6) Context Matters - Part 4: The Jewish Narrative: A Connected Story of Redemption

The last post discussed how the Bible represents the Jewish Scriptures. In this post, I want to explore how the Jewish scriptures contain the Jewish story. 

Next, we should consider that these ancient Hebrew writings are not just random, but they're a collection. The Bible's writings come together to form a coherent, connected story. As said earlier, the events we read about in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not the beginning of a new story. They were later chapters in a continuing novel that began in Genesis, specifically with the promises to Abraham. God said that it would be through Abraham's family that all the rest of the nations of the earth would be blessed. 

Now, think about it. If we picked up a ten-chapter novel and started reading it at chapter seven, how many of the story's details would we miss, get wrong, misunderstand, or even misinterpret? This is why it's essential to see that when Jesus came the first time, he was a Jew who arrived in context to a very Jewish story and that his words were in context to that story and that worldview.

Some have described the Bible story as one of redemption. Beginning with the ideal in Genesis, followed by the fall and corruption of this ideal creation. By the end of the Bible, we see restoration and redemption. All things are made new. This is just one example of several vital threads that tie together throughout the various genres of the Bible. This story of redemption in the Bible reveals more and more of God's plan to restore all of his creation to its original glory, as before Adam's fall in the garden. 

The weaving of these threads throughout the Bible isn't always smooth. It's not always easy. We see setbacks and failures and all sorts of questions that get raised. When and how are these promises going to come to pass? In fact, this is one of the burning questions on the minds of so many Jews at the beginning of the first century. Has God abandoned his promises to the nation of Israel and thus to the world? And the resounding answer that the Jewish apostles gave us after Jesus's death and resurrection was no; God has not forgotten. God has not abandoned, altered, or redefined the promises. God will do all that He said through Moses and the prophets. The plan has not changed.

Replacement Theology or supersessionism, the idea that the church has replaced Israel, has influenced our understanding of God's plan. Supersessionism has caused the things that the Old Testament says about the future of the Jewish nation to take a backseat to the things that Jesus did at the first coming. Now, we should not minimize what Jesus did when he came the first time. However, we need to see those things in context to the larger story of the Bible because the Old Testament has been building a story that didn't come to its ultimate climax or its final conclusion in the first century with the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Scholars and theologians throughout history have used the word apocalyptic when referring to the ultimate climax of the story that has been building throughout the Bible.

Part of this Jewish Narrative and the story building to a climatic end involves ideas centered around the climatic end itself. We see themes developed by the law and the prophets, like the day of the Lord, the resurrection of the dead, eternal life, the day of judgment, and the kingdom of God. These themes were genuine, tangible future realities in the minds of Jesus and other Jews within the first century. First-century Jews understood from their own scriptures that history was moving toward this climactic end, that when the Messiah appears, the righteous would be rewarded, the wicked would be punished, the age to come would be launched, and God would set up a kingdom of righteousness, with the Messiah reigning in glory over the nations from Jerusalem.

So, as we approach the life and the words of Jesus, perhaps more familiar to us than the Old Testament, we would remember that Jesus was Jewish, talking to Jewish people, addressing very Jewish themes, and affirming Jewish ideas from their scriptures. Now, this doesn't mean that the words in the life of Jesus don't matter to us as 21st-century Gentiles. Of course, they do. They count much more when we see them through this first-century Jewish apocalyptic lens. As the apostles go on to make clear from their writings, this complete gospel message had not come to be a different story than what they had expected. As if Jesus redefined or reimagined the prophecies of the Jewish scriptures. Instead, this was a continuing story that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus confirmed to be true. And this is what the apostles write about throughout the book of Acts and their epistles. This Jewish context to the Bible is an important concept to grasp and understand. We see evidence of this apocalyptic worldview in Acts 17: 30-31, where Paul is addressing the people of Athens and proclaiming that God has fixed a day for the apocalyptic expectations:

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but know he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." (Acts 17:30-31, ESV Bible)

Further in 2 Peter 1:17-19, we see Paul referring to an event known as the Transfiguration, where he, along with disciples James and John, witnessed the glorified appearance of Jesus on a mountain:

For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased," we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed… (2 Peter 1:17-19, ESV Bible)

While the event of Transfiguration is considered a significant moment in the Gospels, emphasizing the divine identity of Jesus, Peter states that it confirmed the prophetic word to be true. Meaning, it met the expectations set out in the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures. 

When we read the Bible, we cannot ignore the Jewish narrative of the Bible. When you open your Bible to read, remind yourself that you are part of a grand story God has written. This story has a lot to say about his people, Israel. It also has much to tell about how God has chosen to take a people from among the Gentiles for his name. God even gives the Gentiles the Holy Spirit as a down payment of the glory to come when he redeems Israel and restores all creation. So not only are we, as 21st-century Western disciples of Jesus, invited to understand this very Jewish story and our place as the Gentiles, the nations, within the story, but we're also invited to participate in it. We are asked to boldly tell others about it and to long for its ultimate conclusion, which is the Jewish apocalyptic expectations of eternal life in a resurrected body, the restoration of all creation, the administration of God's blessing to the world through Abraham's descendants in the age to come when Jesus returns and reigns on David's throne in Jerusalem. 

Our understanding of this narrative and where it is headed should empower us to live according to it. The typical Christian narrative involves accepting Jesus into your heart, living an excellent life, and going to heaven to float on clouds one day. At least, that was the gist of the narrative I was taught. The Jewish narrative is an epic story designed to thrill our hearts much more than the Christian Western View of the Bible. We will explore these ideas more in future studies, but it is vital to understand this context when reading the Bible. 

The contrast to reading the Bible with this Jewish narrative in mind is to aimlessly seek wisdom from the Bible's contents. Without context, we struggle to connect the dots of the overarching story. Too many times, Christians play Bible roulette and flip to whatever passage feels good at the time. The daily devotional is the epitome of what I am describing. Hey, what are you saying? I happen to like my daily devotional! I am not telling you to avoid your daily devotional. What I am stating is don't forget the context. Certainly understand how the daily devotional fits into the overarching Jewish narrative. Don't search the Bible aimlessly, looking for a promise or "good word" to keep the day going and to keep you pepped up for life. And certainly don't do it so you can say you "read your Bible" today. 

To illustrate the point further and establish a more sound context, imagine you are house-sitting for a good friend while his family is on vacation. At your friend's house, on the refrigerator, is a love letter he wrote to his wife once when he was away for a work trip. It is open for anyone to see, so you read the letter. This letter says a lot of awesome things about your friend's wife. It describes how much he loves her. It talks about how committed he is to her and how much he misses her. And when he gets back home, he can't wait to take her out on a date and spend time with her. 

It is apparent in the letter how your friend feels about his wife. Would it be appropriate for you to read that letter and assume that the letter was instead written to you or even described how your friend feels about you personally? Of course not! That would be very weird, and it wouldn't be correct. Although you are good friends, you are not his wife. The things he wrote in the letter aren't things that were said to you personally. So, does this mean that the letter has no relevance or application to you as a friend? What do you seek to gain from reading this letter? There is actually a lot that you can learn from the letter. 

First, you can discern your friend's character, commitment, and extravagance. You can see how he cares for his wife and what he longs to do for her when he returns from his trip. You can see how much he misses his family when he is away. There's so much understanding that you can gain about your friend simply by reading the letter to his wife. Perhaps it even makes you appreciate your friend more as you see the nature and character of his relationship with his wife. It makes you happy to know that you are really good friends and even considered to be like family. 

Now, of course, we can't directly apply the details of this example to how we read the Bible in terms of all of the details, but I hope you can see the main points that the example illustrates. When we read the Bible, we must ask who these words were originally spoken to. What context would they have heard them in? And what meaning would they have had for them? And I think once you answer those questions, it's possible to ask, well, what can I, as a 21st-century Gentile, understand about God, His ways, His character, and His promises? How should I live based on this information? How can I join the story he's been telling primarily focused on the ethnic descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the nation of Israel? What's the place of the Gentile nations in this story, and how does the whole thing end? This context of the Jewish narrative and the overarching story will change how you read the Bible.