Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the YA podcast. Lean in as we dive into the practicals of life with Jesus as spirit filled young adults.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: All right, welcome to Bible chat. We're continuing just to have a chat about the word of God in general. At the moment, we want to haste say, hey, Sam.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Hello, everybody.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: And yes, I am back with Sam. Did you know Sam's a dentist?
He is a dentist.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: I'm technically a doctor, but I'm a fake doctor.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Yeah, doctor Sam, I should be saying that maybe not everyone will think you have a doctor.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: No, I don't want anyone calling on me for, I don't know, anything blood related. Oh, blood's okay.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: All good.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: So, Sam, the doctor is with me. Not a real doctor, a dentist.
But let's jump into some chatting about the Bible. Today we're going to talk about, I guess, the challenges that we face when it comes to actually interpreting scripture. How do we read this thing that is centuries, millennia old? What are those challenges that we face? And there's something that I wrote down. I might have heard it somewhere, but I've written it down. Um, and it's the fact that we are all theologians.
Some of us don't have training.
We're all theologians, many of us without training now, like theologian theology, Sam, like, what does that mean to you? Theologian?
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Yeah, because obviously when you say that, it sounds like, what are we all theologians, truly. But like, I guess it's just anybody who has, who has thoughts about God.
[00:01:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: And, you know, revelation of God and, you know, is delving into their understanding about God and scripture and stuff like that.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: I think even, like, I mean, an atheist has a thought about God, right?
[00:02:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: And like, there are many theologians that don't believe in God, it's just that they study God, they study scriptures. So I think, yeah, that statement. We're all theologians, we all have a, we all have beliefs about God, but some of us don't have training in how to audit those beliefs, how to form those beliefs, how to even test those beliefs.
And I think that that's why, again, we're talking about this, we're doing these conversations around the Bible is to better equip people not just in their reading of the word, but actually, as we read the word, their forming of beliefs about God and the auditing of what I mean by auditing the. Looking at our beliefs and trying to decide, is this actually truth? Not is this true? Because there's a lot of true things, but is this the truth? Is this the reality of who God is? I think is important. And we do need training for that. And I think without that training, we can slip into heresies, we can slip into unhelpful ways of thinking, unhelpful beliefs about God, or we can impose even our emotions on God, that sort of stuff. Does that make sense?
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
[00:03:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: And I think as well, like, when we start thinking about, like, okay, so are we auditing all of this type of stuff as well? And we're now looking at our application of how we interpret scripture and all that kind of stuff as well. And then that's where we fall into a lot of challenges as well because we're taught to, like, oh, you should just be able to just read, pick up your Bible and then understand everything just from face value and everything like that. But it's not practically like that. There are a lot of, like, a lot of challenges that we face.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we. I think, like a, if you lived in Jesus time, I think you would have had an easier reality of just picking up scripture and understanding it.
There's probably less barriers back.
[00:04:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: For them and not letting have to overcome similar barriers to us, but there's just a proximity, I guess, and we'll get. Get into some of these challenges in a second. But that, yeah, that statement of, like, just pick up scripture and you'll understand it. It's like, I think, pick up scripture and read it and yes, you will be formed, but you won't necessarily understand it and be able to apply everything.
Yeah.
[00:04:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Because I think as well, like, we kind of touched on this in the last episode as well, but, like, the holy spirit coming into it.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Yeah, the revelator.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: Yeah, the revelator. That's amazing.
[00:04:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: And revealing scripture to us and, like, taking us to deeper levels as well, because even though we may have, we feel like we've gotten, like, we understand a certain scripture, like, the Holy Spirit actually wants to take us far deeper into that as well.
[00:04:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: And we're not discounting that. I think by saying, oh, you can't just pick up the Bible and read it and you'll understand it. We're not discounting the role of holy spirit.
[00:05:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: I think if you put yourself on a desert island with the Bible and maybe a concordance to understand the Hebrew and everything, you're going to get close. But I think we do need to acknowledge the need to be trained and the need to have some skills developed when we approach the word. I think you can get somewhere without that. But I know in my life, when I develop some of these skills that we're going to talk about in, you know, coming episodes. And even today, it changed everything.
[00:05:37] Speaker C: It.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: I grew so, so deep in the word of God and I started to love it because it wasn't, it wasn't painful anymore. It wasn't. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, what do you mean? Sacrifice a goat? Like, I don't have to do that. Like, what is.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: And where am I going to find a goat?
[00:05:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Like, and I think we fall into that trap of, I think most people, you know, you start to read the Bible in a year. Have you ever done that? Read a Bible in a year?
[00:06:07] Speaker A: I've not done it.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Have you tried?
[00:06:09] Speaker A: I have tried.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: Oh, good. There's the honesty.
But, like, you start in Genesis and you get to Leviticus and you fail.
[00:06:17] Speaker C: Yes, pretty much.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: But, yeah. And the reason is, like, okay, well, we get to Leviticus and we don't understand. We don't understand it full stop.
And then also we don't know why we should be reading it.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: We don't know the purpose behind it. And that's what I mean by we can't just pick up the Bible and understand everything in it is. I mean, I don't even have to prove the point. After that, we all get to Leviticus and go, huh? And when you stop reading the Bible through, you, you go back to, I'm gonna read John. Like, I'm gonna read the letter to the Corinthians.
And. Because that's, that's easier. And so I think we do need to acknowledge the necessity for some skills development when it comes to scriptures. Yeah, yeah.
So you haven't. You've never read the Bible in a full year?
[00:07:06] Speaker C: No.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Something, I mean, we might talk about this eventually, but something that I did a couple years back, now, granted, it was in lockdown, so I had a lot of time. I read the Bible chronologically.
[00:07:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: That was really, really cool. Yeah. You know, you, you read Genesis one to, like, twelve, and then all of a sudden you're reading job and then you're back in Genesis and, like, it was really cool to read scripture like that. And especially when you get into, like, David's life, because then you're reading the psalms either before, after the very situation that he wrote that psalm in. Yeah, yeah. You should do that.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: I will, yeah.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Chronological reading in the Bible.
[00:07:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Get it done.
[00:07:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Interpreting scripture. Right. Some of those challenges that we face, I'm just going to quickly list them for the four that we're going to chat about. I think these cover most things. The challenges that we face when interpreting or reading scripture is the distance of time, the distance of culture, the distance of literature and the distance of language.
Distance of time, distance of culture, distance of literature and the distance of language.
Let's jump into time.
[00:08:18] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: What does that mean? Like, the challenge of the distance of time when it comes to interpreting scripture.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: The first thing that I think of is this is only part of it, but like, the advancements as well in terms of knowledge of the world and, you know, the nature and things like that and all that kind of stuff as well.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: So, like the time. The time that we've had to develop our own, I guess, arsenal of human knowledge versus divine knowledge. Exactly.
[00:08:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: And to be honest, I think with that one in my head, it's kind of almost like trying to firstly eliminate the idea that, like, we have the same level of knowledge about exactly how.
[00:09:03] Speaker B: Everything works or our knowledge is better.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Yes, that too, as well. Because to be honest, that's actually not what's most important as well there.
[00:09:13] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Because even though like this, it's funny, because when we think about, like, philosophy and stuff like that.
[00:09:19] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: We're not referring, there aren't many modern day philosophers that we're referring to. We're referring from people from like ages back.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Yeah. With, you know, socrates and that's like even pre Christ, like.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: Exactly, right.
And you would think, oh, but surely we're smarter now.
[00:09:35] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: But we still refer back to those things. So it shows as well that just because we've had so called advancements in terms of knowledge and science and all that kind of stuff, that we somehow have a better perspective on the world.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: This actually reminds me of conversation that I had with a couple of people the other week, and it was the difference of the difference between knowledge, understanding and wisdom, because I think often we think that knowledge and wisdom are the same thing.
[00:10:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: And actually, I mean, the Bible says a little knowledge puffs up. Yeah, but it never says that about wisdom.
[00:10:07] Speaker C: No.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: It actually says the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom. So, okay, if fear of God develops wisdom, then. But knowledge, a little knowledge puffs up. Like, I think there is a difference between the two.
[00:10:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: And it's interesting that even you said just then, it's like, out, we've got more knowledge, but I think in some areas we don't have more wisdom.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: And I think that's why we in philosophy refer back. Because wisdom should be timeless if it is true wisdom, and because wisdom should be applicable, we might have to apply it into a different context, but it should still be applicable.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: And the way I described knowledge versus wisdom is, and I put understanding in there because I think that's important as almost like a stepping stone. But knowledge is like what you actually know about something. It's like, I know your name is Sam, I know your name, you are a dentist. I know this, like, etcetera. So it's the factual. I can write this down. I know this is true.
Whereas understanding. The easiest way I can explain understanding is you actually can then now teach it, not just orate it, not just say, I know this, so you should know this. But I understand it enough to actually be able to explain it to someone else.
You know, I know what my car engine does. I don't understand my car engine.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: No, neither do I.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: But my mechanic knows and he understands what the car engine does. So that's knowledge and understanding. I think wisdom actually goes past the what of knowledge and understanding. And wisdom is more the how, the when, the why, the timings, the seasons. And I think that's when we get into wisdom. Wisdom is often the application of knowledge and understanding.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: And that's why I think that the scriptures say the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom. Because if you fear God, the how, the why, the when often takes care of itself.
[00:12:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: And the what comes. Because you've placed it correctly.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: Yeah, no, that's awesome.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: That's what. We weren't going to talk about that, but like. Yeah, I think even that.
[00:12:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: We think back into distance of time being a challenge that.
[00:12:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: It's that fact of we've developed a whole bunch of human understanding that we think is better, which is, of course it's better. I love medicine. I love being able to not dying from tuberculosis. It's great.
But it's. It becomes a barrier to us because we don't approach scripture on its terms. We approach it on our terms and we expect something from the scriptures that it was never made for.
And I think the other side of that is also just the sheer amount of time that scriptures had to go through. Like, it was written on papyrus when it was first written, that sort of thing. And it's had to last the test of time, which is not necessarily a challenge that we face. It's probably a challenge that scholars face. Translators, those people, they kind of deal with that challenge for ourselves, for them, like, it's great.
[00:13:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: We're not having to, like, is this, you know, scroll actually legit?
[00:13:29] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: But it is a challenge. I think the challenge that we probably face is that, you know, the time of development of the human species.
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Next challenge we face, I guess, is culture, the distance of culture. This is a big one.
[00:13:47] Speaker C: Yeah. This is huge because.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: Yeah, because we're obviously, we each have our own cultural context as well, like, even.
As well, like, I mean, you have.
[00:13:57] Speaker B: A different culture to me.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: But we live in the same city, so we share a culture.
[00:14:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: We go to the same show, so we share a culture there.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: We grew up in different families, so there's a different culture. Different culture with different ethnicities. Different culture.
[00:14:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:09] Speaker A: So it's like, even now, there's differences in culture now, but then there's still, I guess, in a way, a collective modern culture, you can say. Yes, but that in itself is also, then also so far removed from the culture that the Bible was written in as well, which is the Hebrews. So there's still a completely different culture to our own and.
[00:14:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: So it's hard to even understand sometimes what the cultural background is when they're speaking about certain things as well, and what is the norm for them culturally.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: Yeah, whatever.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: What's respectful in their culture.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: What is.
[00:14:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: So many things, I think.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: I mean, a big one that I always come back to is, what did Grace look like to them?
[00:14:51] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: Because we read some stuff in the Old Testament, like, that doesn't sound like grace. No, we, like, it's like, we read the. The Old Testament, like it's a different God.
[00:15:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: And it's like, yeah, okay, there's Jesus now. So we don't have certain, you know, requirements and all that sort of stuff. There's a different relational dynamic, I'd say maybe, but God's still the same.
[00:15:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: And so what was their viewpoint on grace?
Because the lore to them was grace.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm not sure if we want to.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Go there, but we. We kind of talk this about this on young adults retreat, but that scripture about women's headdress and stuff like that, and, like, how we look at it and we're like, what? All women must have their heads covered in church. That's oppressive.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:15:43] Speaker A: But it was cool the way you presented it as well, that it was like, it was actually liberating.
[00:15:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Because there was a, like, there was a culture where, like, women had to have their heads exposed so they could be, like, sexual objects.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it was, um. Yeah, it's like that. It was restorative to them in that way. In the sense of, in roman culture to who? You know, Jesus. Greco roman culture that. Not Jesus Paul's writing into. Um, it was like the hair of a woman was almost, like, sexualized. And so to say, like, have your head covering when you come into the church. It was restorative, and it removed an element of male female relationship that would have been detrimental to the worship of God. And it's like, hey, like, this is how we are restoring your dignity in the house of God.
So, yeah, I think there is definitely that cultural dynamic view of grace of, like, okay, to us, we. We might read something, go, what? Like, that's nuts.
[00:16:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: Um, I mean, a classic one. Absolute classic. Um, Sabbath, right? When, you know, we read Sabbath, it's like what you like, you mustn't work for an entire day. You're not allowed to cook. You're not allowed to clean, you're not allowed to collect food. You're not allowed to. You're not allowed to. You're not allowed to, you know, like, all these rules of things that you're not supposed to do. Um, Sabbath was given to a group of people that hadn't been enslaved for 400 years.
[00:17:20] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. So.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: So it wasn't a. You're not. It's, hey, hey, you don't have to work because your productivity isn't your worth. Yeah, they've been enslaved for 400 years. Their productivity was their worth.
[00:17:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: For 400 years. And we feel like that's, like, legality and all lawful and restrictive as. Okay, they've. Again, see, culture. Context matters. The distance of culture. As soon as you go, oh, they were slaves. Now I understand how that isn't law. That's grace, that's love. That's the joy of doing nothing. The joy of not being productive. Um.
[00:18:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Does that make sense?
[00:18:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: And I think as well, like, you can be helpful as well, when you see things that seem like that's an intense lore to have, and then realizing, okay, there's actually a much deeper meaning behind this and more like, you know, understanding that I need to have to understand what. How important it was for them when that law, for example, was given or something like that. That, like, yeah, it's. It's funny that some of the things that you realize even, like, like, revelations of stuff that they couldn't have even known about, the Hebrews couldn't have even known about, that God was like, I'm gonna help you now and give to you as a law right now, but, like, it's actually to help you and.
[00:18:42] Speaker C: Yeah. To benefit.
[00:18:43] Speaker B: One thing I'll say that I still don't get from the levitical lore is like, why you don't boil a mother's goat, a baby goat, in its mother's milk? Like, yeah, I'll get there one day.
The revelator will help me.
Man, I love that one.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: That one just like, it just pops out of nowhere and you're like, okay, yep.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: All right, cool. No, no goat's milk.
[00:19:03] Speaker C: Cool. Yeah.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: Although I was reading that, it was like, um, because it was to do with some, like, neighboring countries, like idol.
[00:19:12] Speaker C: See?
[00:19:12] Speaker B: Okay, this is good. Yeah, this is actually. Wow. Holy spirit, thank you for leading us here.
Um, yeah, you would like so even that in of itself. Right. There's a neighboring cultural context to the Israelites that God was trying to make them set apart from.
[00:19:29] Speaker C: Yes. Yep.
[00:19:30] Speaker B: So not only is there the cultural context of the israelite people or the cultural context of the Corinthians, but it's what is the neighboring, what is the opposing, what's, you know, in New Testament speak, what's the world?
That side of it. And I think that's really helpful to look at because you start to realize, because God's whole plan for the Israelites was you're set apart. Like, that was the whole purpose of levitical law was set yourselves apart from the world so that you can live in my presence, so you can live with my presence at the center of everything and. Okay, well, now, in order to understand some of the laws, then I need to understand what they were being set apart from, what they were being different to.
And that's a really important side to understand so that we have a viewpoint of what God was purposing.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Yeah, because, like, they were obviously, like you said, like, surrounded by countries with completely different cultural contexts, specifically, a lot of idol worship, all that kind of stuff. Um, yeah. That kind of stuff is also helpful as well when you're like, reading scriptures like Joshua and stuff.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Yeah, totally.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: Seeing. And you're like, oh, frick.
[00:20:45] Speaker C: That seems intense.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: They're just invading all these places and doing all that stuff. But, um, there's, you go into some of those cultures and there was some awful stuff.
[00:20:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Happening in those cultures. Those are people groups, should I say? Yeah. And child sacrifice, like, yeah. As a thing.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: It's why the levitical law.
[00:21:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:04] Speaker B: Like, absolutely prohibits it probably, but it's all human sacrifice. Why? Because humans are the image of God.
[00:21:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: So again, restoration.
[00:21:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Everything, like God is just all about restoration, which is so amazing as well.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: But yeah, yeah. Let's maybe just go through a couple of quick things around some cultures to be aware of. Then, as we're reading scripture. So obviously there's the hebrew culture, very collective.
They came out of slavery after 400 years, a nation.
And, I mean, we could talk about that forever, but. And then they have been promised land. They're going into the promised land, and they're being surrounded by idol worship. And even in that is a cultural viewpoint of those people weren't just worshipping carved images, but they actually saw a spiritual side to that.
So another cultural thing that we need to consider of the ancient Near east people is their spiritual worldview. Everything was spiritual. Everything had a spirit behind it. Ephesians talks about, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of darkness over this present age. And it's like that was easy for them to understand because everything had a spirit behind it. Even regions. They saw geographical regions as under the control or influence of a specific God or spirit. Right. That's so hard for us to understand. And that's when you understand that culture. Now you can start to read some of the Old Testament. It makes more sense because. Oh, they're doing that because there's a spiritual dynamic at play.
Everything was spiritual to the hebrew people. There was no divide like we have today. Sacred and secular. It's like, no, it was all spiritual. It was all an interplay between the spiritual realm and the physical realm.
Other cultural contexts, obviously, New Testament, you've got the overarching Greco Roman, but then when you're reading letters, you got to go into the culture of Corinth, the culture of the Ephesians church. Well, they had very different cultures. They had similarities. Cause it's greek, Greco Roman, just like, you know, Perth has similarities to Melbourne. But there's differences, Sam. There's differences.
[00:23:15] Speaker A: I know y'all are weird over there. We love all the people from Perth.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: But even, like, shocking for me, like, moving to Melbourne was like language differences. Like, things, different language that we use and slang terms and stuff like that, but. So Corinth versus Ephesians, what was the idol worship in those different cities? What were the problems in those different cities? What were the things that they grew up with? And when we start to look at those cultures, we start to understand what Paul was talking about when we read the parables of Jesus. Like, we need to know the culture he was speaking to, because we can't fully understand those parables without understanding those cultures. The parable of the prodigal son. When you look at the culture dynamic of the Hebrew, different things of when a son was lost and when a son left a community, it changes the way you read it. It doesn't change, I guess, the purpose of it, but it gives you so much greater depth and thankfulness for what Jesus did for us and those sorts of things.
[00:24:13] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: Probably should keep moving on to the next problems.
[00:24:16] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:24:17] Speaker A: And the next one is literature distant.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: From our distant literature.
[00:24:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: What does that mean, Sam?
[00:24:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Just, like, we write things differently. As simple as that.
[00:24:29] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: We read things differently.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: We read things differently.
[00:24:32] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: So, like, even just, like, the way we're taught to, like, delve into, you know, literary works and stuff like that. Especially, like, you know, like, in english class and stuff like that. Like, yeah. Like, it's written very differently. Like, there was a lot of.
[00:24:50] Speaker C: Like.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: Symbolism and stuff like that as well in Hebrew, like, literature and everything like.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: That, but even being careful where that symbolism is.
[00:24:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:57] Speaker B: So then we got to talk about the difference of genre.
[00:25:00] Speaker C: That's true. Yeah.
[00:25:01] Speaker B: Because. Okay. Like, reading Exodus, and it's like, well, yeah, okay. There's symbolic things in there, but Exodus is a narrative. It's a historical narrative.
[00:25:13] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: So let's not read things into the scriptures that aren't there.
[00:25:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: But then when you're reading, like, ecclesiastes, you're reading psalms. Like, obviously, there's a whole bunch more symbolism and different literary devices there that aren't at play in a historical narrative.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:25:32] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Because I think.
[00:25:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: I was hearing about how, like, it's, like, formed, like, an anthology, like, a group of works that are, like one another, related to one another. But it's a very unique work, like, because there's not many anthologies to say that are, like, this diverse.
[00:25:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: In the types of literature.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: What are some of those types in the anthology, as you put it?
[00:25:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: So we have, like, the, like, historical narrative that you're talking about or list, like, you know, events as they happen and stuff like that. Not to say that it wasn't crafted as well.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Oh, it's very specifically crafted.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Then you have apocalyptic literature, which is, like, Daniel revelation, that kind of thing.
And I really actually, I was just reading about how, like, an apocalypse, that the original word was actually just meant, like. Or like, a revelation that changed everything he knew about the world.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Necessarily, like, specifically end times things. But it's just like, where your whole worldview gets changed by a revelation.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: It's like that word apocalypse is really just the revealing of what was once concealed.
[00:26:42] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Okay. That makes a lot more sense.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Um, we have parables, like.
[00:26:50] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Parables within a gospel.
[00:26:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: So the gospel probably fits like a historical narrative, but a parable within that.
[00:26:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: Is a different genre entirely.
[00:26:59] Speaker C: Exactly, yeah.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: And its own different type of interpretation and everything. And then we have letters.
[00:27:05] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:06] Speaker A: In, like, the Pauline letters and all that.
[00:27:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:08] Speaker B: But even epistles. Yeah, that's the word, I think, like, that's, like, importance. Even the knowledge of, like, an epistle had a structure.
[00:27:16] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:16] Speaker B: Just like, even today, like, the way we write emails has a particular structure. Like, an epistle had a structure to it, and it wasn't just a letter. Like, we understand. It had a particular structure. There's, like, wisdom literature. There's poetry. Yeah. A lot of poetry.
And even looking at, like, within the historical narratives, 1st 2nd kings versus 1st 2nd chronicles written at different times, covering the same things.
[00:27:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: But with different purposes in mind.
[00:27:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: So that literature difference comes very. Becomes very clear when you contrast the two.
[00:27:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: I think it's important for us to delve into that. We won't go too much further with that, but just to say, like, we grow up with more of a hellenistic Latin based literature, which is different to a hebrew literature, especially when it comes to poetry and the way that they approach writing and the holistic nature of scripture and the way it interweaves and everything we need to approach it on its terms, which I guess the final thing is the problem of language.
[00:28:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: The distant language.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Distant languages, yeah.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: Plural.
[00:28:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:33] Speaker B: So, like, Hebrew is one Greek and a couple of verses in Aramaic. I guess.
I mean, by the time, like, a lot of things that we're reading today probably come out of the Septuagint, which is an entirely greek translation, but that obviously had to go through from Hebrew, Aramaic and then Greek.
[00:28:55] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: So what's the challenge with that?
[00:28:58] Speaker A: I guess the challenge, I guess, for, like, especially, I guess, the translators and stuff like that to make sure that, like, you know, what it meant in the original language is conveyed correctly into the language it's being translated into and stuff. But we can still face that challenge a little bit as well, because we sometimes, like, so, you know, refer back to, like, what was the original Hebrew and stuff like that and so.
[00:29:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Like, it kind of brings into the conversation the culture as well, a little bit as well, because when you see the way the word is used in your science or get an understanding of the cultural context behind it as well.
[00:29:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: I mean, I had the joy of. I say joy. It was doing linguistics at university, and we were. You never able to separate language from culture.
Language is inherently cultural. I think that's important when we talk about the problem of language within biblical interpretation, because even if even within english speakers, our culture plays a part on how we understand English. I think even a lot of the New Testament talks about being made perfect, or the purpose is to be perfected. And I think, like, we read that and we're like, oh, wow, that's unattainable. We can't be perfect. Then you look at the way the greek word is interpreted by a greek person, and it is probably closer to our english word complete whole. Like you're finishing a race, that sort of thing. Right, teleos.
So even that, like, the word that the translators use now actually has a different cultural element to it that challenges us in how we interpret that language. And that's in English.
[00:30:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: Also, when they translate a certain animal's name as unicorn.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: Yes. The good old King James Version, translating rhinoceros as unicorn.
[00:30:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: A horse like animal with a horn. They translated unicorn, more likely a rhinoceros.
[00:31:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, that's a good one to end on. So the four problems that we face when we come to scripture, the distance of time, the distance of culture, the distance of literature, and the distance of language. Tried to kind of COVID a lot of those and give you some pointers on that, but we'll keep referring back to this as we go through a bunch of different Bible chats. As we talk through scripture, we'll say these things all the time, but hopefully you were blessed by that, and we'd love to chat soon, and see you later. See you guys.
