I was asked to reflect on our time together at Bethel Seminary and my time at the seminary in specific. As many of you know, I entered seminary through the back door. Prior to moving back to Minnesota (where my wife and I grew up), I had completed a Master of Arts in Biblical Archaeology of the Old Testament. I spent three years applying to PhD programs in Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. I always imagined that I would serve the church in ministry but, in my head, that would come after a long Academic career. When I wasn’t accepted to any of the top five schools for that field, and job prospects following a second-tier education were less than ideal, I spent a good amount of time grieving what I thought my life would be.

Perhaps some of you also know that I grew up as an atheist. I used to pick fights with Christians. One of those people that I used to pick fights with, told me in the last year, that she couldn’t believe that I was in seminary to be a pastor because I used to make her cry following our discussions. It wasn’t until my heart was softened at a regular youth group meeting that I came to know Jesus as my lord and savior. I quickly found myself thrust into leadership roles and I could think of no better way to spend my life than studying God’s redemptive history. Not from the moldy basement of a library but where it happened, in the dirt of Israel and the ancient near east.

While I could spend the remainder of my time talking about how impactful Bethel seminary was on my faith formation, I think that the texts chosen for our reflection this evening call us to focus on each of our futures in ministry and therapy instead. I am so thankful that the story of Esther was chosen for our reflection this evening. As we graduate from Bethel Seminary tomorrow we are entering one of the toughest church climates to be faced by the American Church. By almost every measure the religious “nones” are increasing among the youngest generations. Millennials and Generation Z (the current batch of freshmen over at the college) have serious reservations about the importance of the church and faith in their daily lives. Racial tension is at a significant high and the world faces the largest refugee crisis since the end of World War II.

We have spent these years at Bethel Seminary “for such a time as this.” While the biblical text may not have been written to us, it was definitely written for us. As the unchurched and post-churched “nones” increasingly question the relevance of the Church in the world today we need to take what we have learned here: How to approach the text in a rigorous and theologically informed manner, drawing on our own experience of spiritual formation, in order to influence the church and culture through virtuous leadership.

Easy, one-line answers aren’t enough. Those who are on the margins of church and faith want to be listened to and they want to be called into a mission and vision that is greater than themselves! In response to those needs, I pray we, as the future church, begin to reclaim a robust praxis of Christian hospitality that seeks to see Jesus in the “least of these” around us – whether inside or outside the church. I’ll be honest, a praxis of hospitality is dangerous. It calls us to invite “others” into our lives of faith risking not only our possessions but the relationships closest to us. Fortunately, we need not look any further than Jesus for the normative practice of hospitality as both stranger and host. Hospitality calls us to engage the stranger and guest, but it also calls us to allow ourselves to be changed by that relationship as we practice presence with them. Hospitality demands that we listen to their story of pain and hurt, empathizing with their alien identity, for we are all seeking a homeland, all guests in the kingdom of God, subject to God’s gracious benevolence towards us. We have all been well-trained for the individual vocations that lay before us. While the challenges of graduate school are great, our greatest challenges lay in the future and we will have to draw on everything we have learned here to navigate that future well as we rely heavily on God’s grace through those challenges ahead.

As you face those challenges may you be sustained by God, in Jesus through the power of the Holy spirit. May you listen well, seeking to connect and empathize with those both inside and outside the church. And May you ever grow deeper in your life of faith as you lead others into deeper discipleship of Christ; for you have been trained “for such a time as this.”

Recovering the the art of hospitality has weighed heavily on my heart over the course of the last year. When we think of hospitality today, normally we think of professional services: hotels, hospitals andrestaurants. But it wasn’t always that way. Hospitality was one of the distinguishing marks of the early Christian communities. It set them apart from the rest of the Roman world that was dependent upon classism and patron/client relationships. The hospitality of the church meant that all waited for one another to share the Lord’s Table, regardless of class or ethnicity, and share they did – a full meal. If you would like to know more about the nature of Hospitality in the early church I can think of no better resource than Christine Pohl’s Making Room.

Resource review

I have taken up stands on both sides of the evolution and creation issue. As an avowed atheist in middle and early high school I liked to pick fights with Christians specifically over evolution. For me, at the time, the fantastical interpretive hoops of a young earth creationist perspective simply didn’t make sense. All too often people were reading into the texts of Genesis 1-3 what they wanted to see. Eventually I relented and my heart softened, and I came to understand the profound restfulness offered by Jesus in the kingdom of God. Post-conversion I didn’t change all that much. Instead of picking fights with Christians I started to pick fights with any atheist I could. There’s a major problem with that way of being though: It’s hard to communicate grace when you treat everyone like something to be conquered. I had switched sides and adopted a young earth creationist stance, all the while knowing there were significant hermeneutical problems with the position.

Seventeen years later, my approach has considerably softened. I spent a decade studying the cultural backgrounds of the bible and during that time I discovered that two of the most profound words in the English language is the statement “me too!” My previous graduate work had been focused on the Old Testament. I went to seminary to gain greater experience in New Testament studies and to round out my training in ministry and leadership development. I’ve learned that identifying with the other, finding common ground to approach struggles and doubts from the same place, has a significant impact on our ability to do ministry, especially with the growing number of unchurched and post-churched.

Because I write about and present on the cultural backgrounds of the Bible in church contexts I am frequently asked about issues of origins, creation, and cosmology. While this does not deal directly with my specific area of study (Archaeology), a cultural and contextual approach to the nineteen creation accounts in the biblical text does bear significantly on how we might begin to gesture towards the relationship between biblical cosmology and modern scientific cosmology. Normally, my stance as an old earth evolutionary creationist gets me into trouble in some church contexts. Where my stance proves fruitful is when I am reaching out to the unchurched and the post-churched who have only come into contact with people who demanded a young earth “literal” reading of the creation account. Ultimately, I must conclude that the cosmology presented in the biblical text is not scientific and should not be read according to a traditional “literal” interpretation. Instead, it should be read as a theological statement about who God is and how humanity relates to God. This leads me to deny any mode or demand of concordism between the biblical text and scientific cosmology. Much harm has been done to peoples’ faith by those who demand that they shut off their thinking mind to accept some predetermined notion of what Genesis 1-3 is all about.

The issue is complicated by science. As an archaeologist, I am a fan of various methods of dating including radiocarbon dating. While there are plateaus in the calibration curves for radiocarbon dating, it is accurate out to about twenty-thousand years before present. There are archaeological remains that are ten-thousand years old making it impossible for the earth to be only four thousand years old. Genomic research also complicates a literal reading of Genesis 1-3 as current research indicates that the genomic diversity in humans could not have come from a population less than ten thousand. That becomes problematic when we consider the words of Paul in Romans 5:12-14 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, and this is normally where the conversation leads for my young earth creation peers. If we are dealing with an old earth, and a large human population how are we to read and understand Paul’s words in these two places. My normal response, as with Genesis, is contextually. That was Paul’s understanding of cosmology. This issue will demand the development of an understanding of the nature of scripture and a greater articulation of an understanding of the nature of inspiration, the embodiment of God’s self-revelation.

These questions will significantly shape the church of the near future

The questions surrounding the relationship between scientific cosmology and biblical cosmology are particularly pronounced for Millennials and Generation Z (the current group of freshmen on campus). Frequently the church’s ignorance of and dismissal of scientific inquiry frequently creates a major stumbling block to faith for these age groups. Largely educated in a public-school system that has whole heartedly embraced Darwinian evolution, Millennials and Generation Z don’t have the same hang-ups about the scientific data that previous generations of evangelicals have had during the culture wars of the 80’s and 90’s. For them, the church’s inability to respond with both a robust understanding and a positive assessment of scientific inquiry leads them to be wary of the intellectual authenticity of the church and its leaders. Ultimately, if your young people are forced to make a choice between evolution and the bible, statistically speaking, many are choosing evolution, rather than choosing the bible and disregarding their intellect. Often, questions about human and cosmological origins become questions about the biblical text itself – or at least certain interpretations of the text: if Adam and Eve were not historical individuals, is the bible true and in what ways? Were humans originally innocent? Was there a “fall”? and Is there original sin?

Millennials and Generation Z craves authenticity and being drawn into a vision and mission that is greater than themselves. Being drawn into that mission and vision cannot come at the price of their own intellectual identity however. They are not willing to turn off their minds to assent to a particular interpretation of the text, instead they want to be drawn into a communal interpretative activity where individual perspectives change and shape the community’s understanding of the text.

Authors Setran and Kiesling and Kara Powell, in talking about emerging adults, cite several factors that contribute to decreased church attendance and faith engagement among emerging adults, including: 1) churches that overly cater to families and do not redeem singleness, 2) the church is perceived as unengaged with society, 3) a perception of shallow/trivial teaching with little relevance, 4) the church is perceived as repressive or outdated (particularly with regard to sexual standards), 5) the church is perceived as exclusive and judgmental, 5) the church is an unsafe place to express doubts and 6) the church is perceived as “anti-science” or at least simplistic in its response.

In response to these perceptions among emerging adults, we need to offer a degree of equipping, discipling and mentoring to emerging adults that produces a spiritual formation bent towards kingdom manifestation. This includes deep theological training and practical exposure to spiritual disciplines of abstinence and engagement. But it also includes a willingness to walk alongside emerging adults in their faith doubts and questions about how their faith relates to the modern social context, their individual vocations, and the modern scientific method. If we offer anorexic responses to their doubts and serious intellectual questions regarding cosmology, emerging adults will continue to eschew the church in preference for a moral therapeutic deism that requires much less of them.

The science is important

For emerging adults, the scientific data plays an important role in their understanding of the biblical text. Churches that insist upon concordism (the matching of a “literal” reading of the Genesis 1-3 with scientific inquiry) often alienate this group of people that are far more comfortable with accepting an ancient age of the earth and cosmos as well as biological evolution as the means through which God created biological diversity, including humans.

Generally young earth creationists identify the age of the earth as somewhere around six thousand years before present. Normally this number is arrived through a calculation of ages based upon the genealogical tables in the Biblical text. Unfortunately, the scientific data simply does not support such a young age for the earth and its materials. Radio-carbon dating is accurate up to about twenty thousand years before present. The earliest settlement in Israel, at Jericho, has been dated radio-metrically to about ten thousand years before present or the 9th millennium BCE. For much of Europe, we have a dendrochronology (tree ring) catalogue that can be traced to roughly twelve thousand years before present. Just those two data points alone make a young earth improbable. Things become even more complicated though as we consider dating methods for the age of the earth and the cosmos in general. The age of the earth and solar system has been determined using two methods: 1) Zircon Grain analysis and 2) radiometric dating of Argon-40’s half-life into Potassium-40. Several dates have been given using these methods for the age of the earth. Radiometric dating in Greenland produced an age of roughly 3.6 billion years for the earth. Zircon grain analysis of grains found in Australia dated the earth to some 4.4 billion years old. The standard though is provided through radiometric dating of meteorites which produces an age of roughly 4.5 billion years for our immediate solar system. Finally, the age of the universe is determined using a combination of the speed of light constant and stellar parallax to determine the distance of near earth and midrange objects in lightyears. The furthest limits of space is set by the cosmic background noise at 13.8 billion light years away (“How are the ages of the Earth and Universe Calculated,” BioLogos available online http://biologos.org/common-questions/scientific-evidence/ages-of-the-earth-and-universe).

In response to this data, young earth creationists tend to argue one of two tacks. Either they argue for a gap theory where there is a significant gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 where Satan ruled earth for a period in Genesis 1:1 or they argue that God created the earth and the universe with the appearance of age, including geomorphology, dinosaur bones and light already in transit. The problem with such a position though is that is makes significant claims about the character of God which run counter to nearly every orthodox statement about who God is – loving, truthful, etc.

The genomic evidence following the human genome project produces another set of complications for biblical literalists. Namely, the present level of genetic diversity found in humans today indicates that there was never a population of humanoids fewer than roughly ten thousand (McKnight and Venema, kindle location 170). In other words, it would be impossible for us to see the present level of genetic diversity found in the human genome if humanity had descended from either a single pair (Adam and Eve) or a small group of people (Noah and his children). Genomic scientists used three distinct methods to determine the minimal viable population that could produce present levels of genetic diversity. Humans have about three billion alleles (gene data) and about 100 of them are mutated every generation. Using that known rate of mutation genomic scientists, used the method of Allele Diversity to indicate that the human population was never far below ten thousand (McKnight and Venema, L1106). Young earth creationist responded to this method by arguing that genomic scientists assumed a constant mutation rate as opposed to a variable rate. Perhaps, sometime in the past the mutation rate was greater? To account for the possibility of a variable mutation rate genomic scientists used two additional methods that did not require a known rate of mutation. First, “linkage disequilibrium” assumes that nearby alleles are inherited together. Occasionally there are copying errors and the alleles are copied in reverse order. This is called a crossover event. Regression curves based upon the known rate of crossover events also indicated that the human population never dipped far below ten thousand humanoids (McKnight and Venema, L1120). Finally, genomic scientists used “incomplete lineage sorting” which measures the diversity of alleles present in close genetic relatives (e.g. Humans, chimpanzees and gorillas). This method indicates that the lowest population of hominids was between seven thousand and ten thousand when humans first began to leave Africa (McKnight and Venema, L1181).

Between the age of the cosmos and the genomic data significant questions are raised for how we are to read and interpret Genesis 1-3. The traditional young earth “literal” reading that seeks to read into the text young earth science simple cannot account for either the age data or the genomic data that indicate that neither the earth, nor human origins could have occurred in the way young earth creationists normally “literally” read the text. If that is the case then we need to re-evaluate what constitutes a “literal” reading of the text and how we can understand the biblical text alongside what we know from the scientific data.

Why context matters

There are of course nineteen different accounts of creation in the biblical text (Gen 1-3; Prov. 3:19-20; 8:3; 6:8; 22-31; Psalm 19:1; 33:6-9; 65:6-8; 104; 139:13-14; 147:4-18; 148:5-10; Job 9:8-9; Isaiah 45:18; John 1:1-2; Col. 1:16-17; 2 Pet. 3:5; Rom. 4:17), yet the origins debate has tended to only focus on Genesis 1-3 in their discussion of either biblical or scientific cosmology. To properly read the Genesis account considering the scientific data we need to begin to gesture towards how reading the text in its original context, both Genesis 1-3 and Paul’s references to Adam in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, might alleviate some of the perceived conflict between a “literal reading” and scientific cosmology. While the biblical text was written for us, it was not written to us. Indeed, it is filled with several voices, each in their own social location and writing to specific audiences within their own time and place. I contend, along with John Walton that the most “literal” reading is one which assumes the identity of the text’s original audience, and therefore assumes the cultural norms of that audience as well.

For both the Genesis account and Paul’s understanding of Adam we have to assume that what goes unsaid is often the subconscious shared heritage between the texts’ authors and the texts’ audience. This is sometime called the “Ancient Near Eastern Cognitive environment” and it represents the assumed cultural beliefs shared by both the text’s author and audience (Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought). While cultural backgrounds studies do not directly allow us to better understand scientific cosmology they do allow us to better understand that ancient cognitive environment.

In the case of the Genesis narratives we can say two things: 1) It is ancient revelation because it does not receive special revelation outside the normal ways in which ancient near easterners would describe the world (e.g. it assumes an ancient cosmic geography); 2) it assumes a functional ontology (Walton, Lost World of Genesis One). The former statement assumes that there is not a single example of revelation revealing a scientific understanding that is not native to the world of the Bible’s ancient authors and audiences. For instance, what is normally translated as “the mind” in the Old Testament is usually the Hebrew word for “entrails” because this was thought to be the location of thinking in the Ancient Near East. In the case of the latter statement, a functional ontology is distinct from a material ontology in that functional ontology argues that things do not exist until they are named, separated, given a role within an ordered system, and someone benefits (e.g. humanity). We use this sort of ontology when we describe organizations today. A business for instance does not exists until it begins making sales or a school does not exist until students are enrolled and they begin taking classes.

There is both internal and extra-biblical evidence to indicate that creation in genesis is operating under a functional ontology. The extra-biblical evidence such as various creation account from elsewhere in the Ancient Near East (e.g. The Epic of Atra-Khasis, Enuma Elish, The Memphite creation, and the instructions of Merikare) all emphasize the gods’ roles in naming, separating, and giving roles in an ordered system. Internally the Hebrew word for “create” (ברא) is used fifty times in the Old Testament. God is always the subject or the implied subject. More significantly however the types of object taken by bara’ are ambiguous. No object clearly demands a material ontology and no materials for the creative acts are ever mentioned (Walton, Lost World of Genesis One). In the Genesis account of creation material exists prior to God’s creative acts – namely, the waters of the deep. Additionally, tohu and bohu (“formless and void”) seem to be functional terms rather than material terms. They denote that the cosmic waters lacked a function in an ordered system. Finally, a functional ontology provides a better account of God’s creative activities in each of the seven days of creation, including the seventh where God takes up residence in his cosmic temple (Walton, Lost World of Genesis One).

If however we accept the modern scientific understanding of human genetic diversity, as well as scientific cosmology a problem is created for how we are to understand Paul’s use of Adam in the New Testament in Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:20-23; 45. This problem is especially acute when people argue that Paul is referring to an actual “historical Adam.” By “historical Adam,” people have tended to assume that this is a reference to two persons (Adam and Eve) who have a biological relationship to all humanity, that those two sinned and brought death into the world, and that sin nature was passed on to all humanity through sexual embodiment. Unfortunately, “historical Adam” does not appear to be the type of Adam Paul is referring to in Romans and Corinthians. More likely, given the intertestamental and extra-biblical references to Adam in early Jewish sources, Paul is using Adam as an archetypal figure.

Here again, we can draw on both internal as well as external extra-biblical evidence to support this position. Internal to the text in 1 Corinthians 20-23; 45 Paul refers to Adam as the first man and Jesus as the last man. The fact that we know Jesus was not the last biological human means that Paul must be referring to Adam as the first and Jesus as the last in a different way. The most likely option is to argue that Adam was the archetypal first (an archetype of disobedience) and Jesus was the archetypal last (an archetype of obedience). In Romans, Paul admits that “death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). While Paul is drawing a contrast between Adam and Jesus, he does not identify Adam as the source of all of humanity’s sin. No, each human has sinned and the evidence of their sin is the fact that every person dies.

The external evidence comes from intertestamental and late first and second century CE references to Adam in Jewish texts such as Sirach 5:11-15; 17:1-10, 4 Ezra 7:118; 127-28, and 2 Baruch.  In each of these extra-biblical text Adam is an archetypal figure. There is no notion of “original sin” that was passed by Adam and Eve onto the rest of humanity. Instead each person has the opportunity to behave like Adam (disobedience) or choose the path of obedience. 2 Baruch is particularly informative because the path of obedience and disobedience are characterized as either the path of Moses or Adam respectively. Like in Paul’s texts everyone has the opportunity to be Adam, and everyone has the opportunity to be Moses/Jesus. None of the authors show a concern for the “historical Adam,” rather their concern is with guiding human behavior in their own time (McKnight and Venema, L2304, L3538 and L3575).

The failure of tradition

For the earliest interpreters of the Christian cannon, the patristic church fathers, concerns over historicity were often varied and divergent from modern understandings of historicity and the concordism demanded by young earth creationists between biblical and scientific cosmology. Indeed in describing the early church fathers Peter Bouteneff has argued that in “reading the ancients, we find that during any single era perceptions of and concerns about historicity and its relationship to truth vary among contemporaries at least as much as they do across millennial divides” (Bouteneff, Beginnings: Ancient Christian Readings of the Biblical Creation Narratives, xi). Indeed the early fathers were far more comfortable with reading Genesis 1-3 using a hermeneutic of typology or allegory that modern readers tend to feel squeamish about, particularly if their theology is tied to a certain understanding of original sin and “total depravity.” Bouteneff concludes his argument about the patristics noting that “Genesis 1-3 was read in terms of the Trinity … and even more in terms of Christ” (Bouteneff, 170). This is significant because it allowed the patristic fathers to have a greater freedom with their hermeneutic and exegesis. By maintaining, a Trinitarian focus, Bouteneff concludes, “which our writers identified as something made known through the apostolic witness, was both the hermeneutical key and the treasure sought through early patristic exegesis whether served through literal, typological, or allegorical readings or through a combination thereof” (Bouteneff, 170).

Our modern notion of original sin and “the fall” is rooted in an Augustinian reading from a mistranslation of Romans 5:12 in the Latin Vulgate that read “All die because in Adam all sinned.” Nearly every modern version of this text now uses the original Greek source which reads “death spread to all men because all sinned.” That one error, coupled with Augustine’s own misgivings about sexual embodiment has left a legacy on the transmission of original sin through sexual procreation. Rather than reading in Paul that all men die because all sin, Augustine produced a reading which led to the unleashing of cosmic sin and death because of Adam’s original disobedience. Individuals were no longer personally responsible for their own adherence to the way of disobedience (Adam) or the way of obedience (Jesus) for each had inherited a sin nature which prevented obedience. By the time of the reformation, this position becomes enshrined in Calvin’s assumed total depravity. Against this assumed total depravity I would cite passages such as Genesis 1:26-27 and 9:6 where, even after “the fall” humanity is still considered to have been created in the image of God. Likewise, I would cite Exodus 19:6 and 1 Peter 2:9. The former calls Israel a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation”, who, having just come from Egypt, would recognize that this moniker gave them the responsibility of being intermediaries between Yahweh and the rest of the nations of the world. In the latter case, the same image is being drawn on and applied to the Church. We are a “royal priesthood, a holy nation” responsible for mediating the presence of Christ to the rest of the world. Such positions go against any notion of total depravity for all believers in Jesus.

Finally, we should deal with the present disconnect between faith and science and the insistence of young earth creationists that scientific cosmology must match biblical cosmology (concordism). I contend that Genesis 1-3 is ultimately teleological not scientific. It is concerned with who God is, what is humanity’s anthropological purpose, and the ultimate purpose and function of the cosmos. In this way, Adam and Eve are archetypal characters designed to speak into the Ancient Near Eastern cultural context about who humans are and how they are to function in creation. Ultimately, empirical science focuses on causation sequences but it cannot clearly identify teleological purpose. As noted above, there is not one good example of biblical revelation, disclosing a scientific truth which is not native to the culture of either the text’s author or audience. By demanding that we read modern materialism into the Genesis 1-3, young earth creationists wind up negating the Genesis story according to its own functional terms and meanings. In making such demands young earth creationism requires a type of eisegesis by injecting a modern scientific understanding into the text. This means that the text is not being read, as claimed by young earth creationists, “at face value.” There is no reason that we should expect an ancient text to include a modern scientific understanding. If it doesn’t happen for the locus of the mind, or embryology (Psalm 139:13-14) why should we expect it when it comes to scientific cosmological and human origins.

McKnight and Venema’s Adam and the Genome offers an important corrective to this failure of tradition and the the failure of the modern church it address serious scientific inquiry and doubts held by it’s youngest members. If we want a thriving church filled with emerging adults over the course of the next decade we need to do a better job than offering anorexic one line responses to their doubts and questions. We need to engage young people deeply, walking with them in their struggles of faith. Every statistical indicator shows that in doing so young people walk away from the experience with even greater faith formation. McKnight and Venema’s book is a fantastic resource for guiding you through an alternative perspective on how that conversation might go. I can’t recommend it enough.

Disclosure of Material Connection. Some of the links above are affiliate links. That being said I only promote things which I thoroughly believe my readers will benefit from and that I use myself. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, part 255: “guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The beginning of a year is a time for resolutions and goals. A time to make a plan and set out on a new path; a time to make decisions and stick to them in order to achieve all of those things you never quite finished the year before. Should I focus on developing this project or that other one? Should I take that job or the one across the country that uproots our entire family? Should I buy the red shirt or the blue shirt (Blue obviously)? Should I major in business or move towards full-time ministry? In our fast-paced society, we face a hundred decisions that can significantly or insignificantly effect our lives for the future. Frequently, if you are in the Christian tradition that also means finding some way to meaningfully connect those important decisions to what God would have us do in our lives.

That presents a problem though. I’ve never heard the audible voice of God in a dream or vision. I’ve never been given a fleece to see if it was wet or dry in the morning. I don’t own a set of lots and I distrust open windows next to closed doors. How then do I seek the will of God in the critical decisions of my life?

• This school or that one?
• This job or that one?
• This town or that one?
• Marry this girl or that one?

Frequently we aren’t given a clarion call from above telling us what we should do, instead we are forced to struggle in the mire wondering “what’s the right next step?” Even though the pace of our decisions has increased dramatically, knowing the will of God in our decisions is not a new problem. People have sought the will of the gods in their critical decisions for thousands of years!

One of the best places to see how this worked in the ancient world is at Didyma in western Turkey. Didyma meant twin and referred to the Greek gods Artemis and Apollo. Artemis’ temple was located at nearby Miletus while Apollo’s temple stood at Didyma (connected by a “sacred way”) and was one of the locations of the six major oracles of the ancient world, second only to the oracle at Delphi.

Didyma was one of the most active oracles in the ancient world. The earliest inscription found there have been dated to the 7th century BCE. The original temple was destroyed in the 5th century BCE and eventually rebuild. The site is visited by nearly every ancient Greco-Roman leader that sought greater power. Alexander the Great, Lysimachus, Seleucus, Caesar Augustus and Trajan. Massive resources were expended to seek the advice of the oracle who would answer (normally) one simple yes or no question for you per year. Persons seeking the advice of the oracle could wait as long as a year in the chresmographeion (the area shown in the 360 view above) in order to receive a response to their question.

We know from the oracle at Delphi that ancient leaders would send a proxy to ask a question of the oracle. The oracle or pythia was normally a young girl who was forced to sit on a bowl held by three stilts in the adyton (“do not enter”) in a structure within the larger temple called the naiskos.  The naiskos housed the cult statue or sacred spring. The pythia in a hallucinated or ecstatic state would be approached by a priest who ask of her a simple yes or no question. The pythia would respond to the question in an altered voice. The priest claimed that this was the voice of Apollo coming through the pythia. Pythia, because they were forced to take hallucinogens, tended to have short life-spans.

Once the question was answered the petitioner would be called from the chresmographeion and his answer would be read at the large double doors to the inner sanctuary. Can you imagine expending thousands of dollars, sometimes waiting as much as a year, to get a simple “yes” or “no” answer about the will of the gods for your life?

Fortunately, the God of the bible doesn’t work in such a cryptic way. God certainly has a will for your life but it normally has far less to do with the issues we are worried about. To be perfectly honest it doesn’t much matter what color your wearing or if you live in that city or this one. If you take that job or this one. If I may be blunt, I seriously doubt God is all that concerned with questions like these. God is far more concerned about whether you love him with all of your heart, soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

You see God isn’t like the other gods of the ancient world. His will has been revealed to us – and not by one yes or no question at a time! The book of Hebrews begins this way:

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world” (Hebrews 1:1-2 ESV)

And in the letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes,

“In [Jesus] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ …” (Ephesians 1:7-9 ESV)

So, unlike the ancients who relied on yes or no questions, we may know the will of God for our lives by looking to Jesus. Fortunately, Jesus has a lot to say to his disciples about his will for their lives. Nowhere is this perhaps more poignant than in Matthew’s account of Jesus life. During Jesus teaching the sermon on the mount, Jesus, in his very salt of the earth way draws on the imagery around him on the northern shore of Galilee to demonstrate a point. Discussing the lilies of the field and the grasses he tells the gathered crowd:

“O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:30-33 ESV)

Both the author of Hebrews and Paul point us to Jesus to discern God’s will for our lives and when we look at Jesus, his message is clear: seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Jesus treats our anxiety over the small decisions of life as an indictment of our faith. If that’s you, it’s okay. If your faith is faltering, God wants to lift you up and support you. He is big enough to be comfortable with your doubt. At the same time he is also big enough to know that what really matters is not what profession you go into or what job you take or where you live but whether or not you are making manifest the kingdom of God and seeking his righteousness. If you are doing that, in whatever profession you find yourself in then you are fulfilling the will of God for your life. No need to cast lots, wait for liver shivers, or a wet fleeces overnight. We have been blessed by a God who is willing to reveal himself not only in scripture but in the person and being of Jesus. Ultimately, his desire is for the manifestation of the kingdom of God and, according to John 15 the bearing of much fruit.

Read in its right context, the fruit of John 15 is not right thinking but right action. This is why Matthew records Jesus’ rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees who “tithe mint and dill and cumin” but “neglect the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23 ESV). The scribes and Pharisees were so concerned with their right thinking about the law that they forgot the law’s intended purpose: justice, mercy and faithfulness. Wherever you find yourself, in whatever occupation, major, or city, you have the opportunity to practice justice, mercy and faithfulness in pursuit of God’s righteousness.  If you trust in God’s will for your life to make manifest the kingdom and seek his righteousness, you will produce fruit to his glory, proving yourself to be a disciple of Jesus.

The worst thing that could happen would be for you to spend your fortune to know the will of God. To waste time in indecision and paralysis because you are anxious about tomorrow. You don’t have to wait in the chresmographeion for a year to know God’s will for your life in the next hour, day, week, month or season. Seek the kingdom, justice, mercy and faithfulness and you will be seeking after his righteousness.

The glorious thing about our God is that he doesn’t just care about ministry he cares about the proper ordering and functioning of society. He doesn’t just care about lawyers or nurses, he cares about law and healthcare. Ultimately you are called to find the opportunity to make manifest the kingdom of God wherever and however you find yourself. There are as many ways to do that as there are different people on this planet that God loves and cares for. Rest in his will. Do not be anxious, waiting for a sign from the gods. It’s not likely to come because his will for your life has already been revealed to you.

This story is familiar to us. It provides a nice bookend for the gospel narrative. Just as Jesus was born into this world in a lowly state, rejected and alone; he died in a lowly state, a criminal on the trash-heap of the Roman Empire. The image of the rejected family is so ingrained that the standard manger scene leaves Mary giving birth in a lean-to barn, unsupported by anyone but a very nervous Joseph. Our Christmas carols celebrate Jesus meager beginnings and adopt a nearly naive understanding of his humanity. Thus “Away in a Manger” begins with,

No crib for his bed The little Lord Jesus Lay down his sweet head

and later notes that

The cattle are lowing The poor baby wakes But little Lord Jesus No crying he makes.

I have little doubt in my mind that little baby Jesus cried – often! “Gentle Mary laid her child” sings about how Jesus was laid

Lowly in a manger; There He Lay, the undefiled, To the world a stranger. Such a Babe in such a place, Can he be the Savior?

This narrative of meager beginnings simply ignores the cultural realities of first century Palestine. The innkeeper is likely a completely fictional character. His existence in our christian pageants is more reflective of Christmas traditions based on the culture, geography, and climate of New England than on the culture, geography and climate of ancient Bethlehem. What’s more the traditional narrative depicts Mary as derelict in not realizing her condition until the last minute and Jospeh as negligent in not being able to provide comfortable lodging for his very pregnant betrothed. Both assumptions ignore the cultural realities of the original nativity some two thousand years ago.

Simply put, the Lord of the universe was not brought into this world rejected and alone. He was brought into this world surrounded and loved by the very extended family into which he was born. The text of Luke’s nativity account is clear but we have obscured it with two thousand years of tradition.

Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. (Luke 2:4-7 ESV).

Retelling the Nativity Story

The story we tell from this information should look very different from the Christmas pageants we are so accustomed to watching our children perform. It should begin with Joseph and Mary making the 11-15 day journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem well in advance of her due date, possibly even before her third trimester. Luke simply tells us that “while they were there, the time came for her to give birth.” There is no reason to believe that this was a last minute trip to Bethlehem. While there were generally limits on the amount of time hospitality would be extended to strangers; Joseph was a family member, a skilled craftsmen who could continue his work in Bethlehem as easily as in Nazareth.

The influx of family members for the census meant that Joseph’s relatives were playing host to a large number of guests from elsewhere in Judea. This meant that the upper-room or guest room was already occupied by the time Joseph and Mary arrived. The lower stables (inside the house) where animals were kept to warm the household in winter, was quickly cleaned out and arrangements were made for Mary and Joseph to stay there instead.

At some point in time, Mary realized it was time for the baby to be born. She likely told one of Joseph’s female relatives who promptly ran to fetch Bethlehem’s midwife. The midwife entered the house, removed any male presence, ritually cleansed the home of any evil spirits and gathered Joseph’s female family members. The midwife and Jospeh’s female cousins and aunts attended to Mary during the birth of Jesus, welcoming him into the world in their loving presence. Jesus would have been presented to Joseph, who, accepting his adopted son, used a nearby manger for his the baby’s bed. Thus, Jesus was born into this world, surrounded and supported by Joseph’s loving family

The In-most room

That story bears significant differences from the one we are used to, but they are differences that are demanded by a richer understanding of the cultural setting of Jesus birth. Perhaps the most striking difference is the location of the birth: inside the home of one of Joseph’s relatives. The translation of kataluma as “inn” has obscured this setting. In all likely hood this did not refer to an ancient hotel or paid establishment. Luke uses the term in 22:11 to refer to the room in which the last supper took place, as does Mark 14:14. We know from archaeological remains that in insula style houses this usually referred to the “upper -room” or “in-most room.” As the highest and most secluded room in the house this would have been the room guests were offered for lodging in order to honor both the guest and the extreme benefaction of the host. When Luke describes a paid establishment, a proper “inn,” he uses a different word (pandecheion) as in the case of the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:34.

Frequently the in-most room or upper-room was placed above the in-home stables. Animals like sheep, goats, and donkeys were frequently kept inside the house for two reasons. First, bringing the animals inside protected them from predators and allowed the family to keep watch over them in relative safety. Second, during the winter months the animals provided a significant source of heat for those sleeping in the upper room. The census registration likely meant that Joseph’s family had a significant number of guests staying with them. By the time Mary and Joseph arrive the upper room was already occupied. Since the shepherds were in the fields at night, the stables were likely not being used to house animals. When Joseph and Mary arrived needing shelter the stables were cleaned and arrangements were made for Joseph and his young betrothed to stay there.

Ancient hospitality regulations

The complete and utter rejection of Mary and Joseph by Joseph’s extended family simply doesn’t make sense in a culture and society that depended upon hospitality regulations for survival. While hospitality was extended to strangers as a way of negotiating a village’s foreign policy, hospitality was demanded for members of your own family, tribe or clan. While the traditional position argues that Joseph’s family looked down upon Mary’s pregnancy, the fact that Joseph maintained his betrothal would have signified his adoption of the yet unborn child and the expectation that His family also accept Mary as his bride to be. To not offer Mary and Joseph hospitality in their travels would have brought shame to Jospeh’s extended family in Bethlehem. Had Joseph’s family failed to offer them lodging, surely Mary would have suggested they stay with Elizabeth and Zechariah, likely just a short walk away from Bethlehem (Luke 1:39-40).

What’s more, offering and receiving hospitality was couched in religious terms for the faithful Israelite. Israelites were expected to extend hospitality to strangers, alien sojourners and family, because they themselves were strangers in a strange land under the divine hospitality of Yahweh. Yahweh, not the Israelites owned the land. It was Yahweh, as a hospitable host, that provided for their benefaction and as such it was expected that the Israelites would extend that same hospitality to strangers and family (See especially Deuteronomy 26:5-11; Psalms 23:4-6; 29:12; and Isaiah 58:6-7). Had Joseph’s family failed to offer Mary and Joseph a place to stay they would be turning their back on their divine call to show gratitude for the blessings which Yahweh had bestowed upon them.

Midwives

My wife is nurse. I take great pride in knowing that nurse midwives may have been one of the oldest professions in history. I have little doubt that a skilled midwife attended to Mary during the birth of Jesus. Nearly every village of any considerable size had a professional midwife. Bethlehem would have been no different. Giving birth was a dangerous business for both the mother and child in the ancient world. Midwives had both clinical and legal authority during this turbulent period in women’s lives. Clinically, midwives ensured the safety of the mother and the newborn child by ritually cleansing the place of birth and initiating clinical interventions when necessary. Midwives would clear the house of any men, children and unmarried women. Frequently they used birthing stools, massage and music to ease the pain of labor. In the case of breach or inappropriately positioned deliveries more skilled midwives may have attempted turnings.

Legally, the midwife was responsible for the ensuring that the newborn was adopted into its new family. Having cut the umbilical cord, the unwashed newborn would be held up to cry. This cry “was considered a legal petition to join the household and become a member of the village” (Matthews and Benjamin, Social World of Ancient Israel, 72). Adoption and acceptance was indicated with a hymn of praise by the father. Having been adopted, the child would be washed and clothed, conferring legal standing in the family to the child. The fact that Jesus was wrapped in clothes and laid in a manger confirms that he was adopted into Joseph’s family, tribe and clan (Luke 2:7).

What it means for us…

While I don’t pretend that the way I have recounted the nativity story is the only way you might choose to envision Jesus’ birth. I do hope that this re-telling which attempts to attend to some of the cultural details of the first century world pushes back against the more traditional understanding of the nativity story. Scholars continue to debate the importance of the distinction between kataluma and pandacheion and whether or not that has any bearing on how we understand the nativity story. The greater force to be reckoned with though, are the serious breaches of hospitality regulations inherent in the traditional nativity account. The rejection of Mary and Joseph would have brought shame to Joseph’s family, no insignificant reality in a culture more attuned to varying levels of honor and shame. Finally, the traditional account fails to acknowledge the real presence and use of midwifes in the ancient world. Giving birth was a dangerous activity. It still is. Midwifes helped to mitigate the danger and ensured that the newborn was legally adopted into his new family.

Yes, Jesus was born in a stable, but that just so happens to be one of the few places childbirth might have normally taken place inside an extended family house. What’s more our images of Mary struggling alone with a panicked Joseph pacing back and forth are illusions. Jesus was born into the loving arms of Jospeh’s female relatives and likely Bethlehem’s better known midwives.

You see, God chose to become Emmanuel, God with us, not just to be a human, born of a mother and father, but to be a person with all of the familial relationships personhood implies. Yes, Jesus was born, Mary’s son, adopted by Joseph, but he was also adopted by Joseph’s family. From the very beginning, from his very birth, Jesus was bringing people together. The picture we should hold of the first Christmas is not just Jesus, Mary and Joseph with a few shepherds hanging about, but of Jesus, Mary, Jospeh, and a dozen extra aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, and a number of Shepherds excited to welcome this new boy into their family, tribe and clan. It is not the meager estate of Jesus that makes him good news to the poor, humble and outcasts, but the fact that he brought together the poor, the humble and the outcast at his birth that makes him such good news.

As he was born into this world bringing people together; his ministry, life, death, resurrection and ascension sought to bring people together. As you consider the birth of the messiah this Christmas may you remember well the words of the prophet Isaiah for “God has accomplished the birth of a savior the deliverance of Israel and gentiles alike” (Isa. 26:17-18). May you also remember that you, like Jesus, are not rejected and alone. If you look hard enough, seeking your fellow brothers and sisters, may you find that you are in this world, maybe for the first time, surrounded and loved.

May God’s blessings be upon you this Christmas season and may you remember that God’s greatest desire two thousand years ago was to know you in your full humanity.

I lied because I was obstinately independent. I lied because I thought Christians were fools. I lied because it was socially expedient. It was the quickest way to get out of the uncomfortable conversation with my grandmother. By the time my grandmother died, I was an avowed atheist who liked to pick fights with Christians about their beliefs.

But then a friend who wasn’t afraid of my debates asked me to join him at a youth service to learn more. With the persistence of my grandmother he invited me again and again. And I relented. I discovered the pain of my stubbornness. I recognized my failure to be and do good apart from God and I came to learn that Jesus was the way of hope even in my brokenness. God had a plan that sought to redeem all things to his purposes, possibly even my life.

The Grace of a Conquistador

Having committed to faith in Christ though I quickly learned that God expected me to make manifest his kingdom. I flourished under these expectations, learning to live into the new identity God had given me.

At first, I was overzealous. Completely flip-flopping in my debates with Christians from avowed atheist to avowed apologist. The faith, its doctrines, and especially my thoughts on them had to be defended and I was just the man for the job. I would be the one to prove the bible true. Each and every doubt or question had a solution waiting to be conquered along with the people who voiced them.

My way of being hadn’t changed much post conversion. Like Benedict Arnold, I had simply switched sides. I still sought out the conflict, the fight and the debate.

Unfortunately, it is hard for a conqueror to communicate grace to the conquered.

On too many occasions my breath carried the odor of toe-jam. The after taste of which was less than satisfying. In her novel Gilead, Marilynn Robinson’s character John Ames perhaps said it best.

​Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense

But defend I did! Vigorously at that.

From Atheist to Apologist to Participant

I have a second grade daughter that is fantastic at mathematics. Her teacher sends home extra work for her because she finishes the regular work too quickly. Last week she wanted me to look over her homework and I noticed she had made a mistake.

She totaled the sum of 713 and 129 as 832 rather than 842. When I said that she might want to check her work she insisted that her answer was correct. Even after we did the problem another way, broke it down and solved it on a calculator she still insisted on her answer. There was no convincing her that the tens place should be occupied by a 4 rather than a 3.

She is her father’s daughter after all. As both an atheist and an apologist I had approached the problems of the biblical text in the same way. Obstinate defiance. I refused to see the evidence right in front of my face and admit the truth because doing so would somehow reflect my own fallenness, my own ability to make mistakes.

The irony is that it is precisely fallenness, that proclivity to make mistakes, that God wishes to redeem. In defending the full humanity of Jesus, Gregory of Nazianus, 4th C. CE Archbishop of Constantinople, argued that whatever Jesus “has not assumed, he has not healed.” At the time, Apollinaris had been arguing that Jesus was fully human except for his divine logos (or mind). To Gregory this was tantamount to saying that the human mind was beyond redemption – even the redemption offered by God.

I like to think that God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. If he was willing to enter fully into our humanity in Jesus, then it seems likely that he was willing to enter into that humanity during his self revelation in scripture. In seeking to partner with human authors and audiences God entered into our proclivity for encultured expression, miscommunication, misjudgement and error. He did this in order to do what he as always done: to heal that which he assumes, to redeem it (even its cultured expressions), transform it and draw it to a new place and purpose more conformed to himself.

I realized that I shouldn’t be an atheist or an apologist. I was simply called to be a participant in a story that was so much bigger than either of those categories, bigger than myself. I discovered that my relationship with God through Jesus in the power of the Spirit was not made up of one answered question after another, but manifest as part of the larger story of God’s redemptive history.

• A history that is filled with ambiguity and tension.
• A story that is filled with love and grace but also wrath and judgment.
• And a story of the reality of present suffering and of glorified futures already manifested in renewed identities.

I discovered that God has always sought those he calls to himself where they are at, in their own broken contexts, in order to bring them to a new context.

I search the archaeological and cultural backgrounds of the biblical text because I no longer see the biblical text as something to be affirmed or negated. It simply exists in the tension of the messy middle created by the combination of divine intent and human instruments. It simply reveals a God that is constantly calling us to participate in the greatest story of transformation ever told. Its title is ‘The Renewal of All Things,” atheists, apologists and participants included.

The Bible is not to be affirmed or negated. It reveals the God calling us to participate in redemptive history.

The area is so large that almost no historians would claim to specialize in the entire region. Yet, if we wish to become familiar with the many and varied people groups, cultures, and geographical settings of the bible we will have to become familiar with this grand landscape. For me, after having spent a decade focusing on the geography and and cultural backgrounds of Israel and Palestine, the next logical step was to expand my studies to Turkey (Anatolia/Asia Minor). That’s why I can’t wait to head to Turkey this summer to study the historical and cultural geography of the New Testament world with Brad Gray.

I think you should join me!​

If you’ve ever thought you wanted to visit the “holy land” or study the “lands of the bible,” you will need to include the lands of Turkey as a major part of that study sooner or later. They afford a picture of the New Testament world that is not available anywhere else. Here are seven reasons why.

7 reasons you should study the Bible in Turkey

Hagia Sophia. Photo courtesy of The Pictorial Library of Bible Lands

1. The New Testament was written from real people to real people

At least two-thirds of the new testament texts were either written from or to locations in Turkey (Asia Minor/ Anatolia). In our our attempts at systematic theologies and applications of the apostles’ words to our modern context we frequently forget that they were not written first and foremost for and to us. They were largely letters or narratives written for a very different people in very specific contexts. The more familiar you are with those contexts, the history, geography and culture of the texts’ authors and recipients, the better equipped you are to understand those texts in their original context. This prevents you from reading your own context into the text and allows you to better translate the texts’ original meaning for application today.

2. You’ll gain an appreciation for difficulties faced by the apostles

While, in many ways, the Roman imperial infrastructure facilitated the spread of the gospel throughout the 1st century Roman world, it is easy to loose touch with just how difficult those missionary journeys were. We flippantly refer to Paul’s 1st, 2nd and 3rd missionary journeys with little understanding of the miles, hills and valleys surmounted. Actually traveling the land (though certainly with the advances of modern transportation) you can begin to appreciate the massive task that was set before the apostles as they sought to fulfill the commission of making disciples of all nations.​

3. You’ll encounter the real seven churches of revelation

As often as we would like to apply a specific judgement about one of the churches of Revelation to the congregation down the street (Don’t pretend like you haven’t) we really shouldn’t look to today’s church as our primary point of reference for understanding the point of the message in revelation. That church down the street, or across the intersection was not John of Patmos’ first or even intended audience. No, the churches of revelation are all in Turkey: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea! In most cases their geographical and ancient cultural context figure prominently in Revelation’s words for each of them. There is no better way to get a handle on why Jesus told them what he did than from within their precincts.

Temple of Apollo – Didyma, Photo courtesy of The Pictorial Library of Bible Lands

4. You’ll realize everything is bigger in Turkey​

If you thought that the moniker “everything is bigger in …” should be applied to Texas for all time you would be wrong. During the 1st century BCE-CE, as western Turkey, Cappadocia, Lycia and Galatia were annexed into the Roman Empire, these provinces on the fringes not only had the means but also had the desire to prove their allegiance to the Emperor. As a result everything, especially the imperial cults became bigger in Turkey. There is no better place to get a clear picture of the influence those cults had on the early church. 

Siloam Tunnel Inscription – Istanbul Museum. Photo courtesy WikiMedia Commons

5. The Istanbul Museum​

Sometimes its not just about the sites but about the material collections available. The Istanbul Museum is just such an impressive collection of artifacts. During the period of Ottoman control of Palestine significant material remains, such as the Siloam tunnel inscription, were collected and transferred to the Istanbul museum. There are physical remains here that can’t be seen anywhere else in the world.

6. You’ll be better equipped to Connect the Contexts​

The ancient greco-roman world is perhaps more akin to our own modern context then that of ancient Israel. While Israel is a perfect place to get a handle on the ministry of Jesus and the texts of the Old Testament, Turkey offers a unique vantage into how the gospel spread amongst and came to be applied in a culture more similar to our own in the modern western world.

7. It isn’t a vacation, it’s an investment.

As you consider how you might enhance your ministry, either as a professional or as a lay leader, or seek to enhance your understanding of the biblical text in general, there is no book or tool that compares to the transformative experience of reading the biblical texts with your feet. Traveling to the Lands of the Bible are an investment that pays dividends over a lifetime of ministry and devotion in the text.

Hattusha’s (capital of the Hittites) Lion Gate. Photo Courtesy of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands

I would go on, but stopping at seven seems more biblical. Like I have attained some fulfillment of the task to which I set out. There are certainly more reasons to include Turkey in your travel plans as you study the lands of the bible, not least of which is the region’s influence on the world and culture of the Old Testament (Who were those pesky Hittites after all).

Planning your trip:

I discussed some of the additional reasons why you may want to include a trip to Turkey as part of your biblical studies with Pastor and Author Brad Gray on October 30th. Brad also shared upcoming opportunities to join us as we Walk the Text in the New Testament World.

I will be traveling with Brad to Turkey this summer for his “Walking the Text in the New Testament World”  trip and would be happy to explain why I think this is fantastic opportunity for any pastor or lay person interested in getting a better handle on the texts of the new testament.

If you, or someone you know, might benefit from knowing more about how studying the biblical text IN Turkey could transform their spiritual life then be sure to share this opportunity and video (blab) with them.

This wide-access to the texts of scripture, enjoyed by Americans, is a relatively new phenomenon (post reformation). For most of biblical history and the era of the church the vast majority of people were dependent upon the public recitation or reading of scripture. In other words, scripture was something heard and performed – listened to- rather than looked at and studied.

Tom Meyer is trying to resurrect this lost art.

He performs long portions of the biblical text from memory and in so doing, gives others the opportunity to practice the lost art of listening to the public performance of long portions of scripture. I had the pleasure of discussing this topic – the orality of scripture – with Tom last fall. Watch our 15 minute discussion and gain insight into how the ancient practice of hearing scripture can enliven your study of the text.

Interview Highlights:

Tom Meyer has memorized over twelve complete books of the biblical text. He is the founder of The Scripture Cannot Be Broken Ministries and tours the country in association with Wordsower Ministries in order to dramatically perform the biblical text from memory. He also happens to be a professor of Old testament and Bible Memorization at Shasta Bible College in Redding, CA and has two M.A’s from Jerusalem University College.

We talked about:

1. Why hearing scripture so important for our devotional life?
2. ​The importance of the spoken word to the bible’s original audience (both OT and NT audiences)
3. The importance of hearing scripture in the wider church.
4. What is the difference between reading the bible and and hearing the bible performed?
5. Strategies for developing the ancient practice of hearing scripture on a regular basis.

You’ve probably been on a “missions trip” before. Studies as early as 2009 were indicating that 35% of all American Young Adults (age 25 and under) had either participated in or planned to participate in a service trip in the next three years. Those number have only trended up since.

In all likelihood, if you haven’t participated in a trip yourself, you’ve likely been hit up with a support letter. Even though the world is becoming flatter and flatter and we have more and more opportunity for cross cultural experience, few of us have come away from our cross cultural experience realizing the significant implication it could have for how we read the bible.

Simply put, we are far more willing to invest time, effort, and even money into being able to successfully communicate the gospel into a foreign “target” culture than we are willing to invest our time, effort and money into receiving the gospel from its “origin” culture. We forget that the modern western world is and continues to be a “target” culture for the original authors of the bible. Authors who are no longer alive to make the missionary investment. We, the “target” culture have been left to shoulder that burden because ultimately, reading the bible is a life long cross cultural experience.

But what would it mean to read our bibles missionally – fully aware that we are entering a foreign culture and receiving a foreign message. In the first place we would spend a whole lot more time, effort and money becoming culturally competent in the bible’s cultures of origin.

Reading the bible should be like a long-term mission trip!

Let’s face it, you can get away with less training on short-term mission trips than you can on a long term mission. Churches tend not to invest in very many long term missionaries that haven’t spent a year or two trying to achieve fluency in a target language. Yet, we are often very willing to ignore the importance of original language study in our daily devotions and weekly bible studies.

Sometimes I am shocked by ministry leaders that insist, in one breath, that: everything one needs to understand about the bible can be gleaned from modern english translations. Yet just a few short breaths later will insist upon the importance of contextualizing the gospel for this group or that group. If the gap between adult bible education and youth bible education is so great, how much more should we consider the gap created by two thousand years of world history and an entire shift in worldview.

Fortunately, the missionary’s lens exposes both the problem and potential solutions.

Even as missions identifies our blindness to the cultural gap between ourselves and the bible, it also gives us a method for bridging that gap in order to more clearly receive the bible’s original message. Missions is, after all, in the business of making connections across cultural gaps.

You don’t have to be a long-term missionary to learn to benefit from cross -cultural missional thinking. Indeed, we can take a lot of the strategies utilized by short-term missionary leaders to help us increase our cultural competence when it comes to our daily bible reading.

4 cultural competencies necessary for reading our bibles with greater clarity.

In his definitive book on short-term missions, Serving with Eyes Wide Open, David Livermore identifies four core competencies that missionaries must achieve in order to effectively serve in a cross-cultural context. By developing these four competencies of “Cultural Intelligence” not only will we be more equipped to communicate the gospel cross-culturally we might just find that we are better equipped to read that gospel message in its original context according to its original thought world.

1. We have to develop our drive to think (and read) cross-culturally.

By this Livermore means that missionaries must be interested in and motivated to engage with and adapt to cross-cultural experience. We can’t be missionaries in Vietnam and refuse to eat vietnamese food. We have to be willing to cross the gap.

The same goes for reading our bibles cross-culturally. We need to be willing and motivated to identify those areas where the words on the page may be culturally influenced. We have to be prepared to question our “literal” understanding of our english bibles in order to see if there are cultural layers simmering just below the surface of the text. And, once found, we need to be excited about the opportunity to dive in and immerse ourselves in the bible’s ancient cultural context.

2. We have to develop our knowledge of foreign cultures.

By “knowledge” Livermore means that missionaries need to understand and measure the various degrees and levels of cultural difference between their own culture and that of the target culture. For Livermore, this is about more than simply gaining an outline of a culture’s history. It is about becoming cognizant of the mental geography of a foreign culture. Frequently this geography is invisible, it goes without being said, and is made up of all the assumptions about life that we subconsciously assent to on a daily basis.

Our cultural knowledge regarding the world of the biblical text needs to be nurtured as well. Many of the categories used to understand cultural difference in the modern context (such as notions of time, individualism vs communalism, power distance, etc) can be brought to bear on the gap that exists between ourselves and the ancient biblical world. Doing so will allow us to more easily identify subtextual assumptions shared by the bible’s original authors and audience. Frequently these subtextual assumptions shade the Bible’s message in ways that are easy for us (modern western foreigners) to miss.

3. We have to develop our cultural strategy

Its not enough to have drive and knowledge, for Livermore, missionaries need to have a plan in place to ensure that we are “mindful and aware when we interact cross-culturally.” It means that missionaries actually become aware of cross-cultural interaction prior to the event so that the interaction can be planned in culturally sensitive and appropriate ways. It also means that missionaries have mechanisms in place to allow for flexibility according to the facts on the ground.

Reading the biblical text with cultural strategy means that we are prepared to handle  messages of the text that are culturally distinct from our own. It means we don’t jump to conclusions about the message of the text because of our own feelings  and dispositions on any given day. It means never assuming that what we understand to be the “plain meaning” of the text was in fact the “plain meaning” intended by the authors. It means investing in resources that facilitate our own, and our congregants entrance into the cultural world of the text. And perhaps more importantly, it means having an open hand approach to receiving and discussing questions regarding biblical meaning, message and application.

4. Finally, we have to develop our willingness to act culturally.

By this, Livermore, means that missionaries must be willing to in-fact change their behavior when interacting cross culturally. This might entail changing everything from what they say, to who says it, where and when. And it most certainly entails how one practically applies their cultural drive, knowledge and strategy to living among and engaging with the target culture.

In terms of reading our bibles with greater clarity, developing our cultural action means that we are more willing to allow the text’s original culture to determine its message today. Before applying the words of the bible to our lives in 21st century modern America, we have to determine how those words might have applied to its first audience. Only then can we begin to seek a textual application that successfully translates the original application into our modern context. To do anything else is to allow our own modern context to determine the meaning of the text.

We are called to be transformed by the message of the bible. Sometimes that message comes in ways that are steeped in its own ancient and foreign culture. That knowledge should be brought to bear on how we apply the text. In other words, cultural action implies that we don’t just translate words, concepts and meanings – we also have to translate the original authors intended effects. If the ten commandments were meant to offer grace in a system that sought retribution escalation, perhaps we should’t be using it as a means of condemnation in our evangelism.

You may or may not have engaged in a short term service mission during the course of your life, I only pray that you realize: You are part of a “target” culture, distinct from the bible’s cultures of origin. What’s more, you are on the receiving end of a long-term missionary effort each and every time you open up your biblical text. Learn from this fact. Develop your cross-cultural drive, knowledge, strategy and action in order to read your bible with more clarity and live better today.

What has been your experience with missions or cross-cultural interaction? How has that led you to read the bible with greater clarity?

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This father’s day I was reminded of Henri Nouwen’s description of the prodigal’s father in his book The Return of the Prodigal Son:

May you be that type of father, and may you recognize that you have that type of father already, this fathers day.

In the first half of the 6th century BCE a bunch of Judean officials let their anxiety get the better of them. Stressed out and overworked they betrayed their best hope for salvation, the Prophet Jeremiah, and left him for dead at the bottom of a pit. All to often the stresses of modern life put us in the same situation. Either we, like the officials, are stressed out and over worked and we eventually snap at those close to us, or we, like Jeremiah, find ourselves knee deep in excrement suffering at the hands of those we would hope to help.

Winter wasn’t the best time for warfare in ancient Israel. People and chariots got bogged down in the mud of the winter rains making the deployment of troops difficult. Those same winter rains also fed the water systems of besieged towns making it more difficult to choke out the willing resistance of a town’s defenders.

By summertime, the conditions for warfare improved. The heat of summer desiccated the land and cisterns were left with little more than the mud and street filth that had washed into them the previous winter. When the cisterns were this low, “Drinkable” water was skimmed from the top of a cesspool of mud, street garbage, and human and animal waste. It was at the bottom of one of these “water sources” that the prophet Jeremiah found himself at the end of a siege in the summer of roughly 588 BCE.

From ca. 597 to 588 The Judean King Zedekiah ruled as a puppet king under the close watch of the Babylonians. In 588, Nebuchadnezzar, having destroyed much of the Judean hinterland, again besieged Jerusalem itself but his plans were cut short. The troops of an upstart Pharaoh in Egypt (likely Hophra of Jeremiah 44:30) required Nebuchadnezzar’s immediate attention, forcing Nebuchadnezzar to end the siege of Jerusalem. For Jerusalem the pressure was released.

Suddenly, Zedekiah found that he was in charge without big brother always looking over his shoulder. Unfortunately, “Puppet kings,” by definition, don’t make good leaders. They’re not supposed to. So, lacking strong leadership the Judean court began to devour itself. Jeremiah, as one of the more outspoken voices proclaiming that the destruction of Jerusalem was inevitable and that Judeans should surrender to Babylon in order to submit to God’s will, found himself attacked.

The Judean officials claimed that Jeremiah was “weakening the hands of the soldiers and the people … seeking their harm” rather than their welfare (Jeremiah. 37:4). Nothing could have been further from the truth, yet the weak Zedekiah relented and allowed the Judean officials to throw Jeremiah in the bottom of a cistern.

The water levels of the cistern described in Jeremiah 38:6 indicate that it was late summer by the time Jeremiah was lowered into the mire. The officials, unable to kill Jeremiah outright, likely hoped he would either starve to death, or more likely contract a fatal disease from the excrement in which he found himself.

Things haven’t changed much.

We live in Jeremiah’s world too. Faced with the stresses of modern life we either find ourselves knee deep in excrement or we allow our anxieties to throw others into the mud.

In his classic discussion of the effects of anxiety on family systems, Edwin Friedman has argued that “nature abhors a vacuum in emotional systems ” (Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue). Ten years of relentless pressure, especially the kind the Babylonians could place on a city, leaves an imprint of stress and anxiety. In the absence of the Babylonians, the Judean officials continued to carry that emotional baggage around and they created an enemy out of Jeremiah, the very person that was most advocating for their restoration.

All too often we are like those Judean officials. We live our lives stressed out. Pressures of time and activities and keeping up with the Jones’ are constantly being applied to our families, our businesses and our churches. When we finally get a weekend off, or that project gets finished, the pressure is relieved yet our anxious state remains. Like post-traumatic stress we carry the previous day’s battle with us and fill the emotional vacuum with new enemies, even among friends and family.

I know I’ve snapped at my kids after a long day or been unjustifiably  annoyed that the house wasn’t the way I imagined it would be when I got home. Like the Judean officials I was attacking the best assets in my life – friends and family. I could have been enjoying a period of rest and playfulness, instead I turned it into another battle to be won.

Other times we find ourselves, like Jeremiah, suffering at the hand of an anxious system that refuses to abide an objective voice. The Judean officials could have easily passed Jeremiah off as a false prophet: A crackpot who didn’t know what he was talking about. Zedekiah could have stood up to his officials instead of continuing to meet with the imprisoned Jeremiah in secret. Neither party were  willing to step up to the plate and heed Jeremiah’s proclamation of the eventual destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians. They let their anxiety get the better of them and Jeremiah suffered for it.

You’ve probably experienced that too. You’ve stuck your neck out at work to advance a good idea only to have your head lopped off. You’ve been slighted, passed up, ignored or outright abused, even by those who would otherwise claim to love you. Or your own anxiety has thrown you into a pit. You’ve given up everything for your kids, or your husband or your Job, in the hope that if you give one hundred and ten percent things will improve. Yet you never find your way out of the stress and anxiety of everyday life. You’re stuck in the mire with no way out of the pit.

Whether we find ourselves throwing other people into cisterns or we are knee deep in excrement ourselves, we should draw inspiration from the leadership of Jeremiah. Indeed, we can avoid much of the stress and anxiety of modern life if we can conform our lives to four characteristics displayed during his ordeal.

1. Keep Calm and Carry on in the will of God

At the beginning of the siege, when everyone else was running around like chickens with their heads cut off, Jeremiah had the presence of mind to purchase some land from his cousin (Jeremiah 32:15). This is no small detail in the narrative. Even though Jeremiah knows that land will be ripped away by Babylon he determines to follow God’s command and fulfill his duty as the leverate redeemer of the land. Not only does this act prove that Jeremiah prioritizes God’s will in any situation but it also shows that Jeremiah remains hopeful that Zedekiah will heed his advice and the calamity of the Babylonian destruction can be avoided.  Even when imprisoned, Jeremiah’s primary concern is not the injustice of his imprisonment but that he may continue to air his “humble pleas” before the king (Jeremiah 37:20).

We too, need to maintain objectivity by drawing on the will of God for our life. We can avoid much of the anxiety of everyday life if we allow ourselves to be led by the will of God.

2. Trust in the steadfast love of God for you

In the midst of Jeremiah’s imprisonment, in the midst of a siege, knowing full well that Jerusalem is going to be laid waste, Jeremiah recalls the covenants that God made with Moses and David (Jeremiah 33). He draws on the psalms and proclaims that we must continue to “Give thanks to the Lord of Hosts/ For the Lord is Good, / His steadfast love endures forever!” (Jer. 33:11)

3. Seek the help of another leader

Jeremiah is rescued from the cistern by an Ethiopian official of Zedekiah named (appropriately) “Servant of the King.” What’s interesting is that Zedekiah seemingly has no problem with Jeremiah’s suffering until a foreigner, a Cushite, points out its injustice (Jeremiah 38:5,9).

Like Jeremiah, we need outsiders (mentors and other leaders) to speak truth into the situation of our suffering. Sometimes we are unable to rescue ourselves from the mire. We must lean into the leadership of others in our lives; Jesus most of all.

4. Allow the end of things to continually break into the present reality.

Even when the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple is at hand, Jeremiah allows the light of future restoration to press in and illuminate his darkest vision. He reminds us that God will “restore the fortunes of the land” (Jer. 33:11), that the promises will be fulfilled, that the righteous branch will one day execute true justice and righteousness (Jer. 33:14-15).

Even if we, in the stresses of our modern day life, can only see the light of justice and righteousness dimly we are called to act according to its eventual complete illumination. Like Jeremiah, we are called to buy land knowing it will be restored and we are called to hope for those that throw us into mud knowing we will be restored.

Facing anxiety and anxious systems isn’t likely to go away any time soon. Jeremiah faced it in the ancient world, and we will continue to face it in our modern context. Whether we find ourselves throwing people into pits or in a pit ourselves we can draw on the example of Jeremiah to remain calm, trust in God’s direction for our lives, seek the help of others, and allow the truth of our eventual restoration to define our present state of being.

Most people who have a high regard for the biblical text and the truths it communicates want to better understand what it is actually trying to communicate. A lot of the time, when people ask how they can accomplish that goal, they are told to simply read the bible more.

That’s all well and good! I think everyone would benefit from reading their biblical texts more (especially the texts of the Old Testament) but if you really want to supercharge your understanding of the text you need to get some perspective. You need to get information from outside the text that will allow you to better interpret what is inside the text.  For most of us, the best way to get that outside information is through reading!

As for me, I read books about the biblical text and it’s context in order to close the gap between the modern western culture I grew up in and the foreign culture of the bible. Besides actually touching the physical remains of the lands of the bible, reading is the best way to bridge that cultural gap. 

Like many of you I set out to read more in 2014. While I didn’t approach this systematically, I did succeed in reading more books than I can remember having done in previous years.

One of those books was Tony Reinke’s Lit! a sustained explication of the theological foundation of reading both biblical and non-biblical texts. In Lit! Reinke rightly points out how daunting the task of reading can become. If we can only read one book a week for the next fifty years then, as Reinke notes,

For every book one that you choose to read, you must ignore ten thousandother books simply because you don’t have the time (or money!).

His solution? Prioritize the books you’re reading based upon your reason for reading them. If the book doesn’t fit in with your priorities pass it by! Ultimately, you can prioritize the books you read in any way you wish. But by creating priorities you give yourself a mechanism by which you can filter out those thousands of books that aren’t worth your time.

When I wrote out my priorities I realized that I read a fairly balanced diet of books in 2014. That wasn’t always the case! By understanding my priorities I hope to be more intentional about my reading in 2015.

My Reading Priorities

Here’s how I will be prioritizing my reading for 2015 (lightly based upon Reinke’s own priorities) and how the books I read in 2014 stacked up against those priorities (with occasional annotations).

1. Reading the biblical text

• I’m not good with “a little bit each day.” I like to read entire books of the bible (or poems)  in one sitting to get a better feel for the greater context the story or argument. In 2014 I really focused in on the Pauline epistles.

2. Reading to better understand the movement of God in redemptive history

• Make Your Mark: Getting Right What Samson Got Wrong by Brad Gray. This is the best book I read this year. Gray’s work is a perfect illustration of how knowing more about the cultural backgrounds of the bible not only affect how you read scripture but also how the interplay between the text and context can alter how you should live your life today. It epitomizes Biblical Remains’ mission to encounter the ancient world of the bible that we may live better today! Check out my interview with the author here.
• Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewish Words of Jesus Can Change Your Life by Lois Tverberg.
• Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today by N.T. Wright.
• 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline.
• Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation by Bill Nye.
• The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne.

I include Nye and Thorne’s work here because I like to read a few books each year which ponder the natural world. If God works through the everyday banal moments of our lives, then he is also working in the the banal everyday motions of the universe, both big and small. Understanding that universe helps us to understand the largest context there is.

3. Reading to better understand the movement of God in our lives today

• The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming by Henri Nouwen
• A Many Colored Kingdom: Multicultural Dynamics for Spiritual Formation by Elizabeth Conde Frazier, S. Steve Kang, and Gary Parrett
• Becoming Whole and Holy: An Integrative Conversation about Christian Formation by Jeannine Brown, Carla Dahl, and Wyndy Corbin Reuschling

4. Reading for personal development

• Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books by Tony Reinke
• Streams of Living Water by Richard Foster.
• A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life by Donald Miller. The second best book I read all year. I didn’t want to end my runs just so I could listen a bit longer.
• The Peacemaker by Ken Sande.
• The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God by Timothy Keller.

5. Reading for professional development

• Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen.
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t by Jim Collins.
• Who Runs the Church?: 4 Views on Church Government with individual essays by Peter Toon, Roy Taylor, Paige Patterson, and Samuel Waldron.
• Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend by Andy Stanley.

6. Reading for personal enjoyment

• Dreamers and Deceivers: True Stories of the Heroes and Villains Who Made America by Glenn Beck.
• Food: A Love Story by Jim Gaffigan.
• The Lion’s Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War by Steven Pressfield.
• Miracles and Massacres: True and Untold Stories of the Making of America by Glenn Beck.

Join the Conversation below: How do you prioritize your reading schedule? How do you plan to read more in 2015? What one book are you most looking forward to reading this year?

While I think the film will be popular among many church-goers as a new arrow in the quiver of apologetics, I doubt many serious biblical scholars will agree with its conclusions. Indeed, those conclusions are widely connected to a historical theory which has been carefully negated in scholarship (even among otherwise orthodox biblical scholars). Because of this, I fear that the film’s popularity with churches will wind up leaving the church ridiculed for trying to fire another broken arrow at the “white tower establishment”.

Patterns begins with a straightforward enough concept: The Bible describes an exodus event for which, according to many scholars, there is little to no extra-biblical corroborating archaeological or historical evidence. Taking seriously the record of the biblical text, Mahoney, a self-described “reluctant participant,” engages in what he calls a “scientific method” of identifying the exodus in the historical record. This method attempts to match the chronological “pattern” of the exodus described in the biblical text to evidence of that same chronological pattern in the archaeological and historical record.

Mahoney comes to a crisis when, as noted above, he finds there is little evidence of that “pattern” in the time periods normally associated with the exodus event. Stymied by professional archaeologists, even those who are otherwise sympathetic to traditional interpretations of the biblical text, Mahoney turns to the theories of David Rohl and John Bimson who, instead of accepting the normal dates associated with the reigns of Egyptian kings, have argued for revising the traditional chronology of Egyptian kings by pushing forward and expanding the king list by nearly 200 years.

This would allow the archaeological remains associated with earlier Egyptian dynasties to coincide with a 1450 date for the exodus. Fantastically depicted in the film’s best feature, an imaginary expanding “wall of time” shows how the different levels (biblical chronology, Egyptian chronology etc.) are aligned by Rohl, Bimson and Mahoney’s chronological shift.

It’s no surprise that the film is billed as “provocative” and “game-changing.” Mahoney opts to change everything we think we know about Egyptian history in order to get it to match more closely with the biblical chronology. But, contrary to what the filmmakers would have you believe, there is nothing new here, just a dejected theory. Indeed, most of the scholars interviewed in the film, even those who believe in a traditional biblical dating of the exodus, reject this revised chronology and opt for less-sensational, less provocative, less game changing, more accurate and more nuanced descriptions of the archaeological evidence of the exodus.

Unfortunately, those alternative positions are never fully articulated in the film, nor, for that matter, are any specific problems with the revised chronology. By short handing particular perspectives, the film becomes biased towards Rohl’s revised chronological solution, when other solutions could have been discussed. When I asked Mahoney Media why that was the case, Steve Law, the film’s co-writer, indicated that test audiences wound up becoming fatigued by “too much information.” Ultimately he indicated that “To us, the emphasis given in the film to the general idea of chronological revision not only was more cinematically engaging, but also has the most explanatory potency.”

This is the problem with the documentary format. It is not the best format to put forth and test supposed “new” ideas and solutions no matter how much they are qualified by “perhaps’s” and “could’s.” Time constraints mean that creditable opposition is never addressed. In “Patterns,”  all scholarship becomes flattened in a “them” vs. the revised chronology paradigm. The film lumps together traditional biblical maximilists and secular minimalists in a gang of “archaeological giants” that the revised chronology will take down with nothing but a sling and a prayer.

Apparently, arguing that secular scholars might be right in the date of the exodus but wrong in the details is simply not as provocative as claiming that scholars have everything under the sun about the exodus wrong. This is the problem with the medium Mahoney is using to argue for the historicity of the exodus. When it comes to the box office, the more provocative solution is always the best one, but when it comes to doing good historical, archaeological and biblical research, a theory’s glitz bears little on its accuracy. Real historical research is pounded out in the dialogue of hundreds of articles and papers, and refined in the open response to accusations of error in hundreds of pages – a 2-hour time limit and audience fatigue is not a problem.

In six hundred theaters tonight, viewers will come away from the film with no idea that they have just picked up a broken arrow. They won’t know that the revised Egyptian chronology is not a new theory and has been shown to create as many problems for biblical chronology as it solves. For instance, the stratigraphic sequence of the archaeological record in Israel doesn’t change even if we change the chronology of the Egyptian kings and associated material remains in Egypt. Major synchronizations between the biblical text and the archaeological record in the Iron Age wind up being pushed out of sync by Rohl’s revised chronology, for the periods of the Judges, the united monarchy and thereafter. (For a more detailed discussion of the problems the revised chronology creates, see Bryant Wood’s article here . For a fuller articulation of the very cogent alternatives to Rohl’s chronology, read Hoffmeier’s Israel in Egypt)

Simply put, Mahoney doesn’t consider a large enough data set. When trying to link the biblical chronology to the archaeological record we can’t just account for the pattern of the exodus: the arrival of the Hebrews in Egypt, their multiplication and enslavement, the eventual judgment of Egypt and subsequent exodus and conquest of Canaan. We also have to account for every period thereafter: the arrival of the philistines, and period of the judges, the united monarchy, civil war and Shishak’s attack, and the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

What we know about the stratigraphic and historical sequence of the latter set in Israel makes the chronological revision suggested by Mahoney untenable. In the end, by over-emphasizing the revised Egyptian chronology, Mahoney abandons the critical scientific method that led him to question mainstream archaeological thought in the first place.

Ultimately, “Patterns of Evidence” will leave viewers with the erroneous impression that the bible can be proven true by archaeology, but the historicity of the biblical text is not dependent upon the vicissitudes of historical preservation. Archaeology will not prove the veracity of the bible. Archaeology informs our understanding of the biblical text and the biblical text informs our understanding of the archaeological record. While we cannot fully understand one without the other, neither “proves” nor negates the other. And really, we shouldn’t ask them to.