Most Christians with a high view of Scripture would tell you that “all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable…” but if you really dig down you’ll see that, to paraphrase Animal Farm, all Scripture is inspired but some Scripture is more inspired than others. The recent data on BibleGateway was a great example of this. They were able to sift through the millions of verse searches and find the top 100 verses in the Bible, 84 of the 100 were from the New Testament. And it could be argued that a large percentage of the remaining verses were specifically Christological.
What do we do with Balaam’s donkey, and Lot’s daughters, and the Canaanite genocide also known as the conquest of the promised land? Two primary methods are used. First, we spiritualize the Old Testament stories without specifically calling them allegories. We can learn spiritual truths from God’s historical dealings with his covenant people and imbue them with Christian meaning. Sometimes you really have to stretch as anyone who’s ever done a sermon series on the book of Judges can tell you! Romans says the Old Testament proves humanity’s unrighteousness and the law is set aside for Christ. Hebrews sees Christ in the rock. Galatians has an allegorical reading of Sarah and Hagar. 1 Corinthians 10 sees the Old Testament as a lesson book for those of us living in the fulfillment of the ages. So there’s a pretty strong precedent for allegorical reading of the Old Testament.
Another method is to specifically set aside the Old Testament as a special category of the canon. Essentially, the Old Testament becomes backstory to the main plot which is the incarnation and redemption of Christ. This solves a lot of problems. We’re not compelled to read the whole Bible equally but concentrate on “the good stuff.” Most of us do it anyway. I read New Testament more than Old Testament and I read the Gospel of Matthew more than the book of Jude. There’s an unspoken canon within the canon that we don’t draw attention to because it seems to be a complicit admission that some books of the Bible are “more inspired than others.” As I argued in a recent post on my blog, “the gospel is more important than the Bible.” I’m not in any way suggesting that the Old Testament is unnecessary. Far from it. Without the Old Testament as background much of the New Testament is incomprehensible.
A third option is possible. We can try to take the Old Testament literally and binding for our current situation. AJ Jacobs in his book The Year of Living Biblically showed people who try to do just that. And his own sorta-serious attempt to follow every commandment of the Bible brings out in high relief the incompatibility of the Old Testament with New Testament or modern thought. I teach my Bible students to differentiate between civic, ceremonial and moral commands in the Old Testament. Civic laws are supposed to be specific to that ancient culture and thus not applicable to us directly. Ceremonial laws have been replaced by Jesus’ redemption and command to fulfill the royal law of love. And moral laws are just as true today as they were back then. It seems like a good way to split things up but splitting it up is nearly impossible. How do you draw the line between civic, ceremonial and moral laws even in a terse statement like the Ten Commandments? There is no cohesive strategy for reading the Old Testament as anything other than either a historical document akin to the Epic of Gilgamesh on one hand, or as an allegorical collection of moral dramas on the other hand. Jesus seemed to favor the latter option. Without questioning the veracity of the stories, he dismissed them, fulfilled them, or used them as allegorical examples of New Covenant concepts. So though most of us would scoff at a literal application of the Old Testament we in practice patch together highly eclectic mixes of literalism and symbolism in our interpretation of the Old Testament.
Thomas Jefferson is famous for having cut out all the parts of the Bible he didn’t like and creating his personal Bible. I wonder if we don’t do the same thing just without the scissors. Are all Scriptures equally inspired? And if so, what do we do with the tough stuff in the Old Testament?
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Comments (32)
The notion that the Bible contains exactly what God wants it to contain for whatever reasons God has is quite a different idea. One of the most amazing things about the Bible is that as a library its crowd-sourcing credentials are obvious. Why would this book derived from a historically obscure and insignificant ethnic group come to play such a dominant role in the development of so much of the world?
We might turn the question around and ask "how can one group of people, who are in fact a tiny sliver of humanity within its broad scope, yet thinking that they sit at the pinnacle of human achievement be so self-absorbed as to imagine that they can determine what out of all of human history was helpful and what was not?"
If most of us traveled back 100 years we would find ourselves enormously out of step with nearly everyone around. We very blindly imagine that 100 years from now our great-grands will applaud us and our beliefs and perspectives as "the greatest generation". I have my doubts.
What is truly amazing is that many generations through a huge diversity of languages and cultures find enough value in various parts of this book as to not only embrace it with laudatory words but to read it and attempt to apply it to their diverse contexts. We might want to consider that before we, like Thomas Jefferson decide to play editor. pvk
I believe that is as good a summary as any human being can offer of the value of this text. The rather significant ways each new translation alters the meaning of some passages, and their implied or inspirational impact, not to mention the way adherents of different translations fight tooth and nail over the difference, suggests that none of us have it right with any divine precision. But God IS somewhere in there.
Regarding the Old Testament: remember that there are several million people in the world who not only consider it primary, but consider the New Testament an irrelevant syncretism. They are called Jews. Although Christians have a long history of subjecting these people to vicious torture and persecution for that very reason, lately most Christians have had warm fuzzy feelings for Judaism and Israel, if only for the sake of apparent fulfillment of a plausible view of prophecy. Personally, I had Sunday School teachers who put some emphasis on Amos and Micah, and Isaiah, which I retain to this day. It wasn't just about Jesus, but about good and evil, individual responsibility for our brothers and sisters, the relationship of devotion for God to policies of the state and wealthy interests. Yes, there are echoes in the Gospel, but they are good in their own right. Jerry Falwell preaches in a rather opposite manner. So we do indeed each look in the Bible for the answers we like to questions we think are important.
All of the OT was to be understood literally (or perhaps literarilly) for those who it was written for. Are you a Jew, a descendant of Abraham who agreed to the Sinai covenant? If so the Torah is as relevant for you as ever was. Actually the covenant God made with Noah will always be relevant in an entirely literal way for ever human there ever will be, because God made that covenant with every human (and every animal too!)
We have to understand the contexts. There was no ceremonial/civil/moral distinction for the original recipients of the Law, and neither is there for us, for the Torah Law is not binding for us, only the Law of Christ. I do not have to obey a single one of the ten commandments, let alone the rest of the Law.
Now for allegory, well I like to say that God is in the business of making the symbolic reality. The tabernacle/temple was a giant symbol of several realities, most importantly symbolising how far removed we are from God and the extremes that reconciliation would take: sacrifice. God made those symbols reality in the temple. But he went ever further and made it reality in Christ too. But just because it was a symbol, those who the Torah was given still had to interpret it literally.
It's in the covenants. For some weird passage in the OT, consider which covenants might be relevant. Find who the covenant parties are, you might even be one of them. Look at the terms of the covenant, is it still valid or has it expired? How does the NT add to our understanding of this covenant?
In this way all scriptures are created equal, and the process to interpret them is even equal.
Thanks for your comment though. I am very interested in the covenants of the Old Testament, there is so much depth to them which most people just pass over. If you or your Rabbi friend were ever to read my blog, I'd love to hear from you.
Moving on to the question, the fact that we prioritize certain Scriptures should not be reason for concern, nor does it suggest that we think some portions are more inspired than others. Jesus did not quote the entire Old Testament and yet he upheld every jot and tittle as important.
Our prioritization of Scripture rather suggests that some portions of Scripture are more applicable to our current situation or the circumstances we are discussing than other passages. Neither do so-called problem passages indicate a concern for their inspiration. Our lack of understanding may be due to a number of possible explanations beginning with our own lack of ability to discern.
As to those OT passages that seem inconsistent with our understanding of God, well, what if our understanding of God is incomplete? What if he is bigger than we understand him and we just don't like it? What if he really is a holy God who expresses that holiness in laws that must be obeyed and in wrath when they are not - as well as a God who is love and expresses his love in grace and mercy to those who do not deserve it?
Those who knew the Tanach before we did, observe that it is NOT all equally inspired by God. The Torah is, "words and music by the Creator of the Universe." Books like Chronicles are not, they are chronicles. The Prophets (Michah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos...) are not direct from God, but a human being's attempt to put into poetic allegory a vision of totally inhuman origin, which no human could fully understand. Valuable, yes, but not all equal. It is all worth reading, it is all INSPIRED by God, but it is not all equally authoritative, nor do we fully understand the original intent, each time anyone opens the book to read.