Video Series: Intro to Biblical Culture

⬤Marcia: A Chinese student was moving into a dorm room after his U.S. roommates had dropped off their luggage and left. When they returned they found their suitcases opened and the Chinese student was trying on their clothes!

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⬤Brian: Shalom! Welcome to Bridges to the Bible! I’m Brian Johnson.

⬤Marcia: And I’m Marcia Johnson.

⬤Brian: So in the story here, why in the world would the student do this?

⬤Marcia: I got the story from Sarah Lanier’s book Foreign to Familiar, where she explains a lot about differences in culture, and the difference here was the Chinese student came from a culture where property was not owned individually but by the group. Well, first I probably should explain what I’m talking about with culture. A lot of times we’re thinking about the way that people dress or the way the people eat, but a lot more significantly and commonly hidden is why they act in a certain way, how they’re thinking. So it’s the way of life of a people group or a subgroup both on how they act and why. And so in this case, the Americans were like: “These are our personal belongings. You’re violating our rights!” And the Chinese student, coming from a different culture, had no idea that Americans viewed their possessions this way. Unfortunately this was a really bad way for this Chinese student to begin his college career in America.

⬤Brian: So today we’re going to do an introduction to culture in the Bible and how to understand it. And what you can do is you can go to BridgesToTheBible.com to download the episode guide to this to follow along with the notes, as well as there are discussion questions and more along with that. So let’s jump in! Today we’re going to be looking at why to study Biblical culture, how we’ve gotten the different pieces of Biblical culture, how did they enter into our culture, our images, and just some of the takeaways, some of the ways that we can take from that. So jumping into it, why should we study Biblical culture? There’s a great quote that I enjoy: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” What do you think of (we’ve traveled a bunch overseas) what do you think about when traveling to a foreign country?

⬤Marcia: Well I know we do a lot of preparation ahead of time. I usually buy a whole stack of books and read about what things we are going to see, what the food’s going to be like, and try to learn a few little phrases. So let me try some out. Here’s one of the books I bought for going to Israel, and there’s some Hebrew phrases. “Boker… tov…”

⬤Brian: “Boker or! Ma shlomech!”

⬤Marcia: … “Hi.”

⬤Brian: (Say “tov“)

⬤Marcia: Oh, “Tov!” Well one of the things that we were told on things to pack was to pack a modesty kit, and I’m like: haven’t heard that before! Fortunately they did explain it, and that when you go to certain sites, particularly churches, you cannot have bare skin showing on upper arms or let your knees show, and so they suggested to pack something like a scarf that you could cover up that offensive skin.

⬤Brian: So that when you saw signs like this, you knew to cover up your legs, you need to cover up your dogs, cover up your guns, that sort of thing.

⬤Marcia: Right.

⬤Brian: Okay, got it.

⬤Marcia: So another thing that happened was we would just assume things that we were not prepared for, and there was this one funny sign that reminded me of that. In our culture we don’t use the term WC, and we also assume you can go to any public restroom and not have to pay. However you do need to pay in most foreign places. This was a funny sign: “Only 50 cent is enough to feel the magic atmosphere”! And so it got me thinking, like, if we’re traveling to a foreign country now, and there’s things that we just commonly assume. How many things do we assume about Biblical culture that we’re really off on? Things that are just not said.

⬤Brian: Right, one example of something that’s not said is the idea of a prayer shawl, or tassels. So in Numbers 15, God tells the people to sew tassels on the corners of their garments, and we see religious Jews doing this to this day like this. Today it’s either like that or another common way is with a prayer shawl: a tallit. And you can see on the corners of it, right there, how it’s got these tassels. How much artwork do you ever see of Jesus wearing tassels? Now, this is a modern garment; this would not have been around in Jesus’ time. This was invented because they don’t wear robes generally today. And so here you go. But think about it, Jesus, if He is going to obey His Heavenly Father, He’s going to wear tassels on the corners of his robe. And can we assume that that happened? Well, for instance, it talks about the woman who was bleeding, and says that she grabbed the corner or the hem of his garment. Well, depending on your translation, what’s on the corner? The tassel!

⬤Marcia: But it doesn’t say that.

⬤Brian: It doesn’t – it assumes that you know what’s on the corner because that’s what basically everybody did.

⬤Marcia: So why would she want to grab His corner or grab His tassel?

⬤Brian: It’s not just a matter of convenience, probably, because in the book of Malachi it says “the Son of Righteousness will come with healing in His wings.”

⬤Marcia: “♫ Risen with healing in his wings! ♪” We sing that at Christmas time!

⬤Brian: Exactly! Now, the word for “wing” there is kanaf which is also the word for “corner”. Think more like “extremity”. So will rise with healing in His “corners”; well, what’s on the corner? The tassel! So by her grabbing this and wanting to be healed, it says:

⬤Marcia: That’s quite a statement of faith!

⬤Brian: Exactly, it’s not just I want to be healed. I believe you are Messiah who has healing in your corners, in your tassels!

⬤Marcia: So that’s a really good example of something that is not said but the Biblical authors just assumed everybody knows that corners had tassels.

⬤Brian: In a Jewish society, absolutely.

⬤Marcia: So we may miss some of the things that are assumed and not said, but also we may bring in our assumptions into what we’re reading of the Text because our default is to read things through our own culture. Whereas, actually, reading the Bible is a cross-cultural experience, and not just what they did differently but, how they thought that could be a lot different.

⬤Brian: And you think about how we get the images of Biblical culture. A lot of that comes from Middle Ages or Renaissance art. One very common example is DaVinci’s “Last Supper”, a beautiful painting. But really this painting tells us, in terms of the setting, of DaVinci’s culture more than Jesus’. It’s supposed to be Passover, which you celebrate after dark (it doesn’t look like); it’s a European villa (they look very European); it’s Passover with unleavened bread…?

⬤Marcia: (looks like puffy rolls)

⬤Brian: Yeah, a number of things with this that it’s not portraying the Last Supper as it would have been in the first century. It’s if the Last Supper was happening in an Italian villa in DaVinci’s day, it would have looked maybe something more like this.

⬤Marcia: I think we’re also influenced a lot from story books: Bible story books, videos, and so on. Pretty much common images of Jesus show Him wearing a white robe with a sash, often blue, sometimes red. Kind of makes it look like maybe a beauty pageant sash.

⬤Brian: Does he go around waving?

⬤Marcia: He’s usually pretty white, American / Northern European looking. Another example here, similar kind of things: Who is Jesus? Oh here, we have Jesus coming down Palm Sunday. I don’t see really tassels on anybody… — oh here’s somebody who has tassels! Oh! And it has a label on it:

⬤Brian: “Pharisees”. So what this is saying is the Pharisees were the ones who obeyed God, and all the other people really didn’t care what God has to say, including Jesus.

⬤Marcia: And He’s wearing a modern —

⬤Brian: –prayer shawl. Is he wearing blue jeans, too?

⬤Marcia: And, unfortunately, this is fairly common, so our culture we project into things that we read in the Bible.

⬤Brian: You know, our values are also rather different as well. You think about how we view just daily life like: youth versus age.

⬤Marcia: That reminds me of a proverb: “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.” So in the Bible, age is a positive thing; it shows experience and wisdom. Whereas, look at Paul writing to Timothy: “Let no one despise you for your youth.” So youth is seen as a disadvantage as opposed to our current modern culture: it’s really flipped that we see the younger person is the more valuable.

⬤Brian: Another way that we’ve muddied the waters is through translations. The Bible wasn’t written in English; it was translated into English, and we’ve got a lot of great translations, but there’s some difficulties in translating the Bible. There aren’t one-to-one correlations of words. Also a translation is an interpretation of how you want to take a passage, and the translators are human: they’ve got biases and flaws just like the rest of us. They do a great job but it’s difficult work. For instance: what was Jesus’ profession?

⬤Marcia: Well usually it’s translated as “carpenter”.

⬤Brian: Right! Now the Greek word there, tekton, could be translated as carpenter, but it could also be translated a few other ways as well. It’s a builder, kind of a little more generally, but is someone who’s building with the local building materials.

⬤Marcia: So around here we call our builders carpenters.

⬤Brian: Because we build with wood, and so that would make sense to call a “tekton” here a “carpenter”. In Jesus’ day and in Jesus’ place they build out a stone; there’s not a lot of wood.

⬤Marcia: There’s a lot of stone!

⬤Brian: And there’s a lot of stone! I mean even see here: a place called Nazareth Village. You see the building: made out of stone. He’s working in some wood, so I wouldn’t say that Jesus never worked with wood; no, I’m sure he did. But he probably worked a lot with stone, so builder or craftsman would probably be a better translation of that.

⬤Marcia: So Brian are we saying that we can’t understand the Bible without knowing its culture and other areas of context?

⬤Brian: We’re not saying that at all. The basic message of salvation for the Bible is universal, and it’s something that anyone can understand, even without all this detailed information.

⬤Marcia: And a lot of the other, just good basic teaching.

⬤Brian: Yeah.

⬤Marcia: So Brian can we assume that the culture is pretty much the same then throughout the Bible?

⬤Brian: Not exactly, I mean, if you think about even just the United States, that different areas of the country have different cultures. There’s similarities and there are differences. And likewise over the two plus centuries of our nation’s history, there’s been shifts in culture as well. The Bible is a couple millennia of history, over an even larger area of many different nations, so there are definite differences. Now, over time things changed, much slower there, and there were more similarities between cultures, but there were also large differences. So we can’t just take one and assume everyone everywhere took the same thing because that’s not the case.

⬤Marcia: And we’re also not saying that one culture is better or worse than the other. But our whole point in this is that we need to become more aware of how the Biblical characters viewed things, what they thought about.

⬤Brian: Yeah, whether it’s right or wrong, we can debate, but we’ll get into that. The other thing we need to remember is that the Bible wasn’t written to us; instead, it was written to them. Now it was written for us; it’s for our benefit!. We can tap in and read, but they weren’t thinking of us when they wrote it. They were thinking of their audience.

⬤Marcia: I think we should do one quick example that if we know just a little piece of the culture, how that can illuminate the Text.

⬤Brian: Alright!

⬤Marcia: So from Psalm 119: “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” So what kind of picture comes into our head when we read “lamp” and “light”? Well, I actually was able to purchase a first century oil lamp. They would have a wick in there and olive oil, and hang it by a rope, and walking with it by your feet, and this would give just enough light for one more step. So the lamp is not a flood light. And understanding this verse then in this light is that God guides us one step at a time.

⬤Brian: Yeah, I like that. That’s really nice. Well, let’s let’s recap here. We looked at why we should study Biblical culture; we looked at the assumptions that we bring when we look at the Bible; we looked at a little bit about what the Bible is bringing in terms of its assumptions, that it’s just expecting us to know; and so therefore if we’re going to be responsible readers, we need to recognize these assumptions, these biases, that we bring. And if the Bible doesn’t make sense, it’s probably not the Bible’s fault; it probably made sense more or less to the original audience, and the onus is on us to try to understand it and get into how did they understand it.

⬤Marcia: So I think some first steps in how then can we begin to understand Biblical culture better: one thing I think we need to be asking a lot of questions, read slowly, think about what we’re reading. Is there anything unclear? Something going on that we could study further? We need to become sensitive to what’s going on in the background, whether it’s spoken or not.

⬤Brian: And we need to be aware of these biases that we bring to it, and not just when we’re dealing with the Bible, but really just any time in life to be aware that we have biases that we bring when we interact with other people.

⬤Marcia: It can be helpful if we have some interactions with people of different cultures, it helps raise our awareness that there are differences. And maybe we are able to see somebody in person from another culture; otherwise, it might be reading books, might be seeing videos, or a variety of ways that we can understand that cultures do vary.

⬤Brian: So this has been an introduction to Biblical culture. I’m glad that you could join us! Head to BridgesToTheBible.com to download the episode guide with the notes, with the discussion questions, and more. Coming up next week, we’re going to get into our first series on Biblical culture, where we’re going to focus on the communal nature of their culture. Until next time, SHALOM!

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