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by Dr. Michael Heiser

I have this topic stuck in my head today in the wake of some conversations with folks about the Dead Sea Scrolls. But it could just as well be about interpreting any passage in the Hebrew Bible. I’ve grown weary of people (especially in Christian Middle Earth) appealing to rabbis to “prove” some idea they have about Scripture.

You have to realize appealing to rabbis means nothing. Rabbinic thought and biblical thought (and academic work) are miles apart. Hey Christians enamored with rabbis: The rabbis can’t even get the messiah right (or, to be more charitable, the two powers in heaven doctrine right — that belief they used to have in Judaism until it became uncomfortable due to Christianity). If you’ve ever listened to Ben Shapiro (I’m a fan of the show) you know what I mean. He often does “Bible time” on his podcast. But what you get isn’t exegesis of the text in its ancient context. What you get is rabbinic opinion (with all the contrarian rabbinic opinions shelved to the side). Rabbinic interpretation (think Talmud and Mishnah) contradicts itself over and over again. That’s what those works do — they fling opinions at each other. That Hebrew food fight got codified into the Talmud and Mishnah. And Judaism is fine with that. We shouldn’t be. Most of what you’d find in rabbinic writings bears little to no resemblance of exegetical work in the text understood in light of its original ancient Near Eastern worldview. Not even close. They’re frequently making stuff up (they apply biblical material to situations in which the community found itself in; the work of the rabbis was responsive to community circumstances — it’s very applicational or situational).

In short, “the rabbis” are not authorities on biblical exegesis in context or on deciphering scrolls and inscriptions. A modern analogy might help. If you put 100 pastors in a room and asked them what a given passage meant and why, and then recorded their debates and codified them in writing you’ve have “evangelical Christian rabbinics.” In academic terms, they are mostly amateurs, unaware of the historical contexts (ANE, and even Second Temple — most of which period preceded the classic rabbinic era). It’s a pool of contradicting opinions. It’s really not very useful. Rabbinic commentary about the biblical text will tell you only about the opinions rabbis have had on a passage. It won’t tell you at all how the ancient biblical writer was producing content from the context of his own pre-rabbinic worldview. “Rabbinic period” and “biblical period” do not overlap chronologically. The classic rabbinic period (“Rabbinism”) dates from the 6th century AD forward. Some of what worked its way into the Mishnah and Talmus is earlier than that, but NONE of it (recall it’s commenting on the Hebrew Bible) is from the Old Testament period. The Dead Sea Scrolls also pre-date the rabbinic period (by centuries). NOTE: This is also why the church fathers aren’t authorities in biblical exegesis, either. They are centuries (even millennia) removed from the biblical period and had no access to things like ancient Near Eastern texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls for help in interpretation. They were brilliant, but far removed from the right contexts and under-sourced.

In fairness, though, I don’t want to overstate the situation. Just as we might find a pastor who is a trained scholar in our hypothetical analogy — and whose opinions would be more informed (i.e., he’d be aware of the scholarly give and take, the published literature on a passage, and the wider worldview contexts), we might find a rabbi who is a trained scholar as well. But it’s light years from a 1:1 equation there. “Rabbi” isn’t a synonym for “Hebrew Bible scholar” any more than “pastor” is a synonym for “Bible scholar.” You might find that overlap, but it’s far from a given.

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by Nate Claiborne

One of the more paradigm shifting experiences I had in seminary was finding out about other ancient Near Eastern literature. The Bible, particularly the Old Testament, was written in a very different place and time than our own. By studying other writings from that place and time we may be better equipped to understand what the authors of Scripture originally meant.

Now, I say “may be better equipped” because reading that other ancient Near Eastern literature takes just as much of an interpretive effort as reading the Bible, and maybe even more so in some cases. One might even say that the other literature is even harder to interpret because we haven’t been exposed to it as much as we’ve been exposed to Scripture.

This is where finding good resources on the ancient Near East can prove helpful. So, I want to highlight a couple before moving back to books on Genesis proper.

Scripture and Cosmology

Kyle Greenwood’s Scripture and Cosmology focuses on one main aspect of understanding the ancient Near East. Thanks to IVP Academic, I was able to give it a read a while back. On the whole, I think it’s a helpful primer on the intersection of ancient Near Eastern literature and Scripture. While there are different aspects of this intersection, cosmology is perhaps the most relevant to making sense of Genesis in light of modern science. This book will introduce that touchy subject well without being the definitive last word (which it doesn’t aim to be).

In case you’re still wondering, the ancient Near East is what we would now call the Middle East. In relation to Europe, it is the Near East as opposed to the Far East. And it is ancient, meaning up until either the Persian Empire, or Alexander the Great (depending on who you ask). We can potentially understand the Bible better by understanding the literature of Israel’s neighbors from that time period.

The opening chapter highlights the importance of context for interpretation and also differentiates the different types of context (cultural, geographic, historical, literary). This leads to a discussion of worldview in general, and then the particular part of a worldview called cosmology.

The next three chapter are the first part of the book and focus on Scripture and the cosmos in its ancient cultural context. The first of these chapters is a general introduction to ancient Near Eastern cosmologies, or understandings of the world and how it worked. The next chapter then looks at how cosmology is represented in Scripture. The remaining chapter in this first part then takes a closer look at cosmogony, which is the more technically term for a creation account. Greenwood starts with Genesis 1-2, but then looks at the other places in Scripture that talk about God creating the world.

The second part of the book has two chapters and focuses on cosmology in historical context. The first chapter compares Scripture and Aristotelian cosmology. The second does the same but with Copernican cosmology, which at the big picture level is more or less our current understanding.

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