Number 3 in my new series, Confessions of a Bible Know-It-All: 25 Ways I Changed My Mind.
1. I am not the "you" of the Bible.
2. Try reading the verse before your favorite verse.
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Confession #3: Then I read the verses before the prophecies
1. My parents gave me a Thompson Chain Reference King James Bible when I graduated from high school. Aside from the Bible itself, my favorite page was a chart in the back that told the key Old Testament prophecies that were fulfilled in Jesus.
You have probably heard the argument: "It's impossible that all these predictions could be fulfilled in the same person by coincidence." It's an argument used to defend the inspiration of Scripture, the existence of God, and the divine identity of Jesus. Now I believe all those things. But I also feel like I was set up for a bit of an unnecessary crisis because of those arguments.
It's not the Bible's fault. It's a casualty of that "first naivete" I mentioned in the last chapter.
2. The first hint of this came in a college class. The professor showed us Matthew 2:15: Jesus went down to Egypt as a child "that it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my Son.'"
Now, I had that chart in the back of my Bible. But I had never actually gone back to those passages to read the verses that came before and after them. I had just assumed they were straightforward predictions. I expected that, if I went back to Hosea 11:1, I would find something like, "When the Messiah comes, he will go down to Egypt, and then he will return so I can say that out of Egypt I called my son." Or something like that.
Then the professor had us go back to Hosea 11. It wasn't what I expected. It wasn't a prediction at all. And it certainly wasn't about the Messiah. Here's what the verse and the one after it say: "When Israel was a boy, I loved him, and from Egypt I called my son. The more they called to them, the more they went from their face. They sacrificed to Ba'als, and to idols they offered incense."
That was a surprise. The verse is about the Exodus -- in the past -- not about the Messiah in the future. And Jesus certainly didn't sacrifice to Ba'al or offer incense to idols. Clearly, the verse in context was not about Jesus at all.
This was a puzzle! I smiled at the time -- being the Bible know-it-all I was. I'll figure this out.
Except I didn't -- at least not in terms that fit the chart in the back of my Thompson Chain Reference Bible.
3. After my first year of seminary, this seeming discrepancy began to wear on me. In fact, as I was learning to read verses in the light of what came before and after them, I was finding more and more of a difference between how the New Testament used these verses and what they seemed to mean in their original books. It seemed like Matthew was reading Hosea incorrectly, and I didn't believe the Bible could have errors.
Spoiler alert: I don't think Matthew was in error. I think my expectations were in error. I expected these to be prediction-fulfillments. And it turned out they were instances of the New Testament authors reading the Old Testament in a "spiritual" or more-than-literal way. In other words, they were reading verses or segments of verses somewhat like I grew up reading memory verses.
Let me explain. In the last chapter, I mentioned that, once words are uttered, they become distanced from the meanings their authors intended. [1] We can see meanings in emails, text messages, conversations that weren't what the writer or speaker intended. Relationships regularly get into conflict over these sorts of misinterpretations.
Growing up, my family expected the Holy Spirit to speak to us in the words of the Bible. Many American Christians read the Bible this way, expecting to hear a word from the Lord -- to get zapped by the Spirit while reading. We didn't think about the fact that we weren't reading the Bible in context for what it actually had meant. This unreflective reading is what we might call a "first naivete."
Ancient Jewish interpretation of the Bible often read its words in a similar way. Something about the biblical text triggered a truth in the reader's mind. In some ancient examples, they read the words of the prophets in relation to their current situation, much like Bible prophecy teachers still do today. [2]
Some Bible scholars of the early 1900s called this seeing a "fuller sense" in the text (sensus plenior in Latin). Even though Hosea 11:1 wasn't a prediction about Jesus, there is a parallel between Jesus and Moses in Matthew. Moses led Israel out of bondage in Egypt. Jesus leads us out of the bondage of our sin. You can see where, while Hosea 11:1 wasn't originally about the Messiah, there is a rough parallel.
4. Over time, I began to "change my mind" on how to see the way the New Testament read the Old Testament. The New Testament was not in error. It just used a different hermeneutic than the way I was learning to read the Bible in school. A hermeneutic is a way of interpreting something.
In college and seminary, I was learning "inductive Bible study" or how to listen to the biblical text to let it tell me what it meant. That's also called exegesis, where you draw meaning out of the text. The biblical authors and I, growing up, often read the Bible "eisegetically." We read meanings into the text based on our traditions and theology. [3]
If your theology is good, it's not too bad to read the Bible this way. For one, the vast majority of Christians do and always have. We read the words using the Christian "dictionary" in our heads (as well as the dictionaries of the churches we go to). It's just not how to read the Bible if you want to know what it actually meant originally.
As a side note, I had a Bible colleague who would tell students, "Matthew was inspired. He was allowed to read the Old Testament this way. You aren't." But, I think he has actually softened a little on this point over the years.
5. I end this chapter with a potentially shocking example. Isaiah 7:14. You probably know the verse because Matthew 1:23 reads it in relation to the virgin birth: "A virgin will become pregnant and will bear a son, and they will call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted is 'God is with us.'"
Again, I expected to go back to Isaiah 7:14 and find a prediction that the Messiah will be born of a virgin. As a memory verse, it can be read that way: "Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young maiden has become pregnant, and she gave birth to a son. And she called his name Immanuel."
Hebrew tenses are not entirely about time, so the timing could be translated differently. However, the most natural way to take the verse is in relation to something that has already happened. Some modern translations have "virgin." Others have "young woman" (e.g., the RSV). At the time, I assumed these were the evil translations.
But who is this sign to? Eventually, I looked at the verses that came before and after 7:14. To be honest, there were names and places I didn't really know anything about. Who was Ahaz? Who was Rezin? Who was "Pekah the son of Remaliah"? Where was Syria? What was Ephraim?
Because I didn't know who and what these things were, it was easy to hear "blah blah blah" virgin birth "blah blah blah." And this was especially true in the King James Version, which printed each verse separately anyway.
6. So what is the context?
This is the late 700s BC. The big threat to this region is Assyria, which will end up destroying the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. Isaiah is a prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah.
The word from the Lord comes to the king of Judah, Ahaz, through the prophet Isaiah. Two kings from the north -- who will soon be obliterated -- are trying to force Ahaz to fight with them. From a human perspective, it makes some sense.
But Isaiah's word from God is not to do it. Ahaz doesn't want to listen. He makes up an excuse, something like, "I don't want to bother God."
But Isaiah insists. The Lord is going to give you a sign whether you want one or not. A young woman has become pregnant and given birth to a son. Verse 16 -- "before the boy knows how to refuse evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by the two kings."
Suffice it to say, I found this train of thought confusing when I was reading the verse in relation to the virgin birth. For one thing, Jesus' birth was 700 some years later. If this verse was a sign to King Ahaz, it wasn't a very good one. What good is a sign to you if it only happens 700 years after you're dead?
But, thought I, how could there have been another virgin birth in Isaiah's day?
Let me share the rest of the story. Virgins get pregnant all the time if they get pregnant the first time they have sex. Also, it isn't entirely clear that the Hebrew word 'almah here only refers to a virgin, although it's possible. So, it was possible that the verse referred to a perfectly natural birth originally.
Second, there are a couple young male children mentioned in these chapters of Isaiah. Isaiah has a son, for example, Maher-shalal-hash-baz (Isa. 8:3-4). Isaiah 8:4 sounds very much like the prophecy in Isaiah 7:16.
7. Get to the point, Ken. The point is that, in context, this was a prediction to King Ahaz. It was a prediction about a child who was born during his reign. That child was a sign to him. Before that child was old enough to tell the difference between good and evil, Ahaz's problem was taken care of.
This does not mean Matthew was in error, as I would have once thought. It means that Matthew was reading the verse in a fuller sense. He was reading the words in relation to Jesus in a "spiritual" way. And that's ok.
After being jolted out of my first naivete into reading these verses more in context, I eventually reached a "second naivete." I can accept that Matthew was inspired to read Isaiah the way he was. AND, I can accept that Isaiah was inspired to give the prophecy to Ahaz too with the verse's original meaning.
After all, it actually happened in the late 700s BC.
[1] The philosopher Paul Ricoeur called this dynamic, the "autonomous text" in Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning.
[2] For example, the Habakkuk commentary (1QpHab) among the Dead Sea Scrolls reads the words of Habakkuk in relation to the rise of Roman rule and influence in the region.
[3] Although they would likely deny it, there's a school of hermeneutics called "theological interpretation" that arguably does this. It tries to have its cake and eat it too, claiming to read the Bible in context while instead reading it in the light of its theology. Both readings are valid, but they are different interpretations.
