Behind every act of communication there is a rich tapestry of context that enables what is being communicated to actually be understood. Take, for example, the following sentence:
“We’re going to murder them.”
If that sentence is yelled out in the locker room of a hockey team before a big game, it means one thing. If it’s spoken in whispers in the back corner of a bar by a couple of criminals, it means something else.
For most of our daily conversations, context (the circumstances in which something is communicated) often goes unrecognized because both the speaker and the listener are inhabiting the same one. As a result, all the nuances of meaning which that particular context gives are readily understood by both parties. However, when the speaker and the listener don’t share the same context, errors in understanding or simply not understanding at all are very possible.
For example, many Americans see a woman wearing a head covering (hijab) as a sign of male or religious authoritarianism and domination. In reality, though, the reasons for wearing a hijab vary greatly from person to person. Some hijab wearers do so by no choice of their own, but a great many wear the hijab for other reasons, such as personal religious convictions, a desire for modesty or as a way to express their personal identity. The problem here is that the wearer and the observer often don’t share the same context, so misunderstandings and misinterpretations are virtually inevitable.
Understanding the context of a communication is usually easier when it is in a spoken conversation. In those cases, the speaker and listener typically have a broad overlap in circumstances to draw from. The role of context gets trickier in written communication, especially literature, where the setting of the author may be very different or even unknown to the reader.
This challenge is especially apparent when the writer makes an allusion to something that is in the general cultural context, but not in a particular reader’s context. For example, in the U2 song Pride (In the Name of Love), one line reads, “One man betrayed by a kiss.” This lyric assumes the hearer will catch the allusion to the Garden of Gethsemane, which is necessary for understanding the sacrificial nature of love that Bono is focusing on. If the reader is unfamiliar with this allusion to Judas betraying Jesus by kissing him (Matt 26:47-49), then this line loses its impact and could potentially lead to a very wrong conclusion, e.g. that a man’s wife was having an affair.
Worse yet is when the failure to understand the context leads a person to the opposite conclusion of what the author intended. For example, there was an incident about ten years ago in which a pastor prayed at the U.S. Capitol for all of Congress to be slain in the Spirit. One news reporter, who clearly did not live in the same religious context as the preacher, wrote an article saying that the pastor had asked God to kill all of the members of Congress. Had the reporter shared the same context as the pastor, the reporter would have known that the pastor was praying for the exact opposite – a blessing from God, not retribution.
While context can be important in day-to-day communications, it becomes vital when we try to understand the Bible. This is because the context of the Bible is so radically different from our own and because there are different contexts within the Bible itself.
In general, there are three different forms of context which need to be evaluated as we study scripture. These include the cultural context, historical context and biblical context.
Cultural Context
The term culture means, broadly, “the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, encompassing language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts.”[1] In the Bible, the Hebraic culture dominates much of the Old Testament while the Greco-Roman culture casts a long shadow over the New Testament. Even this, however, is a poor generalization since there are strong Jewish cultural elements in the New Testament and the Hebraic culture of the Old Testament changed and developed over the 1,500 or so years in which it was written.
The impact of culture on our understanding of scripture can be very significant.
For example, there are four verses in the New Testament which command believers to greet each other with a holy kiss (Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; 1 Thess 5:26) and one verse that commands believers to greet each other with a kiss of love (1 Pet 5:14). There is no more said in scripture about how this is to be accomplished, which is a significant indication that such a kiss of greeting was already practiced in the surrounding culture (which we know to be the case, delivered on the cheek). Therefore, these verses are not requiring the readers to kiss one another (that was already being done), but to remind believers that fellow believers were family and should be given the same welcome as their natural family and close friends.
The impact of culture in the Bible is significant, especially in those areas where the Bible modifies a cultural practice, but doesn’t abolish it. Does that mean the authors approved of these practices? Or were they simply making an unacceptable practice more tolerable? This question has great implications for our understanding of slavery, marriage and the role of women, among others.
Historical Context
The historical context of a passage has two different aspects to it. First of these is the historical background of the passage itself. For example, the story of the return of the Jews to Jerusalem has more depth to it when we know that it was a common practice of the Assyrians to remove people from their homeland and repopulate it with people from other conquered lands.
Likewise, in the New Testament, the shock to the Jewish audience when Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan is made all the more visceral when we understand the historic relationship between the Jews and Samaritans.[2]
Yet the historical context has a second aspect, and that is the situation of the writer. For example, knowing that Paul wrote to the Philippians after he had a missionary career that included multiple beatings, imprisonments and other trials gives his exhortations to rejoice a much greater impact.
Biblical Context
While understanding the historical and cultural contexts of a passage may require external study, the biblical context of a passage requires an understanding of the entirety of the Bible. The biblical context of a passage may be further broken down into three elements.
The Bible. The Bible – despite its many human authors – presents a coherent story from its ultimate author, God Himself. Therefore, when we read a book in the Bible, we need to understand it in the context of the entire canon. If the reading of one passage appears to disagree with another, we need to discern whether we are being presented with different aspects of a larger truth or merely different perspectives of a situation. In either case, examining different passages together helps refine our understanding of each, as well as the story they together are part of.
The Book. Of course, understanding what a biblical writer intended to communicate depends on understanding the genre, historical context and cultural background of the text. However, as we read the book, it is also important to read each verse in the context of the book itself, to see what it means within the surrounding discussion.
For example, 1 Corinthians 13 is embedded in a longer passage (1 Cor 12-14) that is focused on spiritual gifts. Therefore, spiritual gifts and their operation cannot be rightly understood without taking into account the preeminent role of love. Similarly, the discourse on love in 1 Corinthians 13 is illuminated by the chapters that sandwich it.
As another example, it is common to see Philippians 4:12 (“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”) used as a verse to affirm that God will enable us to accomplish whatever goal we may have. In the context of the chapter, though, Paul is really saying that God will enable Paul to endure whatever hardships he encounters as a result of living out his faith no matter what the cost (cf. 2 Corinthians 11:16-29).
Our ability to keep a verse within the context of the book or passage to which it belongs helps us significantly in understanding what the author really meant and is a strong safeguard against reading into the text whatever meaning we would like it to have.
The Author. The author of a New Testament text plays a large role in our understanding the meaning of that text.[3] In particular, if an author has written more than one book (like Paul), nothing in all of those writings should stand in direct conflict with each other. For example, Paul’s view on the role of women has to take into account not only what he wrote about women, but also the way he employed and supported women in ministry. Unless we are to accuse Paul of being a hypocrite, we should expect his words and actions to generally line up with each other.
Another important aspect of authorial context is their choice of vocabulary and sentence structure. Each of the biblical writers made their own unique word choices and sometimes an author would use a word in a slightly different way than another author. Or one author might have used different words than other authors did for the same thing. Understanding a particular author’s style of writing and word choice on his or her own terms helps clarify the author’s meaning and imbue the text with richer meaning.
So the context of the author – their experiences and especially word use – can also play a significant role in our understanding of the text.
Conclusion
In order to understand what the biblical writers were saying to their readers, we must take into account a number of different factors. Among these are the cultural and historical contexts in which the authors wrote (and the readers read) and the context of the Bible itself. If we fail to do this, we run the risk of misunderstanding the text and, in some cases, we may even come up with a conclusion that is the opposite of what the author intended.
Resources:
A great study Bible that addresses the cultural context of the Bible well is the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (https://www.zondervan.com/9780310431589/niv-cultural-backgrounds-study-bible-hardcover-red-letter/).
Notes:
[1] https://www.livescience.com/21478-what-is-culture-definition-of-culture.html
[2] When Israel was divided by civil war, Samaria became the capital of the Northern Kingdom. When the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom, they repopulated the region (now called Samaria) with people from other conquered lands. Since deities were thought to be tied to place, the new inhabitants adopted the worship of their new local god, in this case YHWH. When the Jewish people returned to the land from exile, they considered these foreign worshippers of their God to be abominations and hated them. Jesus’ choice of a member of a hated race as the hero in the parable of the Good Samaritan is made even more remarkable when He makes the priests and Levites (who would be expected to be the heroes) into the villains.
