People ask me all the time\u2014well, actually, they hardly ever\u00a0ask me because who really cares about me and my life, by let\u2019s keep up the facade\u2014people ask me all the time what has been the\u00a0most challenging thing I learned about the Bible, especially in graduate school.<\/p>\n
My degree is in Hebrew Bible\/Old Testament, and the usual suspects for challenging one\u2019s views of the Bible\u00a0are:<\/p>\n
- \n
- The creation stories in Genesis 1-3 are myth<\/li>\n
- So is the flood story<\/li>\n
- Abraham, etc., were not historical people but created by Israelites much later to explain where they came from<\/li>\n
- Moses didn\u2019t write the Pentateuch, Isaiah didn\u2019t write Isaiah, and Daniel didn\u2019t write Daniel<\/li>\n
- Archaeology casts serious doubt on the historical nature of the exodus<\/a> from Egypt and the conquest of Canaan<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
But none of those did the trick. They were easy.<\/p>\n
My uh-oh moment\u00a0had to do with, of all things, the New Testament\u2014the Jesus part of the Bible\u2014and how the New Testament handled the Old<\/strong>.<\/h2>\n
Much of my coursework, in addition to \u201cnormal\u201d Old Testament stuff, was in Jewish biblical interpretation in the centuries leading up to the New Testament<\/a> period. And Jews during\u00a0this postexilic period (5th century BCE and onward) had very creative ways of handling their Bible as they sought to apply the Bible to their own changing circumstances.<\/p>\n
The New Testament, in its handling of the Old, fits\u00a0nicely into that world of postexilic Judaism. A lot of creativity going on.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not what I want to talk about today.<\/p>\n
The real monkey wrench that was thrown into my theology wasn\u2019t how the New Testament writers creatively handled<\/em> the Old. It was how they simply accepted, apparently without batting an eyelash, the creative interpretations of their Jewish predecessors.<\/strong><\/p>\n
To put it bluntly: The New Testament writers had a habit of saying things\u00a0about<\/em> the Old Testament that are not\u00a0in<\/em> the Old Testament but\u00a0are<\/em> in these creative, Jewish writings of the period.<\/strong><\/p>\n
![\"three](\"https:\/\/peteenns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/three-kings-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/p>\nIf I may give a modern example that will ring a bell, I\u2019m sure:<\/h2>\n
You\u2019ve probably heard of the \u201cthree magi\u201d who came to visit at Jesus\u2019s birth (at least according to Matthew\u2019s Gospel). This idea of\u00a0three<\/em>\u00a0magi is readily accepted by most people, seeing that it is repeated again and again\u00a0in church Christmas pageants, Christmas cards, Christmas specials\u2014and even canonized\u00a0in Christmas carols (\u201cWe Three Kings of Orient Are. . . . \u201c).<\/p>\n
But the idea of \u201cthree\u201d is not in Matthew\u2019s Gospel or anywhere else in the New Testament. It is an \u201cinterpretive tradition\u201d (as scholars call it) that got attached to the biblical story, and not without reason. After all, the magi bring\u00a0three<\/em> gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. What could be more \u201clogical\u201d than to say there were also three magi, each carrying one of the gifts?<\/p>\n
These interpretive traditions were\u00a0created often to address some ambiguity or problem in the text, and so it\u2019s no wonder they caught on. But to see the New Testament doing things like this seemed to fly in the face of everything I had ever been taught in conservative circles about how the Bible is supposed to work.<\/p>\n
Here, briefly, are some examples.<\/p>\n
Creative Interpretation: \u201cThe Rock was Christ\u201d<\/h2>\n
Some early Jewish interpreters said that a supply of water in the form of a rock<\/strong> accompanied the Israelites during their period of wandering in the desert. They said this, apparently, to account for the fact that the Israelites get water from a rock at the beginning of the 40-year wilderness period (Exodus 17) and then at the end (Numbers 20). So they reasoned, \u201cMaybe those two rocks are really one and it followed the Israelites around to supply then with water?\u201d As silly as that may sound, Paul incorporates this interpretive tradition, with apparently no hesitation or even awareness, in 1 Corinthians 10:4<\/strong>: \u201cFor they [the Israelites] drank from the spiritual rock that followed them<\/strong>, and the rock was Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is no \u201caccompanying rock\u201d in the Old Testament.<\/p>\n
Creative Interpretation: Noah is a Herald?<\/h2>\n
Some early Jewish interpreters thought of\u00a0Noah<\/strong> not simply as the builder of an ark, but as a kind of prophet proclaiming to\u00a0his contemporaries the coming wrath of God. After all, building a boat year in and year out on dry land would have roused some curiosity among the\u00a0neighbors. \u00a0Second\u00a0Peter 2:5<\/strong>\u00a0picks up on this tradition in referring to Noah as a \u201cherald of righteousness<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noah doesn\u2019t utter a peep to his contemporaries in the Old Testament.<\/p>\n
Creative Interpretation: Cain\u2019s Daddies<\/h2>\n
Some early Jewish interpreters said that Cain\u2019s father was an angel Sammael [=Satan]<\/strong> to explain what made him into the first murderer. First John 3:12<\/strong>\u00a0gladly transmits the same tradition: \u201cWe must not be like Cain who was from the evil one<\/strong> and murdered his brother.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Genesis, Cain\u2019s father is clearly Adam, and not some\u00a0supernatural being.<\/p>\n
Creative Interpretation: Names from Nowhere<\/h2>\n
Some early Jewish interpreters gave names to otherwise unnamed biblical figures. One example is naming the magicians in Pharaoh\u2019s court who opposed Moses, Jannes and Jambres<\/strong>. We find this tradition in 2 Timothy 3:8<\/strong>: \u201cAs Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses,<\/strong> so these people, of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith, also oppose the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
These names are found nowhere in the Old Testament.<\/p>\n
![\"Creative](\"https:\/\/peteenns.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/Mosess-body-790x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\nCreative Interpretation: Satan vs. Angel<\/h2>\n
Some early Jewish interpreters thought that Satan and an angel fought over the body of Moses<\/strong> after his death in\u00a0Deuteronomy 34. This tradition seems to have arisen to account for a curious comment in\u00a0Deuteronomy 34:6,\u00a0that \u201cto this day\u201d no one knows where Moses\u2019s body was. Jude 9 repeats this tradition: \u201cBut when the archangel Michael contended with the devil and disputed about the body of Moses<\/strong>. . . . \u201c<\/p>\n
The Old Testament knows of no such battle (and the mystery of where Moses is buried has more to do with when Deuteronomy\u00a0was written\u2014many centuries later\u2014long after the Israelites had left their desert wanderings behind).<\/p>\n
There\u2019s more where these came from, but these will do.<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t this fun?<\/p>\n
Maybe you can feel my pain as a graduate student. These New Testament writers, who were supposed to be perfect, seemingly without thinking transmitted these interpretive traditions (some of which are quite bizarre, like the \u201crock that followed them\u201d).<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s all good, for this was my first deeply felt lesson about a basic property of the Bible<\/strong>: it is relentlessly connected to its time and place.<\/p>\n
I think to be troubled by this phenomenon we are looking at today\u2014though understandable\u2014betrays a misunderstanding of the heart of the Christian faith\u2014not a \u201cperfect book\u201d or a God who keeps a safe distance from the human drama, but a living faith that reflects the untended contextual messiness of those who wrote about their experiences.<\/p>\n
As we see so often, watching how the Bible behaves is a theology lesson in and of itself.<\/h2>\n
If you\u2019d like to read more about these \u201cinterpretive traditions\u201d of Judaism, I can\u2019t recommend highly enough the work of James Kugel, especially How to Read the Bible<\/a>
, The Bible As It Was<\/a>
, <\/em>and Early Biblical Interpretation<\/a>
<\/em>. I\u2019ve also written on this issue quite a bit on this blog, and in Inspiration and Incarnation<\/a><\/em> and The Bible Tells Me So<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n