Character in Context

The book of Esther is a thrilling story to read about and yet we rarely look into what this would have been like to live through for the two very brave and virtuous (yes, both of them) Queens who had to walk a knife edge within the world of honor/shame dynamics where a shamed woman could easily wind up a dead woman. (And yes, Mordecai was her cousin--not sure where my brain was on that and why I didn't catch it in editing.)

You might be wondering why we need to talk about religion when we are already studying the Bible—but religion in the ancient world was nothing like what we experience today. There was no separation between “church and state” or church and anything. Religion was everything and everything was religious. We’re going to tie ancient religion into their pre-scientific beliefs, and we are also going to talk about some of the wrong ways to treat ancient words in modern interpretations.

Anyone who knows me knows that ancient sociology is my absolute favorite aspect of Biblical context. Today we’ll talk about the ancient community identity, and the differences between Holy and Profane/Common as well as Clean vs Unclean. They are all entirely different but once you understand them, the Bible makes a whole lot more sense!

Sometimes we forget that the Gospels contain three, and not just two, advent accounts because the arrival of “Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord” was anticipated almost as much as the coming of the Messiah Himself! And it’s an exciting story full of angelic visitations, a barren older mamma, a prophetic unborn child, and a dad who is quite literally speechless!

As this is the time of year when a third of the world is focused on the birth of Immanuel, and many believe that Hannukah was the time of His divine conception, I wanted to spend a few weeks learning about the account that Matthew and Luke dedicated two chapters each teaching us. This week we will learn Joseph’s story in the Gospel of Matthew. What better time of year to become educated about the answer to so many Jewish prayers for so long?

I have always enjoyed teaching the ancient art of polemic but I have never actually taught Biblical irony before and I can tell you that it is absolutely a game changer for understanding how the Bible works, how the Kingdom of Heaven works, and how God works.  I really enjoyed putting this one together, and I have some great book recommendations for you.

Can the Bible be understood literally? At face value? Was it meant to be understood that way and what does that even mean? This week, we will talk about communication and how figures of speech (anthropomorphisms, metaphors, and similes) have to be accepted on their own terms so that we don’t misunderstand the intention of the passages.

When we look at the Bible as just one book with one kind of literature and don’t learn how to do “resets” based on what exactly we are reading, we can really misunderstand and misinterpret the text. What is Genre and why is it so important for understanding what different parts of Scripture are and aren’t useful for? How can we get into trouble when we try to make all of the Bible fit into one kind of box?

How and why did the transmission of Scripture change in the first century and beyond? How did they get from the spoken words of John the Baptist and Yeshua/Jesus to the epistles of Paul and written Gospel accounts—and more importantly, why did they do it? What does it mean for us today in terms of God’s ongoing relational quest to communicate with His people?

This week we will continue with the discussion of how Scripture was originally presented and experienced--orally as a relational conversation between God and mankind and as wisdom literature. We will look at how things began to change due to Persian and Greek influences and will segue into the ongoing controversy over the Apocryphal books and how an avoidance of and a loss of knowledge of Hebrew led to it.