The Bible in Context

by Dr Keith Dyer

The Bible bears witness to the Word-become-flesh (Jn 1:14) — God’s revelation bundled up in nappy cloths, squawking in a smelly feeding trough (Lk 2:12).[1] So the words about the Word — and even the very words of the Word — have a particular context and come wrapped in all the ambiguities and frailties of human existence and human languages — namely Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, in the earliest texts.

Fortunately for us, we have many wonderful translations that draw us into that first century context of the Word, but sometimes we are lazy and think that only our own context matters when we read the Bible. We joke that if the King James Version was good enough for Paul, then it is good enough for us — but the joke is on us if our familiarity with the English text leads us to ignore the very different cultural contexts of Jesus and Paul altogether. Sure, we don’t need a degree in Ancient History or Languages to read Scripture well, but we leave ourselves open to all sorts of misunderstandings if we read the Bible as if God speaks only English — to people just like us.

Language in Context

All languages have limitations, and English is no exception. Here are three examples we should bear in mind.

(i) Languages differ in the way they talk about what is ‘figurative’ and what is ‘factual’. Our Gospels portray Jesus as a passionate preacher in a Semitic culture full of colorful language, vivid humour and, sometimes, gross metaphors. When he speaks of cutting off hands and plucking out eyes to avoid the fires of gehenna — we need to take him very seriously, but not literally!

(ii) We have lost the ability in English to distinguish between ‘you’ (singular) and ‘you’ or ‘youse’ or y’all (plural). Most ‘yous’ in the Bible are ‘youse’ and not ‘yous’!! This leads us astray when we read texts like 1 Corinthians 6:19 — “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” We read this individualistically, as if referring to our personal bodies, rather than corporately (the body, singular, of all of us, plural), as in: “Do y’all not know that the body of y’all is a temple of the Holy Spirit within y’all, which y’all have from God, and that y’all are not yourselves?” We need to recover our relational spirituality, and correct the excessive privatisation of our faith.

(iii) Our wonderful Reformation heritage has led recent translations to overstate our ‘faith in Christ’ as the only measure of our salvation. There are 8 times in Paul’s letters where we should return to using the ‘faith/faithfulness of Christ’ (as we used to, in Rom 3:22, 26; Gal 2:16 twice, 20; 3:22; Eph 3:12; and Phil 3:9). The King James Version itself has: “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Gal 2:16). So our faith is embedded in Christ’s faithfulness, and our salvation is even more secure. Maybe Paul really did use the KJV after all!

Culture and History in Context

We downplay the political implications of the Gospel when we translate the same Greek word as ‘The Kingdom of God’ and ‘The Empire of Rome’. In our Gospels, the Empire of God directly confronts Rome and all other human governments. What difference might it make to our reading of Luke if we kept in mind the following background?

1. The Romans kept part of their 10^th Legion, the Fretensis (whose banners and medallions carried the image of a pig/boar), at Gerasa, across the Jordan. Now read Luke 8:26-39 about the exorcism of the ‘legion’, the pigs and the fear of the people there. What might this story be saying about the ‘demons of the colonised mind’?
2. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that Emmaus was the location of a rebellion when Herod the Great died. The Romans squashed it brutally, and 2,000 people were crucified in that area. Now read Luke 24:13-35 (and especially verse 21) in that light. What kind of redemption and hope is it that Jesus’ crucifixion (number 2001!) brings, such that Cleopas and companion would walk all the way back to Jerusalem, uphill, in the dead of night?

Let’s read our Bibles with our eyes and ears open to the cultural and linguistic assumptions underlying the text — and allow the Living Word to challenge some of our own assumptions today.

Dr Keith Dyer is the Professor of New Testament at Whitley College.

The multi-age resources and studies on Luke’s Gospel, Party On Together, by Beth Barnett and Keith Dyer, are available to download from the BUV and Whitley websites, or to purchase in book form from Scripture Union.

[1] I confess that each Christmas I refuse to sing “no crying he makes” in Away in a Manger. What kind of baby would that be? See also 1 John 4:2.