Timely, Not Timeless: Why Context and Language Matter in Reading the Bible

Biblical Studies

Mar 20

Written By Katelyn

When we consider the Bible as one cohesive story, we recognize that a divine Author is shaping this story. Anyone who has read or written prolifically knows that the author has the will to shape their story any way they wish.

The beauty of the Bible is that it is a compilation of genres—narrative, law, poetry, prose, romance, action, drama, and prophecy. Think of the gamut of genres present in literature, and there you have the contents of the Bible.

Some people get a little squirrelly when they hear comparisons of the Bible to other literature.

But the Bible is GOD’S WORD, they protest, as if language and words mean something different to God than it does to us. Maybe it does. I think it doesn’t. After all, the written word is the medium that God used to share his Story with humanity.

In today’s world, we might wish that he’d recorded his thoughts in a conversational podcast, or maybe a documentary, or perhaps an epic TV series. We are visual and audio people these days, after all.

But the written word is timeless… or nearly so.

The written word has been preserved over centuries and vast distances. Archeologists and scholars are continually uncovering more texts from Ancient Mesopotamia that shed light on the world of the Ancient Near East, that is, the world of the ancient Bible.

The thing that we don’t like about the written word is that language isn’t static. In this sense, the written word is not timeless at all.

This is a concept foreign to many Westerners today, largely because we North Americans are sadly lacking in our ability to read and speak other languages than English and even this we poorly understand (likely because we are familiar with only one language…).

Language is not a science; it doesn’t present universal truths.

Take, for instance, the word submit. If you’ve been in church for any length of time, this word might make your skin crawl and result in an impulse to hightail it out the door. It bears the connotation of giving up one’s will to another person involuntarily. It strips away one’s power to choose in favour of another’s authority. Not unlike slavery.

Cringe.

However, the Greek word hypotassō (from hypo- meaning ‘under’ and tassō meaning ‘to arrange’ or ‘to order’) is more nuanced than our English understanding.

In the Greek language, a verb contains what is called a voice. This voice may be active or passive (or middle… but we’ll leave that one alone).

An active voice is one in which the subject acts (e.g. the boy hits the ball).

A passive voice is one in which the subject receives the action (e.g. the ball is hit by the boy).

So, the word submit contains a nuanced meaning depending on which voice is used. In an active voice, it carries the same connotation to which we are accustomed: to compel or obligate someone to submit to an authority (e.g. the soldier submits to his captain).

In a passive voice, the word shifts to describe a voluntary choice to place oneself underneath another’s authority (e.g. the captain is being submitted to by the soldier).

Do you see the difference? The word submit doesn’t simply mean to force one’s will underneath someone else’s will; it can also mean a willingness to come underneath someone’s leadership as in an employee to an employer or a spouse to their partner.

The English language, however, is atrociously un-nuanced. Single words do not carry active and passive voices as they do in Greek or Latin. Whereas Greek and Latin contain specific verb endings to make their meaning clear, English words must be considered within the context of the sentence. Some verb endings help us to understand this context (e.g. -ed, -ing, -es endings), but sometimes it’s unclear.

So, when you pluck a single English word out of a text, you may end up with a distorted meaning if you don’t understand the nuances of language. (This is true for all languages; I’m an English speaker so I’ll pick on my native language.)

Likewise, there are words that we use today that hold an entirely different meaning even just a few decades ago. For example, in English slang ‘bad’ has come to mean ‘good’ and ‘salty’ has nothing to do with taste and everything to do with something being aggravating.

Just imagine how the meanings of words have changed across centuries, never mind geographical distance (e.g. awful once meant ‘inspiring awe’ and now means ‘extremely bad’ or ‘unpleasant’).

What’s the point, Katelyn?

My point is that words do not mean the same thing in all places and times. It requires careful study, contextual interpretation, and a familiarity with the fluidity of language to understand language well.

The Bible is a translated written text. Due to its nature as a holy text, scholars approach it with necessary reverence and awe, resulting in great care being taken in its scholarship. Unlike the Qu’ran, the Bible’s divine authority is not limited to its original languages. This means that its translation is subject to scrutiny like any translated written text so that it may be understood with some consistency across language, culture, and time.

What a task!

That means that we must look at its grammar and syntax. Hebrew and Greek scholars spend their lives poring over ancient scraps to ensure that we understand how the original words were used at the time so that we can better translate them to our world today. The work of translation attempts to bridge time and culture.

(This also means that old translations are not effective in conveying the Story anymore. The KJV is not the only true English translation. In fact, I would argue that it leads to many poor interpretations today because the translation choices of 17th-century England no longer make sense in today’s English. While it served a great purpose then, it only leads to confusion now.)

We must look at genre and themes. What type of text are we reading? We read history differently than we read poetry, and fairy tales differently than we read economic projections. The same is true in the Bible—prophecy serves a different purpose than the law, so we shouldn’t approach it in the same way.

It means that we must look at the culture, religion, and practices of the time in which the text was written and when the story takes place (which are not always the same thing). How does the worldview at the time influence how the story is written? What can we learn about its people and therefore about how God interacts with them?

It means that different people at different times were concerned about different things—those who lived in Ancient Rome with its highly stratified military and advanced philosophies were influenced by different common beliefs than those who lived nomadically in tribal, warring, and highly superstitious Canaan.

But it’s the BIBLE, you might argue. It’s TIMELESS.

Well no, it’s not. It’s timely.

The Bible is very much grounded in the time and place in which it was written. The stories are contextual. They hold meaning precisely because they take place in a specific time and place. If they are lifted from their context, they lose their meaning.

God’s call to Abraham to leave his home and family loses its significance if we forget that one’s home and family were the locus of society and that he left not only his loved ones but also his identity as a citizen of Ur.

The Canaanite conquest doesn’t make sense to us if we dissociate it from the Ancient Near Eastern customs of kill or be killed among warring tribal nations and the prevalent practices of child sacrifice and war rape.

Jesus’ message of proclaiming God’s coming kingdom to the poor, blind, crippled, lame, and non-Jews was offensive to Jews and Romans alike because the Jewish leaders anticipated a military Messiah who would overthrow the Roman oppressors while the Romans acknowledged only Caesar, not some backwater Jewish rabbi, as Lord.

Context matters. Language matters. To insist on a ‘face reading’ of Scripture is to commit a literary crime and does Scripture a gross injustice.

Here are some tools to help you dig deeper into Scripture: