Hermeneutics 3

3. Different Kinds of Contexts
If context is everything, then it will be helpful to get some sense of the different kinds of contexts in which words appear and take on different meanings.

The Literary Context
One of the main contexts to consider when you are reading words is the "literary" context. The "immediate" literary context is a matter of the words that come before and after the verse or verses you want to interpret. Matthew 2:15 gives us a great case study both in what it means to read words in context and out of context.

In the literary context of Matthew 2, Jesus' family has gone down to Egypt to escape the persecution of Herod the Great. Then after Herod's death, they return to Israel. Matthew 2:15 says that these events happened "so that it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my son.'" The literary context of Matthew leads us to believe that this event in the life of Jesus is the fulfillment of a prophecy from the Scriptures (which for Matthew are what Christians call the Old Testament). This is the meaning of Matthew 2:15 as we read it in its literary context.

What is so interesting about Matthew's statement is that he himself was reading Hosea 11:1 out of context. Hosea 11:1-2, the passage that Matthew quotes, reads "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more I called them, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the Baals." When we read Hosea 11:1 "in context" by paying attention to the words that come before and after, we see that Hosea was talking about the exodus of Israel from Egypt rather than Jesus. Further, the words that follow 11:1 talk about how Israel disobeyed God by serving other gods--certainly nothing that could apply to Jesus.

Here we find the question of reading the Bible in context in one of its starkest forms. On the one hand, surely we value what God might have said through both Hosea and Matthew to their original audiences. After all, both books appear in a collection of writings Christians consider authoritative: the Bible. Yet at the same time, Matthew implies God can also speak through what we might call "spiritual meanings" the Holy Spirit might lead us to see in the words. Clearly such meanings may not necessarily have any real relation to what those words meant originally. Of course such meanings are only as valid as the spiritual insight of the person who hears them. Christians believe Matthew was inspired. The inspiration of other individuals today is less assured.

Beyond the immediate literary context is the broader literary context of a verse or passage, including the book as a whole. For example, some Christians take 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 to mean that women cannot preach in church: "Let women be silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must remain in submission, as the law says. If they want to ask about something, they should ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."

But the broader context of 1 Corinthians makes it clear that whatever these verses might refer to, it cannot be spiritual speech like preaching. If anything, it must mean normal chatter or disruptive question-raising in the middle of worship. We know this because Paul assumes in 1 Corinthians 11:5 without even arguing it that women do pray and prophesy in church: "Any woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head." Since Christian prophecy is something you do in public worship, the broader context of the verses in 1 Corinthians 14 cannot refer to spiritual speech but to disruptive ordinary speech.

Genre
Another important literary context is the genre of the book we are reading. For example, the book of Revelation is an apocalypse, an ancient genre that no longer exists. When we compare Revelation to other ancient apocalypses, we realize that it both follows and differs from them in interesting ways.

In other apocalypses, a heavenly figure usually comes down to the person having the vision. The same is true of Revelation: Jesus appears to John. In response to the heavenly figure, the visionary usually falls on his face. Again, this is what happens at the beginning of Revelation. Even knowing this much about the apocalyptic genre raises the question of whether the scene at the beginning of Revelation is meant to be symbolic--a standard feature of the genre--or a blow by blow account of John's actual experiences.

What is interesting is that in the other apocalypses, the heavenly figure then tells the visionary to get up because only God is worthy of worship. In Revelation, Jesus does not tell John to stop worshipping him. Knowing this feature of the apocalyptic genre makes us immediately recognize one of the most important elements in the theology of Revelation: the worship of Jesus alongside God. Knowing the genre of Revelation immediately clues us in to this fact.

As you pursue the various genres of the Bible further, you will begin to see how the matter of genre might affect your perspective on any number of issues. To what extent, for example, were ancient biographies and histories exact in their presentations? Were authors permitted some license in the way they arranged and presented events? Should we even compare the gospels or biblical histories to the ancient genres to which they come closest?

How does the standard format of an ancient letter shed light on the meaning of the letters in the New Testament? Are there pseudonymous writings in the Bible, written under the authority of key figures decades or even centuries after their deaths? Reading 2 Peter as a testament meant to convey the aegis of Peter to a situation decades after his death will yield a different sense of its meaning than if you take it as a letter dictated by Peter himself in the late sixties of the first century.

Historical Context
The historical context is of course a knowledge of the historical background necessary to understand the original meaning of the words. As with the literary context, we might distinguish the immediate historical context or situation behind a book from broader historical background.

Thus the immediate situation behind the letter to Philemon is a slave trying to be reconciled to his master. Apparently Onesimus did something that greatly offended his master, Philemon. As was often the case, Onesimus sought out a go between: in this case Paul. Paul writes Philemon urging him to forgive and receive Onesimus back, while offering to reimburse Philemon for any money Onesimus might have cost him.

Yet we can also speak of much broader historical background. Thus Ezra was written in the Persian period of Israel's history, several centuries after the Assyrians had destroyed the northern kingdom. It was over a century after Babylon defeated the southern kingdom, destroyed the first temple, and took its intelligensia captive to Babylon. It was a half a century after the Persians defeated the Babylonians and allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem. It is against the backdrop of this broader historical background that Ezra himself comes to Jerusalem.

We can also speak of the social setting of a writing, which includes matters like whether the author and audience were likely rich or poor, educated or illiterate. We can speak of cultural matters like how marriage worked and whether people thought of themselves as individuals or formulated their identity more in terms of the groups to which they belonged. Did they think more in terms of honor and shame or in terms of individual guilt? All these factors affect the way we take the words of the Bible's books.

Take Jesus' answer to those who questioned him about paying taxes: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." We probably cannot understand what Jesus meant if we assume that money was as typical of Jesus' world as it is of ours. In rural Galilee, a village like Nazareth didn't even trade goods very much. They did everything themselves from making clothing to harvesting to making pots. The only reason they might need money was thus to pay some foreign power taxes, which must have been oppressive under Herod Antipas in Jesus' day.

So Jesus was not really saying, you should pay what you owe to Caesar and be a good citizen. Nor was Jesus dividing the world into things regarding citizenship and things relating to religion. Jesus was dismissing Roman coinage itself as irrelevant to God--what did a follower of God in Palestine have to do with such things. Caesar has lost his coin; give it back to him.

These are some of the dimensions that the question of context can have. When we are trying to read the books of the Bible for their original meaning, we will need to consider these kinds of factors. The more we dig into context, the more we become aware at how different these same words must have struck their original audiences from the way they tend to strike us. This fact does not mean God has not spoken or does not speak to us out of context. But surely our understanding will only gain in depth when we can better hear the words as well for what they actually meant when they were first inspired.