As Professor George Ladd once put it: "The Bible is the Word of God given in the words of people in history." It is this dual nature of the Bible that demands of us the task of interpretation.
Because the Bible is God's Word, it has eternal relevance; it speaks to all mankind, in every age and in every culture. Because it is God's Word, we must listen - and obey. But because God chose to speak His Word through human words in history, every book in the Bible also has historical particularity; each document is conditioned by the language, time, and culture in which it was originally written. Interpretation of the Bible is demanded by the "tension" that exists between its eternal relevance and its historical particularity.
There are, for example, Christians who, on the basis of Deuteronomy 22:5 ("A woman must not wear men's clothing," NIV) argue that women should not wear slacks or shorts. But the same people seldom take literally the other imperatives in that list....(vs. 8,9, and 12).
1. In speaking through real persons, in a variety of circumstances, over a 1500 year period, God's Word was expressed in the vocabulary and thought patterns of those persons and conditioned by the culture of those times and circumstances. That is to say, God's Word to us was first of all His Word to them. Our problem is that we are so far removed from them in time, and sometimes in thought. This is the major reason one needs to learn to interpret the Bible. If God's word about women wearing men's clothing or people having parapets around houses is to speak to us, we first need to know what it said to its original hearers - and why.
FIRST, one has to hear the Word they heard in order to understand what was said to them back then and there.
SECOND, one must learn to hear that same Word in the here and now.
2. To interpret properly the "then and there" of the biblical texts, one must not only know some general rules that apply to all words of the Bible, but one needs to learn the special rules that apply to each different literary form, of which there are many - narrative history, geneologies, chronicles, laws of all kinds, poetry of all kinds, proverbs, prophetic oracles, riddles, drama, biological sketches, parables, letters, sermons, and apocalypses.
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2 comments:
I always took the verse regarding a woman should not wear anything that pertains to a man to be taking on the identity of a man, or, in other words, women should be as women, and men as men.
You are correct. The purpose of using that scripture was to show how people often take passages out of context just to support a pet belief or doctrine. If we accept the Scripture as being the Word of God we cannot pick and choose. We must either accept all of it or reject all of it.
When you stop to think about, women did not wear pants and neither did men. Basically, everyone wore "sheets". So you are correct in your interpretation. A woman should be a woman and a man should be a man.
Thanks for your comments.
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