The Simple is Complex

The Bible is a particular book about a particular people in a particular place at a particular time with a particular message. It was written to and for a certain group of people in their given context at their given time to speak to them about their given circumstance and circumstances. To be sure, there are timeless, universal truths of Scripture that apply to everyone regardless of historical setting or context. To unearth these truths, though, requires digging deep into the landscape of the biblical narrative, uprooting and unearthing the contextual clues of the text in its original context so that we can then extrapolate that contextualized meaning into a general, universal truth that we can then apply to our current contemporary context, and then contextualize for ourselves today.

This sort of digging requires a great deal of work that can be tedious and laborious. It requires gaining an understanding of not only the text itself as it is now written, but also an understanding of the text as it was written in its original language(s). Not only that, it requires understanding who the author was, namely, what the goals of the author were in writing the text that they wrote as well as determining the audience to whom the author was writing and why they were writing what they were writing to that particular audience at that particular time in history. Additionally, it requires understanding how the audience would have received the message of the text as well as how the text relates to the many other texts of its time, place, and culture. In short, it is a matter of determining the original context of the text, as a text without a context is a pretext for all kinds of delusions and misconceptions as well as misapplications.

Some instances of this tedious and laborious work are not so tedious or laborious on the surface, but seem rather facile and simple, as, for instance, the Ten Commandments, particularly, commandment number six. It says something about not committing murder, but this is quickly muddled, as the KJV states that it is about not killing–so which is it: murder or killing? Furthermore, just what does it mean to murder anyway? And then Jesus seems to up the ante when he says that to have hateful intentions for another is to be just as guilty as a murderer (Matthew 5:21-22). What exactly is going on here? Why can’t Scripture play nice and be straightforward, especially in places where the text seems to be extremely clear and straightforward?

It does seem that Scripture is doing something deeper than we simply might understand on the surface and it’s doing that deeper thing on multiple levels. Indeed, if you rake, you get leaves; but if you dig, you get bedrock. Now, you may be a fan of leaves, but anyone will tell you that bedrock is worth more than leaves any day of the week, hands down, if you intend to build on a solid foundation. Just what is Scripture doing then, that it requires a whole lot of digging? Why can’t it be plain and simple? Why can’t it simply state that ABC = XYZ or that 1 + 1 + 1 = 3?

True to life, the Bible is complex–and complex unapologetically so. Even as the answers to and questions of life are amazingly complex, so is Scripture. It evades us and invites us; it summons us and then enshrouds itself in so much mystery that we begin to wonder if we even know it at all, or even want to know it at all. It does not give simple, Sunday-school answers, precisely, because there are none. There are no simple answers to life; even the simple answers are more complex than we could even begin to think or imagine, if we only dig a little deeper.

For example, take the simple question that many a child asks, “Why is the sky blue?” Simple enough to ask, but profound beyond all is it to answer such with childlike simplicity!

“Well, honey, the sky is blue, because God created it blue.”

“And how did God create it blue? And why?”

“Well, dear, it seems that when light hits the molecules in the sky, all the colors of light are absorbed in the molecules, except the color blue, which is refracted from the molecules in the sky and then is transmitted into our eyes and we see it as blue. As to why God made it blue, I’m not so sure….”

Just taking the simple questions of children will leave us with a lifetime of inquiries and quandaries!

Scripture, no less, affords us this opportunity to become engaged in the process of question-asking–and anyone who doesn’t think of Scripture this way has a misguided notion of what Scripture actually is: it is not the rulebook for our lives to guide us in every circumstance with rock-solid answers about everything. It is not about certainty; it is about love and life, and the pursuit of God and humanity and all creation; it is about truth and wholeness, about health and healing.

Thus, do we dig, deeper and deeper, until we reach the treasures buried in the Scriptures, seeking to find not mere interpretations of one preacher or another, of one pastor or another, of one or another among ourselves, but unearthing the trove of treasure that Scripture truly is. We seek what lies beneath to find what lies within, for what is beneath the layers of history and culture and text is a truth that we will find already hidden deep within ourselves.

Imagine, if you will, that you were to come face-to-face with God. What would that being look like? Imagine, if you will, that God is a mirror, and the deeper you peer into this image of God, the deeper you peer into yourself. Scripture, in much the same way, is a mirror that reflects back to us ourselves. But we cannot know ourselves as we truly are, without first knowing the Word of God as it truly is. Thus, do we dig, deeper and deeper–not only to find ourselves therein the pages of Scripture, but also to find God, and God with us, and God in us, and God among us, and us in God.

The Bible is an Ancient Book

To be sure, the Bible is as time-bound today as it was in its ancient historical and sociocultural context. Additionally, the authors of Scripture were time-bound in their ancient historical, sociocultural context, even as we ourselves are time-bound in our current contemporary context. To fail to recognize this fact is to fail to read the Bible as the book that it is: an ancient book about an ancient people with their ancient customs and traditions in their ancient times with an ancient message.

Quickly, it may come to mind why we should even bother with such an ancient book: what relevance does it have today? Many pastors, as well as a great many grandmothers, proclaim the Bible as the Word of God, a divine guide to our lives, how we should live each and every day. While I do not disagree with this sentiment, I do want to explore the Bible as the book that it is and as it has come down to us through the generations, particularly because there are so many misguided notions about the Bible, what it is, what it says, and who it is for. Why should we read the Bible, then, apart from intellectual exercise or spiritual stimulation? Suffice it to say for now that we read the Bible precisely because the Bible reads us inasmuch as we read it: it is a timeless book in the pages of which we meet ourselves, we meet ancient Israel, and we meet Israel’s God.

It is precisely Israel’s God who is presumably behind the writing of the Scriptures as well as the one about whom the Scriptures are. The work of Scripture, however, divine as it may be, is also the work of many human hands, many editors, many writers, many scribes. The transmission of Scripture throughout the centuries is as human a process as any, though the preservation of it seems to expressly have a distinct mark of the divine upon it. Inasmuch as the Bible has come to us today as the book that it is, with its canon and history, its traditions and theologies, its questions and answers, its stories and myths, so we must accept it for what it is and not for what we think it ought to be or might expect it to be.

Within its Ancient Near Eastern context, the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament, mirrors its ancient environment as much as any other Ancient Near Eastern text. The New Testament as well mirrors its ancient, first-century context. That is not to say that the Bible is simply an ancient book of ancient times to be read for mere interest or academics. Rather, it is to put the Bible in its original context, to see it as it was meant to be seen, to read it as it was written to be read. We cannot accept the Bible for what it is, until we accept it for what it is not: in particular, the Bible is not a book about us, however much it is for us; many atrocities throughout history have been perpetrated by those who have in the name of the Bible and the God thereof taken the biblical text to be their own people group or about their own time in history. Today, for example, in America, some argue that their Christian nationalism is of the Bible and the God thereof. But that is plainly not what the Bible is about.

The Bible is about ancient Israel in its ancient context as well as about its ancient God, who is still alive and active today. The Bible tells us about how Israel related with the only true God in their particular way with his particular condescension to them being particular to them and for them. Inasmuch as the Bible is a book about God’s interaction with his people Israel, it is also a book about how God chooses to interact with people in general: via their historical, sociocultural context. That is to say, inasmuch as God in Christ Jesus took on flesh to become one of us in all fullness without also thereby losing his essential divine nature, so the Bible in all its fullness is both human and divine. This understanding of the incarnation of inspiration, that is, the “incarnational” inspiration of Scripture, is discussed at length in Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation. Suffice it here to say that as Christ Jesus is both fully human and fully divine, so is the Bible.

Myths and Mythologies as Truth

When we think of the ancients, many may think of the myths and mythologies of the ancients. When we think of myths and mythologies, often what comes to mind is “lies” and “falsehood.” When we reflect on the ancient mythologies of the Ancient Near East, we may think of the gods Chemosh, Marduk, Dagon, Baal, Asherah as well as the kings and pharaohs; and when we think of the first century, we may think of the Greco-Roman pantheon as well as the Caesars. All these gods, while perhaps having some historical identity, as the kings, pharaohs, and Caesars surely do, are essentially created constructs of the ancient world, ways of understanding reality, which we today have replaced with the truths of mathematics and science.

However, to conceive of ancient mythologies as purported falsehoods is to fail to rightly perceive them as they were intended to be used and so to misapply the term both to their ancient context as well as to misunderstand what they meant to the ancients. The ancients conceived of their world in terms of forces and powers that were at work in the world around them. In order to make sense of the causes and effects of the world, they conceived of gods, mighty and powerful, even if temperamental, to explain these natural phenomena. I suppose a way to bridge the ancient concepts of the past with modern, contemporary conceptions might be to think of the forces of physics, nature, and the like as being animated beings, “gods” as it were, invisible causes behind the effects that we experience in daily life. Another bridge may be to compare the Darwinian evolutionary theory with ancient concepts of divine origins of the universe; though the Darwinian evolutionary theory has no sign of a god in it, it is still a theory, a story, a myth, if you will of the origin of humanity in the world, and our theories about cosmological beginnings, too, are myths of a sort.

Myth need not be understood as a falsehood or tall tale, but might be better understood as the way in which a people or people group orients itself in and to reality, makes sense of its reality, and understands itself in relation to reality. The myth may or may not be true, that is, factual in a scientific and mathematical way, but it is nonetheless true, in that it conveys a perception of reality, a perceived self-understanding of a people or people group, or an understanding of reality; myth may be seen as true as the expression of a people group’s conception of what is. Thus, the ancients thought of themselves in relation to the gods of reality, whom they sought to appease and control to their own ends. They were not telling stories or proclaiming myths to convey lies or falsehoods; rather, they were constructing their perception of reality as best they could within the framework of the world to which they presently had access. To impose on them our construct of reality, from a twenty-first century vantagepoint is to miss both what they were saying as well as why the were saying it.

Of course, some in the ancient world did not believe in the gods, even as today some do not believe in God or any gods. These people, generally known as skeptics and atheists, are not any less human or intelligent for being atheists, skeptics, or not believing in a God or gods of any kind; they are as much a part of the human race as anyone else. Though some would say they believe a lie, the myth or story by which they live, a kind of naturalistic, closed universe, is the perspective that makes the most sense to them and the vantage point from which they perceive all things. To fail to accept their perspective is not only insulting to them, but it fails to understand their point of view and why they do or believe or think as they do.

Conversely, it is not helpful to simply attribute all things that we do not understand to God or the gods: we must have faith seeking understanding, seeking to know as much as we can so we can grow as much as we can. God, if he exists–and he surely does!–is not about us remaining stagnant or regressing, but progressing on into a fuller and greater understanding of him and the reality that he has created.

The Bible as Myth

Much of the Bible, if not the whole of it, might be termed as “myth,” with the aforementioned understanding of myth in play. Indeed, to acknowledge the Bible’s foundational historical roots in Ancient Near Eastern mythology as well as its first-century context is not to deny its divine origin. Rather, it is to acknowledge its human origin, which is one side of the coin of the incarnation of inspiration.

When the word “myth” is brought up, especially in relation to the Bible, however, many people get bent out of shape and up in arms. Myth, it seems to be thought, is a code word for “a load of lies” or “cockamamy” or “bunk” or “trash” or “fake news.” Just as we do not think that the ancient GrecoRoman gods are anything, so anything that bears a relation with or resemblance to something like the “mythology” of the GrecoRoman gods, let alone the Ancient Near Eastern gods, is thought to be pure falsehood. The Bible, however, is God’s divine revelation, his very Word; thus, it cannot be faulty or false or cockamamy or lies or…myth!

However, such an understanding misunderstands both myth and the Bible, especially the Bible as myth. Take, for instance, the account of creation in Genesis 1:1-2:3. The account is very much indeed the stuff of myth, but that does not make it any less true: it mirrors and mimics the Ancient Near Eastern creation myths of the world and does them a one-up, portraying the creator God as ultimate creator and supreme being over all, rather than some hacked-off deity who wants to overpower his grandmother goddess and rule in her stead. The account of Genesis plays off this ancient myth of the Ancient Near East, in many ways toying with it and mocking it, remaking it to account for, not a scientistic or historical account, but a poetical and mythical account that tells the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth.

The Genesis 1 account is myth in so many ways: it borrows from Ancient Near Eastern mythology to make its point about truth. It portrays the account of creation in poetical story form, not in cold, hard scientific or mathematical facts. It is a story, poetical in its form. But it is no less true and no less right or correct. Whether all creation morphed from some primordial goop of soup, albeit under the divine ordination of God, or was instantaneously created, the account of Genesis 1 leaves open; but what it does not leave open is whether God created.

Finding Contextual Clues

If we read the Bible as only a book meant for us today, divorced from its particular ancient context, we will miss out on the nuances, intentions, messages, communications originally intended to be expressed in the spread of its pages. The reason this is so important is because, though when reading a book or bit of text, we find it meeting us where we are, inasmuch as we are at that moment as much a part of the text as the words of the text are, in order to truly apply it to ourselves, we must first know what was originally intended by the author of the text.

Of course, getting into the mind of an author unknown or long since dead is impossible, let alone getting into the mind of an author we do know or who is still alive. The exploration of a text, particularly of Scripture, is the exploration of the transcribed thoughts of a mind of a particular author to a particular audience. While impossible it may be to probe the mind of the deceased author, we must try, even as we do every day with those around us in communicating.

When we communicate, we communicate with clues: we communicate not only much with our words, but also much with our body language, with what is not said or spoken or written; our tone and facial expressions express as much as do our words. We communicate and interpret based on what we see, feel, hear, and know. It is in light of these contextual clues that we are able to make sense of what is being communicated to us, whether by word or body language. In much the same way, we read and comprehend the text of a book or of Scripture. Thus, we read the text in light of its broader and immediate contexts to get clues as to what it was and is saying, particularly in terms of how it might translate across time into our day and age for us right here and now.

The original context is so important that to miss out on it is to miss out on the Bible itself. This can be illustrated with the following analogy: imagine your spouse or significant other or loved one has recently died. Missing them, you seek out a medium to channel their spirit. The only problem is that you can’t find a medium who speaks your language that you can afford, so you opt for the next best thing: a foreign-speaking medium with Google Translate. Of course, words would be exchanged and some level of translation would be possible, but how would idioms or tone or feeling be translated through this whole mess of communicative exchange? Surely, much would be lost in translation, not to mention the transmission of communication between the medium and the deceased.

Strange and silly as this analogy may be, it is a bit like how the Bible comes to us: through the medium of the printed page from translators and scholars, who presumably pour over the ancient text and its context to translate it into our common, 21st Century vernacular, translating and transcribing what many dead persons have written down in the distant, ancient past in order to make sense of it for us to read today. What is lost to us is lost in the translation and transcription of the text.

The Clarity of Scripture

A major tenet of Protestantism come from the Protestant Reformation is the perspicuity of Scripture, which is just to say that it is plain and clear to be read by anyone, lay or otherwise, with ease and no need of a mediator, like a priest or a pastor, to explain or interpret the plain words on the plain page. I hesitate to agree with this tenet. Though I do believe that the Bible is and should be accessible to all persons everywhere, I do not believe that it is entirely and wholly accessible to each one of us without some aid somewhere along the way.

Some might concede this point, saying that the Holy Spirit is that aid, by whom we are guided into all truth of Scripture. Still, I beg to differ: for though the Spirit is always at work and working in the world around and within us, he more oftentimes works in ways that are rather natural and commonplace, not so much in a vividly or openly miraculous way. The Spirit, again, works through the means of study as well as other people’s study, so that we are able to access the Word of God, not by ourselves on our own, but in the community of the body of Christ or of humanity, coming to understand more fully what the Bible is and says and who God is in light of others, not in spite others.

Our individualism in the West is infectious and seems to play on our old sense of pride, deeply rooted in each one of us, our streak of independence and self-sufficiency, which, though not necessarily evil in and of themselves, if left unchecked can become a breeding ground for all kinds of wrongheaded ideas and beliefs about, none other than, the Bible. We believe, it seems, that we should be able to crack open the Bible and read it–and we should! But we today cannot do that–simply because we are undereducated and ignorant of the Bible and how it was written and how it is to be read.

While we need not necessarily have some overseer to interpret the Bible for us or to apply it to our lives, many of us, I fear, are not at a place spiritually to handle the Bible as it is for what it is, and so we confuse it and muddle it and muck it up. And then we misapply it and tell others to do the same. Why do we do that? Are we intentionally trying to do so? Some are, perhaps, but I think the majority are well-meaning, if not fear-based, in their interpretation of Scripture, and that includes both sides of the aisle, both the conservative and the liberal–both largely seek to understand the text of Scripture, I think, as best they can and both are driven largely by fear. Fear of what? Of the other. Of getting it wrong. Of mucking it up. The funny thing is, though, that in all our need for fearful caution and careful reading, we do not read what is actually in the Bible nor do we actually rightly apply it, and so we not only miss out on the glorious story of Scripture, but also the life it can give.

To begin understanding the original context of Scripture, it is imperative to acknowledge the Bible as we find it, with its quirks, quibbles, and quandaries: we must not try and explain away as merely apparent or illustrative the challenges we find in the pages of Scripture. Rather, we must embrace them as the divine revelation of God himself, that is, as he has deemed fit to reveal about himself, even if they do not fit into our own preconceived notions of what the Bible ought to be like.

The Bible is a particular book–very particular, in fact. But it is a book inasmuch as it is a book, and so should be read as it is: a book.

Introducing the Bible

The word “bible” literally means “book,” and it comes to us from biblos, which is the Greek word for “scroll or papyrus,” which was the ancient form of what we today have as books. The history of how books came about is fascinating, but we shall here simply note that the origin of the word “bible” does not denote anything important or special in and of itself, only that the Bible was and is a book, even if it might be the Book of books. This is an important point because, otherwise, when we read the Bible, we may not read it as a book, with the words on the page as ordinary as any other book, but we might fall prey to the trap of reading it as a magic spell book or as a book of fortune-telling prophecies.

What I mean to say is that to read the Bible as the book that it is, we must come to it as we would any other book, with a basic understanding that its pages are not magical and neither are the words on its pages nor the meaning therein. Neither is the cover, whether made from real leather with your family name and emblem inscribed upon it in goldleaf, holy and divine. It is, to put it plainly, a book! I want to make a point of this point because it seems that historically and presently many seem to believe that the Bible itself is holy and powerful, mighty and divine. But that is plainly not the case: it is a book that records the communications and interactions of many persons with God over the course of several thousand years in various places and locations.

What is holy and divine is not the Bible, but, of course, God. To wit, the first three commands of the Ten Commandments offer direction in this way: worshipping only God alone as God, no idols, and honoring God’s Name as One. We are to worship only God, not the Bible, too. We are to have no idols–that includes the Bible. We are to honor God’s Name as One or unique or holy, which means not sharing his glory or Name with anyone or anything else, like the Bible. What is revealed in Scripture is not that the Scriptures are the revelation but that God is the revelation: the Scriptures are the means by which the revelation comes, but they are not thereby to be revered as the revelation, or as divine in and of themselves–only the revelation is divine, that is, God. We do not worship the creature for having been so wonderfully crafted by the Creator: we worship the Creator. In much the same way, we do not aim to worship the Bible but the One to whom the Bible points, namely, God.

Balaam’s ass spoke a great deal for a donkey and spoke by and for God himself, but neither Balaam nor we worship Balaam’s ass. The ass was the means by which God revealed himself, but was not the revelation itself: God was the revelation in the revelation, revealing himself in the unveiling of the ass’s speech by which God communicated his message of truth to Balaam. If we want to treat the Bible as divine and holy, we ought to then also treat Balaam’s ass as well as every other ass through whom God has spoken as divine and holy.

There seems to be much superstition on this matter, some idea that if you drop the Bible, step on it, burn it, soil it, place something on top of it, whatever, that you will be dishonoring the God it is about or bring some sort of shame or curse upon yourself. In such a contemporary context as today, I do not understand how backwards-thinking some people can be! Truth be told, I revere the Bible as a great and holy book that leads me into a deeper knowledge and understanding of God, but it is not the Bible that saves me (that’s Jesus) nor is it the Bible that guides, comforts, and corrects me (that’s the Spirit) nor is it the Bible that rules over me (that’s the Father). Indeed, there is nothing magical about the Bible, though I will not desecrate it.

Our very lives, however, and our own teaching desecrate the Bible more than we may think. While we may not spit upon the Bible or we may not soil it or tear out its pages, we may hate it and spurn it by the very way that we live, refusing to allow its truth to transform us because we are ignorantly and blindly directed by our own preconceived notions of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, our own prejudices that lead us astray from the actual truth of Scripture.

A word of caution is necessary here, too, for some will take these words and twist them to mean that the Bible is unnecessary or unimportant, not holy and not divine: though the means by which divine truth is mediated is but the revealer of the revelation of the divine, that is, is a signpost pointing to the main attraction, we ought not despise that signpost, for without it were are lost.

In short, to revere the Bible too highly is to make little of its human element. As Peter Enns has noted in his Inspiration and Incarnation, the Bible should be thought of as analogous with the Incarnation: even as Jesus is fully human and fully divine, so is the Bible fully human and fully divine. Where we see flaws and errors in Scripture, it is but the human element showing fully through. Where we see social and cultural, historical and ancient elements coming through, these, too, are but the human element of the fully human Bible that we have.

The reason we ought to not merely acknowledge but to also embrace the human element of the Bible is twofold: first, to embrace the human element of the Bible will save us from having to do so many mental gymnastic exercises around the facts that archaeologists and historians as well as textual critics have unearthed. This is something that apologists sometimes get paid to do, to figure out how to best better the facts, plain as day, when presented with them, to explain away difficulties or challenges presented by the Bible as only “apparent” or “illustrative.” While not everything that Scripture has recorded is prescriptive and some of it is descriptive, it does seem more apparent that the discrepancies between archaeological and historical facts as well as textual criticism and what the Bible says cannot simply be cleverly explained away. Thus, we can accept extrabiblical facts at face value, without having to lose or compromise our sense of intelligence.

Second, to embrace the human element of the Bible will afford us not only tranquility of mind, as we won’t have to defend the Bible in awkward ways, as if it needed defending, but it will also afford us the opportunity to embrace the Bible as it is and not as we might have it to be. Thus, we will read it on its own terms and not based on our preconceived notions of what it ought to or ought not to say or do or be like. Though it can and surely does speak to us in the here and now today, it is not our book to be held tightly and to which we dictate what we think it should or should not say or do. It is not our child that we train up in the way that is “right.” It is not our pet that we teach to do apologetical tricks. It is not our computer or robot that we configure or wire or rewire to fit our desires, needs, or longings. It is not our book to do with as we wish. It is an ancient book that tells the many and various stories of how God has interacted with his people in history. It is weird and different, distant and foreign, strange and new. Thus, we can accept the biblical text at face value, without having to lose or compromise our sense of wonder.

As we read the Bible, we should read it in light of the extrabiblical evidence and with our God-given intelligence, and we should read it in light of the wondrous and mythical, mythological evidence that we find in its very pages and with our God-given wonder. In reading Scripture, then, we bring together both our mind and our spirit, we meld and blend the rational with the spiritual and vice versa. We do not chuck one for the other or prefer one over the other, as if one were better than the other; rather, we embrace both and find that the Bible then comes alive.

The Bible is a Very Particular Book

The Bible is a particular book about a particular people in a particular place at a particular time. The Bible is as time-bound today as it was in its ancient context. The authors of the Scripture were time-bound to their ancient context, even as we ourselves are time-bound to our current contemporary context. Though we have some 6,000 plus years of history of civilization to look back over today, many of us seem either ignorant or reticent to take in such a view in our understanding of both the past and the present.

What we think we know, we do not truly know, and yet so many impress upon others our “knowledge” and “insight,” which is as fruitless and unimpactful as a barren fig tree blown about in the wind.