all present
• hyperbole – not present, except perhaps in the quantity of grain Ruth gleans

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

1. Chapter three is a possible exception  – and the humour there, if there is humour, is disguised and sexual, so very difficult to spot with confidence across cultures!

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:

• incongruity
• lighthearted mood
• surprise
• ingenuity (cleverness is often a mark of humour think of puns)
• inferiority
• disguise or something or someone pretending to be something else
• “inelasticity” (following Bergson)
• human pretension revealed in all its lack of glory!

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:

• A Text without Contexts is Dumb!
• Luke 9:1 – 9:36: What’s the point of a miracle?
• Prophets: three principles to unlock the code
• Reading the parable of the Big Feast in context (Luke 14)

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1. If the art and science of understanding is hermeneutics, then the person who does it is presumably a hermeneut.

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:

• conversion not prediction
• context not timeless
• conversation not monologue

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:

• sheep follow shepherds, they are not left on the hills and then driven
• green pastures, means land where there is some green vegetation, not just rocks and dust
• wadis: steep sided gorges, semi-desert little vegetation, quick run off from  hills = flash floods

For more on this see also my “Psalm 23 in context”

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Banana plantation at the foot of Mt Carmel

Since this is a gripping, but well-known, story what I’ll try to do in this podcast is show you how a bit of context (see here for more on context and understanding the Bible).

I’ll also tell you God’s two nicknames, in some religious traditions knowing all a god’s names is really important, in Hinduism the god Vishnu has 1,000 names, in Islam there is a tradition that God has 99 names. Yahweh the God the Bible talks about has kicknames as well as formal names!

Forrested crest of Carmel from the Eshkol Tower of Haifa University

A couple of photos to illustrate the geography

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In spring it becomes a torrent, today's river is depleted by water taken by modern pumping stations for cities and irrigation

For today’s reading there are historical (standing stones) and geographic (the Jordan river) information that is important, and perhaps better communicated by pictures and words, rather than words alone. So here are some relevant pictures, with brief captions…

Even today the Jordan valley has (in places) dense bush, making it a strange and dangerous place for people more used to dry pastureland. Photo Wikimedia.

Ancient monoliths (like these from Tel Gezer in the Judean Shephelah) are still impressive. Photo Tim Bulkeley

They were often erected in rows or circles, they still cause us to wonder why they were raised.

As part of my seminar on Bible abuse at Easter Camp I talked about how a couple of sorts of context (cotext or social setting and culture) help us understand Jesus parable of the Big Feast (Luke 14:16ff.) more sharply. This podcast is a quick version of that focusing on questions of context.

For the second part of this “A text without contexts is dumb” series we’ll think about cotext, the text that surrounds a text, providing context. The biblical examples come from Psalms and Ephesians. You might want to listen to Part 1 here first

Amos 7:14 is a striking problem for interpreters, not least because what Amos is reported as saying to Amaziah seems to contradict what he is reported to be doing in the rest of the book. This makes it fertile ground for us to incorporate either our presuppositions or rhetoric into the text.

(I use the NIV and Grasping God’s Word) as examples in this but do not intend disrespect for the translators or authors, just to suggest they are human too!
Duvall, J. Scott, and J. Daniel Hays. Grasping God’s Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible. 2nd ed. Zondervan, 2005 is an excellent book, which we plan to use as a textbook for a course I’ll teach next year

]]> http://5minutebible.com/amos-714-presuppositions-and-rhetoric/feed/ 0 0:05:13 Amos 7:14 is a striking problem for interpreters, not least because what Amos is reported as saying to Amaziah seems to contradict what he is reported to be doing in the rest of the book. This makes it fertile ground for us to incorporate either our[...] Amos 7:14 is a striking problem for interpreters, not least because what Amos is reported as saying to Amaziah seems to contradict what he is reported to be doing in the rest of the book. This makes it fertile ground for us to incorporate either our presuppositions or rhetoric into the text. (I use the NIV and Grasping God’s Word) as examples in this but do not intend disrespect for the translators or authors, just to suggest they are human too! Duvall, J. Scott, and J. Daniel Hays. Grasping God’s Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible. 2nd ed. Zondervan, 2005 is an excellent book, which we plan to use as a textbook for a course I’ll teach next year Amos, Context, Reading Dr Tim Bulkeley clean no http://5minutebible.com/a-text-without-contexts-is-dumb/ http://5minutebible.com/a-text-without-contexts-is-dumb/#comments Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:42:00 +0000 tim http://5minutebible.com/?p=34

This latest one is aimed at real beginners in biblical study and addresses why multiple contexts are important for reading/hearing texts, particularly the Bible.