Video Series: Introduction to History

Consider the following story: “I started packing for my trip to Germany…”.
Would the story change at all if I said: “I started packing for my trip to Germany in 1937…”?
Or…
“I started packing for my trip to Germany in 2020…”.
Does the date change the story at all?

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

So does knowing the date of when this story happened have any influence on it at all? Did that impact you or anything when we added “1937” to the date? Now, what was happening in Germany in 1937? World War II starting just a couple years away… Maybe it makes a difference. Or, “2020”: you’re traveling in 2020, huh? That could make for an interesting story. So in the same way when the Bible gives some sort of setting detail, when something happened — “In the days of Caesar Augustus…” — does that have any impact on the story?

This is the introduction to the historical bridge to the Bible, looking at history: these people, events, all these sort of things that happened in the distant past. I encourage you to go to BridgesToTheBible.com where you can download the episode guide to today’s session, where you can find study notes to follow along, discussion questions, and more.

Now perhaps you had some history classes in school or in college, and you’re like: “Oh! Those were so boring!” These long lists of dates and all these people, names and places and facts. Maybe it was just this overwhelming bunch of data that you just couldn’t absorb. Well I had some poor history teachers/professors along the way, but I had some very good ones as well thankfully. And if you have ever had a good history teacher, you’ll recognize that history isn’t simply a bunch of facts; history is a story. It’s a story about what happened: true stories. I think those are some of the best ones in fact.

You see, the Bible didn’t happen in a vacuum. There’s all sorts of events and things and people happening all around it. Sometimes the Bible alludes to it or calls it out directly, and sometimes the Bible ignores it altogether. It could simply be that it just assumes that you know what’s going on, like what was happening in Germany in 1937.

So today what I want to do is talk a little bit about history, at a very high level. I want to ask “What is history?”. I want to look at the differences between ancient and modern history, and I want to finally end with how understanding history influences our view of the Bible and helps us better understand it.

So to start out: what is history? Now you might say that history is an event or a series of events, but that isn’t entirely accurate. Because we could talk about the dinosaurs and how the dinosaurs happened: there were events where the T-Rex came and ate the other dinosaur or whatever. While that’s something that happened, but that’s not history; that’s what we call prehistory, which falls under a completely different subject matter. So if there’s something prehistoric (before history), then that means that history has a beginning and not at the beginning of time.

So, what is history then? History isn’t just what happened; it’s a record of what happened, typically something written down, but there could be other ways that that could be handled as well. So history is a record of what happened; it’s what we see written.

Now understand, as a result, there are some limitations. For one, it is selective. We don’t have a record of everything that’s happened since the invention of writing or record keeping of history — not the case. So it’s selective. Second, it is biased. It’s written by people, and people have a certain point of view when they’re writing it. And this also plays into the selection: I don’t know if I want to tell this bad thing that happened to me, but I would like to tell the good thing that happened to me. And finally history requires interpretation. It’s not simply what happened; it’s not simply about what was recorded about what happened, but it’s also how we look at that recording. History isn’t just about the past; it’s how we relate to the past, our connection to the past. So that’s, in a nutshell, what history is.

So what’s the difference between ancient history and modern history? Isn’t it all just history, recording what happened? Well, on a surface level, yes, it is, but modern history as we know it has much more process behind it. It’s more scientific in a sense. Ancient history is not the same way. They didn’t have the same processes in place or expectations. And that can make us look back and say “that’s not accurate,” when, in fact, for them, it would have been.

Let me give you an example to see what I’m talking about. If you turn to the Gospels, you’ll find a story about Jesus going into the Temple in what we call him cleansing the Temple: he’s flipping over the tables of the money changers and — hopefully you’re familiar with the story. Now in Matthew, Mark and Luke, that takes place during Jesus’ last week, just several days before his crucifixion. But in John it’s placed at the beginning of his ministry: chapter two, right near the beginning. Now some people would say it’s because it happened twice, and that’s why we’ve got them put in two different places: just that John recorded one of them, and the others record the other.

While that’s possible, I don’t think that’s very likely. Much more likely is John took that event and brought it back to the beginning to fit with some other stories to tell the story he was trying to tell, to make his point. You see, the ancient writers didn’t feel a need to tell their stories in chronological order; doesn’t mean that they’re not, but they don’t have to be. Even we will have flashbacks in our stories; we don’t necessarily tell them exactly in chronological order. I think the key difference though is we feel obliged to say “I’m going back now” versus they didn’t. We might look at that and say: “John, that’s not accurate! You pulled this story earlier up!” And John and his readers would say: “What’s inaccurate about that?” They would have no problem.

So understand that when we approach history in the Bible and in the world around the Bible that their standards are different, and we can’t expect them to meet our expectations. We need to measure them against their expectations. So that’s some of the differences between ancient and modern history.

So why is that important? Why is it important to understand history around the Bible? What does that add to us? Well, understand that history is a series of choices, and in the choices that we make, there’s a lot of cause and effect. There are reasons why people do things.

If you open up the history books and you read about so-and-so military general, and he makes a particular choice, and maybe it went very poorly. Now you could argue, “Oh, he was so stupid; why didn’t he know this?”. Well, the fact is maybe he made a really smart choice for the things that he did know, and we forget when we look at it that: oh yeah, there’s things we know that were happening on the other side that the enemy was doing, or that there was this storm that was going to hit. Whatever the case may be, there’s information we know that he didn’t. We need to keep in mind that they’re working off a certain set of data, a certain view of the world.

So when we see markers that help us put things into a historical perspective in the Bible, we should explore what impact does this have. I mentioned at the beginning, “In the days of Caesar Augustus…”, Jesus was born. So what impact does that have knowing that Augustus was the Roman Emperor during Jesus’ birth? Well there’s tons that could be said about Augustus, but I’ll just boil it down to just a couple things just to keep this short. Augustus’ adopted father was Julius Caesar.

Now Julius Caesar was assassinated, and after his assassination he was deified (he was declared to be a god). And Augustus, as his son, was therefore the “son of god.” In fact, that was printed on his coins. And so for Jesus to show up on the world stage during Augustus’ reign and have people say that he’s the “Son of God” — somebody’s already got that title. There’s going to be a clash of kingdoms here; you can sense the tension at that statement.

Another example, just fast forward just a little bit here: the Pharisees. We see Jesus interacting with them, and the Pharisees tend to get a bad rap particularly because they argued a lot with Jesus. But have you ever asked the question: why did they do what they did? Why were they this way? Well, history will help you understand that. They’re not living in a vacuum. We need to go back several centuries to better understand their story and their viewpoint. You see, what happened was there was this thing called the Exile: it was bad; I mean, it was really, really bad. God allowed Jerusalem and the Temple to be destroyed; all these people were carried off into exile. And they recognized that it was the people’s fault; they got it. They were sinning; there was all this idolatry, all these problems that God finally got rid of them. And so they said: we don’t want that to happen again! Pretty smart move, really. That’s a good thought. And so how did they want to make that happen? Well, they wanted people to obey God (pretty obvious). And so they established rules to help people obey God. Now unfortunately those rules tended to build up over time, and they kind of became more rule focused and less love focused, but the purpose, the intent behind it was a good one.

But you need to also understand that a century or two before Jesus is where their movement began. Because it wasn’t just the Exile, although that was a piece of it. What was also happening during their time was foreign influences, pagan influences coming into the country and turning people away from the Torah, from God’s instruction. And they said this is headed in a bad direction. You need to pull them back. So that was the more immediate context to their story, and so that is why they act the way they do. So that hopefully just helps you better understand a little bit about the world of the New Testament, things that you’re not going to simply get in your Bible because it assumes you know. And that’s the beauty of looking at history surrounding the Bible.

So just a quick recap: today we looked at what is history. How history isn’t just a series of events, but it’s a record of events. That record is selective, it’s biased, and it’s subject to interpretation. History isn’t what happened; it’s how we relate to what happened. Second, we looked at the difference between ancient and modern history, and how we need to approach their history from their terms. And finally, we saw how understanding history can better help us understand the Bible and what’s going on in it.

I encourage you to open up your episode guide, which you can get at BridgesToTheBible.com and go to the discussion questions where you can discuss these things in more depth.

Coming up next, we’re going to cross the historical bridge to the Bible by looking at a broad overview of history during the Biblical period. We’ll look at all the major empires and some of the big events that happen to help you better connect, at least at a high level, some of the big things going on in that world.

We hope that you’ll join us. Until next time, shalom!

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