Walton’s Explanation of the Need for
an Hebraic Approach to the Bible:
In the
introduction to his book on Genesis ‘The Lost World of Genesis One’[1],
Prof John H Walton gives, in my
opinion one of the very best explanations of the centrality and fundamental
necessity to approach the Bible through the Hebraic lens and cultural context
of its human authors.
I have written many articles on the Hebraisms found in the
Bible and the crucial difference that they make in helping us to properly
interpret it. Here I would like to quote just some of the introduction in
Walton’s book that so powerfully illustrates the importance and truth of this
argument and perspective.
Walton starts off by stating that:
“The Old Testament (the Tanakh) does communicate to us and
it was written for us, and for all humankind. But it was not written to us. It was
written to Israel. It is God’s revelation of himself to Israel and secondarily through
Israel to everyone else. As obvious as this is, we must be aware of the implications
of that simple statement.
Since it was written to Israel, it is in a language that most of us do not understand, and therefore it requires translation. But the language is not the only aspect that needs to be translated. Language assumes a culture, operates in a culture, serves a culture, and is designed to communicate into the framework of a culture.
Consequently, when we read a text written in another language and addressed to another culture, we must translate the culture as well as the language if we hope to understand the text fully.
Since it was written to Israel, it is in a language that most of us do not understand, and therefore it requires translation. But the language is not the only aspect that needs to be translated. Language assumes a culture, operates in a culture, serves a culture, and is designed to communicate into the framework of a culture.
Consequently, when we read a text written in another language and addressed to another culture, we must translate the culture as well as the language if we hope to understand the text fully.
As complicated as translating a foreign language can be, translating a foreign culture is infinitely more difficult. The problem lies in the act of translating. Translation involves lifting the ideas from their native context and relocating them in our own context.
… On the level of words, for example, there are Hebrew words that simply do not have matching words in English. The Hebrew word chesed is a good example.
The translators of the new American Standard Bible decided to adopt the combination word “lovingkindness” to render it. Other translations use a wide variety of words: loyalty, love, kindness and so on.
The meaning of the word cannot easily be expressed in English, so using any word unavoidably distorts the text. English readers unaware of this could easily begin working from the English word and derive an interpretation of the text based on what that English word means to them, and thus risk bringing something to the text that was not there.
Nevertheless translators have little choice but to take the word out of its linguistic context and try to squeeze it into ours—to clothe its meaning in English words that are inadequate to express the full meaning of the text.”
As Walton doesn’t really explain why ‘chesed’ is difficult to translate, if you are interested in my depth on this please see my article ‘Amazing Grace’ - http://circumcisedheart.info/Amazing%20Grace.pdf
Walton continues:
“When we move to the level of culture, the same type of problem
occurs. The very act of trying to translate the culture requires taking it out of
its context and fitting it into ours. What does the text mean when it describes
Sarah as “beautiful”? One not only has to know the meaning of the word, but also
must have some idea of what defines beauty in the ancient world.
When the Bible speaks of something as elemental as marriage, we are not wrong to think of it as the establishment of a socially and legally recognized relationship between a man and a woman. But marriage carries a lot more social nuance than that in our culture and not necessarily similar at all to the social nuances in the ancient culture.
When marriages are arranged and represent alliances between families and exchange of wealth, the institution fills a far different place in the culture than what we know when feelings of love predominate. In that light the word marriage means some- thing vastly different in ancient culture, even though the word is translated properly. We would seriously distort the text and interpret it incorrectly if we imposed all of the aspects of marriage in our culture into the text and culture of the Bible. The minute anyone (professional or amateur) attempts to translate the culture, we run the risk of making the text communicate something it never intended.
When the Bible speaks of something as elemental as marriage, we are not wrong to think of it as the establishment of a socially and legally recognized relationship between a man and a woman. But marriage carries a lot more social nuance than that in our culture and not necessarily similar at all to the social nuances in the ancient culture.
When marriages are arranged and represent alliances between families and exchange of wealth, the institution fills a far different place in the culture than what we know when feelings of love predominate. In that light the word marriage means some- thing vastly different in ancient culture, even though the word is translated properly. We would seriously distort the text and interpret it incorrectly if we imposed all of the aspects of marriage in our culture into the text and culture of the Bible. The minute anyone (professional or amateur) attempts to translate the culture, we run the risk of making the text communicate something it never intended.
Rather than translating the culture, then, we need to try to enter the culture. When people want to study the Bible seriously, one of the steps they take is to learn the language. As i teach language students, I am still always faced with the challenge of persuading them that they will not succeed simply by learning enough of the language to engage in translation. Truly learning the language requires leaving English behind, entering the world of the text and understanding the language in its Hebrew context without creating english words in their minds. They must understand the Hebrew as Hebrew text.
This is the same with culture. We must make every attempt to set our English categories aside, to leave our cultural ideas behind, and try our best (as limited as the attempt might be) to understand the material in its cultural context without translating it.
How do we do this? How can we recover the way that an ancient
culture thought and what categories and ideas and concepts were important to them?
We have already noted that language is key to culture, and we may then also recognize that literature is a window to the culture that produced it. We can begin to understand the culture by becoming familiar with its literature. Undoubtedly this sounds like a circular argument: We can’t interpret the literature without understanding the culture, and we can’t understand the culture without interpreting the literature.
If we were dealing only with the Bible, it would indeed be circular, because we have already adjusted it to our own cultural ways of thinking in our long familiarity with it. The key then is to be found in the literature from the rest of the ancient world.
Here we will discover many insights into ancient categories, concepts and perspectives. Not only do we expect to find linkages, we do in fact find many such linkages that enhance our understanding of the Bible.
To compare the Old Testament to the literature of the ancient world is not to assume that we expect or find similarity at every point; but neither should we assume or expect differences at every point. We believe the nature of the Bible to be very different from anything else that was available in the ancient world. The very fact that we accept the Old Testament as God’s revelation of him- self distinguishes it from the literature of Mesopotamia or Egypt.
For that matter, Egyptian literature was very different from Mesopotamian literature, and within Mesopotamia, Assyrian literature and Babylonian literature were far from homogeneous. To press the point further, Babylonian literature of the second millennium must be viewed as distinct from Babylonian literature of the first millennium.
Finally we must recognize that in any given time period in any given culture in any given city, some people would have had different ideas than others. Having said all of this, we recognize at the same time that there is some common ground. Despite all the distinctions that existed across the ancient world, any given ancient culture was more similar to other ancient cultures than any of them are to Western American or European culture.
Comparing the ancient cultures to one an-come aware of the distinctions that separated them from one another. As we identify those common threads, we will begin to comprehend how the ancient world differed from our modern (or postmodern) world.
So to return to the illustration of marriage: we will understand the Israelite ideas of marriage much more accurately by becoming informed about marriage in Babylon or Egypt than we will by thinking of marriage in modern terms. Yet we will also find evidence to suggest that Babylonian customs and ideas were not always exactly like Israelite ones.
The texts serve as sources of information for us to formulate the shape of each culture’s ways of thinking. In most areas there is more similarity between Israel and its neighbors than there is between Israel and our twenty-first-century Western world.
As another example, even though today we believe in one God, the God of Israel, and therefore share with them this basic element of faith, the views of deity in the ancient world served as the context for Israel’s understanding of deity. It is true that the God of the Bible is far different from the gods of the ancient cultures. But Israel understood its God in reference to what others around them believed. As the Bible indicates, Israelites were continually drawn into the thinking of the cultures around them, whether they were adopting the gods and practices of those around them or whether they were struggling to see their God as distinct.
As a result, we are not looking at ancient literature to try to decide whether Israel borrowed from some of the literature that was known to them. It is to be expected that the Israelites held many concepts and perspectives in common with the rest of the ancient world. This is far different from suggesting literature was borrowed or copied. This is not even a case of Israel being influenced by the peoples around them.
Rather we simply recognize the common conceptual worldview that existed in ancient times. We should therefore not speak of Israel being influenced by that world—they were part of that world.
…
We have already noted that language is key to culture, and we may then also recognize that literature is a window to the culture that produced it. We can begin to understand the culture by becoming familiar with its literature. Undoubtedly this sounds like a circular argument: We can’t interpret the literature without understanding the culture, and we can’t understand the culture without interpreting the literature.
If we were dealing only with the Bible, it would indeed be circular, because we have already adjusted it to our own cultural ways of thinking in our long familiarity with it. The key then is to be found in the literature from the rest of the ancient world.
Here we will discover many insights into ancient categories, concepts and perspectives. Not only do we expect to find linkages, we do in fact find many such linkages that enhance our understanding of the Bible.
To compare the Old Testament to the literature of the ancient world is not to assume that we expect or find similarity at every point; but neither should we assume or expect differences at every point. We believe the nature of the Bible to be very different from anything else that was available in the ancient world. The very fact that we accept the Old Testament as God’s revelation of him- self distinguishes it from the literature of Mesopotamia or Egypt.
For that matter, Egyptian literature was very different from Mesopotamian literature, and within Mesopotamia, Assyrian literature and Babylonian literature were far from homogeneous. To press the point further, Babylonian literature of the second millennium must be viewed as distinct from Babylonian literature of the first millennium.
Finally we must recognize that in any given time period in any given culture in any given city, some people would have had different ideas than others. Having said all of this, we recognize at the same time that there is some common ground. Despite all the distinctions that existed across the ancient world, any given ancient culture was more similar to other ancient cultures than any of them are to Western American or European culture.
Comparing the ancient cultures to one an-come aware of the distinctions that separated them from one another. As we identify those common threads, we will begin to comprehend how the ancient world differed from our modern (or postmodern) world.
So to return to the illustration of marriage: we will understand the Israelite ideas of marriage much more accurately by becoming informed about marriage in Babylon or Egypt than we will by thinking of marriage in modern terms. Yet we will also find evidence to suggest that Babylonian customs and ideas were not always exactly like Israelite ones.
The texts serve as sources of information for us to formulate the shape of each culture’s ways of thinking. In most areas there is more similarity between Israel and its neighbors than there is between Israel and our twenty-first-century Western world.
As another example, even though today we believe in one God, the God of Israel, and therefore share with them this basic element of faith, the views of deity in the ancient world served as the context for Israel’s understanding of deity. It is true that the God of the Bible is far different from the gods of the ancient cultures. But Israel understood its God in reference to what others around them believed. As the Bible indicates, Israelites were continually drawn into the thinking of the cultures around them, whether they were adopting the gods and practices of those around them or whether they were struggling to see their God as distinct.
As a result, we are not looking at ancient literature to try to decide whether Israel borrowed from some of the literature that was known to them. It is to be expected that the Israelites held many concepts and perspectives in common with the rest of the ancient world. This is far different from suggesting literature was borrowed or copied. This is not even a case of Israel being influenced by the peoples around them.
Rather we simply recognize the common conceptual worldview that existed in ancient times. We should therefore not speak of Israel being influenced by that world—they were part of that world.
…
By recognizing the importance of the literatures of the
ancient world for informing us about its cultures, we need not be concerned that
the Bible must consequently be understood as just another piece of ancient mythology.
We may well consider some of the literatures of Babylonia and Egypt as mythological,
but that very mythology helps us to see the world as they saw it.
The Canaanites or the Assyrians did not consider their myths to be made up works of the imagination. Mythology by its nature seeks to explain how the world works and how it came to work that way, and therefore includes a culture’s “theory of origins.”
We sometimes label certain literature as “myth” because we do not believe that the world works that way. The label is a way of holding it at arm’s length so as to clarify that we do not share that belief— particularly as it refers to involvement and activities of the gods. But for the people to whom that mythology belonged, it was a real description of deep beliefs. Their “mythology” expressed their beliefs concerning what made the world what it was; it expressed their theories of origins and of how their world worked.
… For the Israelites, Genesis 1 offered explanations of their view of origins and operations, in the same way that mythologies served in the rest of the ancient world and that science serves our Western culture. It represents what the Israelites truly believed about how the world got to be how it is and how it works, though it is not presented as their own ideas, but as revelation from God.
The fact that many people today share that biblical belief makes the term mythology unpalatable, but it should nevertheless be recognized that Genesis 1 serves the similar function of offering an explanation of origins and how the world operated, not only for Israel, but for people today who put their faith in the Bible.”
Above is most of the Introduction of Walton’s book, The Lost World of Genesis One’, a book where he argues for a ‘functional creation’ account in Genesis 1, rather than a ‘material creation’ account.
While I don’t think these two perspectives are mutually exclusive and I do think Walton’s ‘functional creation’ perspective has much going for it.
My main point in quoting much of his introduction here is that in first listening to it (via an Audible.com version), I was struck by how well he articulates and explains the need for a contextual and cultural perspective.
He also notes that any translation is inevitably as interpretation as the translator tries to find words in the new language that accurately convey the meaning of the words of the original language as they would have been understood in that language at that time.
The Canaanites or the Assyrians did not consider their myths to be made up works of the imagination. Mythology by its nature seeks to explain how the world works and how it came to work that way, and therefore includes a culture’s “theory of origins.”
We sometimes label certain literature as “myth” because we do not believe that the world works that way. The label is a way of holding it at arm’s length so as to clarify that we do not share that belief— particularly as it refers to involvement and activities of the gods. But for the people to whom that mythology belonged, it was a real description of deep beliefs. Their “mythology” expressed their beliefs concerning what made the world what it was; it expressed their theories of origins and of how their world worked.
… For the Israelites, Genesis 1 offered explanations of their view of origins and operations, in the same way that mythologies served in the rest of the ancient world and that science serves our Western culture. It represents what the Israelites truly believed about how the world got to be how it is and how it works, though it is not presented as their own ideas, but as revelation from God.
The fact that many people today share that biblical belief makes the term mythology unpalatable, but it should nevertheless be recognized that Genesis 1 serves the similar function of offering an explanation of origins and how the world operated, not only for Israel, but for people today who put their faith in the Bible.”
Above is most of the Introduction of Walton’s book, The Lost World of Genesis One’, a book where he argues for a ‘functional creation’ account in Genesis 1, rather than a ‘material creation’ account.
While I don’t think these two perspectives are mutually exclusive and I do think Walton’s ‘functional creation’ perspective has much going for it.
My main point in quoting much of his introduction here is that in first listening to it (via an Audible.com version), I was struck by how well he articulates and explains the need for a contextual and cultural perspective.
He also notes that any translation is inevitably as interpretation as the translator tries to find words in the new language that accurately convey the meaning of the words of the original language as they would have been understood in that language at that time.
For more on the Hebraic Perspective or Mindset, see the articles at my website:
circumcisedheart.info
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