Culture I: Old Testament Cultures
Bob Eckel · Nov 23, 2008
How to Study Bible (2008), No. 08
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492611751033

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Let's kind of begin with some kind of general concepts. What's culture? Define culture. How would you define culture? It's going to relate to today's lesson on the Old Testament and how the culture of the Old Testament influenced Biblical interpretation. And it's going to relate next week to who's teaching next week. next week to discuss agriculture. And in fact, I'm going to suggest, and we're going to begin after we define it, how it impacts our lives today.

I would say it's probably traditions and things of that nature that would fit within the environment surrounding a particular group of people during a particular time. OK, it's not a good sociology definition because it doesn't have enough big words. But we've got to have law and tradition and moral structures and tradition and tradition and tradition and moral of a people society. Maybe other thoughts. Generally speaking, cultures have a common set of values. values, norms, things that are normal for them. Those are some sociology words. From when I was like 16 years old in high school. But yeah, values, norms.

This is anthropology 101. What mannerisms of life? Okay, I think we're all kind of hitting up touching the surface of the elephant here. What's that? How a society does business. All right. What would be the difference between culture and tradition? One is part of the other.

I think those concepts are really very much overlapping. I'm going to read you four definitions, and I want you to see which one you like best. Are these ones you wrote? No, these are not. This is called Christianity and Culture, and so this author, Jerry Solomon, has given us four options, at least those that he's provided. Actually, he's given us a fifth, but they're kind of a summarial view of the other four. The first is T.S. Eliot, and he's written that culture, quote, may be described simply as that which makes life worth living. All I'm saying is that I'm going to present five definitions to you.

The second is Emil Brunner, who's a theologian, which could be dangerous, he stated, quote, that culture is materialization of meaning. Thatís kind of profound and I donít think weíre going to stop here and dissect that one. The third is by Donald Blish, another theologian, and he claims that culture ìis the task appointed to humans to realize their destiny in the world in service to the glory of God.î I donít like that one at all. I really don't because it really kind of avoids the issue. We're all here to glorify God. Give me a break. Define culture.

Here's the fourth, which is by an anthropologist. Again, Anthropology 101. That's the course you're attending here today. This is E. Adamson Herbal. His definition is that culture is the integrated system of learned behavioral patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society and which are not the result of biological inheritance. Let me read that again. It's the integrated system. We all live in an integrated system, don't we? The culture around us is an integrated system of learned behavioral patterns. In effect, what we do and the culture we live in is a behavior that relates to that culture. It could be different for the Greeks, could be different for the Assyrians, for the Egyptians, and for us in the modern Roman era that we live in.

Or Boulder. which are characteristic of the members of a society, bolder, and which are not the result of biological inheritance. That gets into this genetics environment issue which I deal with all the time in my job. How much of it is genetic predisposition when we think of disease and how much of it is environmental influence? But what Herbal claims is that it's in fact not dependent on biological inheritance.

And I think that's a fairly decent definition. And the fifth is what Jerry Solomon, the author of this Christianity and Culture, says. He said, all of these definitions can be combined to include the worldviews, actions, and products of a given community of people regarding our proper actions and reactions within it. What was that one? Materialization of what? The second was materialization of meaning. This is kind of one of these Freudian things you have to lay down on the couch and kind of free associate.

I'm not sure they want to get into that one. So is culture amoral, moral, or immoral? Amoral. I don't know. I think it's reflective of morality. It can take on, yeah. But it's amoral in an ideal sense, it's amoral. It's reflective of the people who live within that society and therefore, if they are amoral, moral, or immoral, then that will be reflected into their environment. So what's the metric of morality? What's the measuring rod of morality? This is the metric on morality.

But as we begin to look at how culture influenced Old Testament writings and our interpretation, we have to keep in mind that some things before God and God's law are wrong. but yet they were accepted culturally at the time. Burns preached about this actually in Genesis, particularly Genesis 12 through 50, the whole Abraham all the way down through Joseph period of history. We got to look at some examples there and see if we can interpret them within the cultural influence that existed at that time. So turn to your first page and I think this raises... We're on page 29. Don't either one have one? You can slide over here and look at. No, that's OK. I'll just. She can't read this anyway. Alright, let's look at the first example.

Marriage to a half-sister. What do you make of that when you look at Abraham marrying his half-sister? Is that something in our culture that's an acceptable scenario here? Well, there's a law. All right, but there for Abraham to marry Sarah, is that moral, immoral, or amoral? We're going to use this term a little bit today just to kind of look at some of these things. Well, according to the culture, is that what you're saying? Well, remember, the moral is defined by God's work, okay?

But the cultural influence, I think, let's, in fact, I was going to, let's pause a second and go tangential. What influence of culture on our Christianity is commonplace today? the world in which we all live, how does that influence our Christianity and the way we walk in the spirit? Well, it can, but I would suggest that the culture historically within Christianity per se influences our behavior. What might be some examples? How about things like a glass of wine, how about tobacco, how about divorce? There are certain cultures within Christianity where those things are determined to be God's moral metric. Throughout history, the culture has had an impact on God's word and the way man has responded by faith to what God has revealed.

So back here, is marriage to a half-sister moral, amoral, or immoral? God didn't give any reason that you couldn't marry your half-sister. If you think about Adam and Eve, everybody was related. Weíre sure thereís going to be more likely mutations, but God didnít say, ìGee, I think we need to have you five times removed before you marry anybody.î That wasnít possible with obviously Adam and Eveís children. I think itís amoral.

Thereís nothing moral or immoral about marrying your half-sister. We know too much about genetics today to say, If you marry your daughter, if your wife dies, the chances of mutations and disease would be higher. It's kind of like almost the Down syndrome of our culture. Women abort their unborn children if they know the child is going to have Down syndrome. I would say that's immoral.

That's how the cultural influence can really impact our walk in truth. Also, this happened during the era of patriarchs and Abraham and that was how many years before Moses and the law which is Deuteronomy and Leviticus and all the rest of that so you know if there is any thousand years right and there are some things in Leviticus and Deuteronomy about you know relatives and looking upon than the nakedness of somebody and this sort of thing.

So that would fall within the aspects of the law and that came after Abraham. Correct. This is all pre-law stuff for sure. Right. And so this would have been all oral. Things passed down from God. So obviously it was not. Correct. Because as we've talked about, it's what he's revealed at the time. And in the time of Abraham, that's what was revealed. All those other things weren't. Just like today, we do have a law, but it's because of disease and health. Really, didn't it have to do with hemophilia?

Well, that's one. But multiple genetic conditions, obviously. If you marry a relative, it's more likely to inherit, particularly recessive mutations, where in fact you need two gene hits to get it. Many diseases represent that. Let's go to the second example.

Having an eligible male heir was considered an extremely high priority, such as Abraham and Lot. culture. In fact, it's hard to say there's anything wrong with that. That was the culture. Today, what's different about today in terms of having a male heir? This has to do with heredity. The laws of heredity and cultural emphasis has really changed today because all siblings basically have equality. Right. Those of you in the room who have wills, I would hope all of us do. Ultimately, if you have children that are both boys and girls, men and women, they're equally handled in your will, right?

We're not looking at the oldest son to inherit the estate. So not right or wrong, just culture. But it hadn't been that long really in our history that that's been true. Because at the turn of the century, young men still inherited, the sisters did not.

And it's interesting because with culture, it's also interactive with other things that go on within that culture to make it work. Because if it's the eldest heir, then they also had dowries and stuff for the girls. And so these things were provided for within the culture.

Correct. So it has to be a workable system. And at that time it appears like it was. You had the adoption thing. You didn't have a male heir, you adopted something. Correct. Okay. Good point. They became the head, really, the most important one in the family. Good. That's a good example. The next is polygyny. I looked at that word about ten times and I never got to my Webster.

Is polygyny a word? I think it means polygamy. Is actually polygyny a word? Polygyny is different from polygamy. I am embarrassed to know so much about the distinction. These are your Mormon roots, right? Polygamy is multipolar. Spouse's polygyny is specifically equal. Wives.

And there's actually a specific word for multiple husbands as well. Oh, really? And what is that term? I don't know. I haven't drawn a blank on it, but there is a word specific for multiple husbands. Remember, this is Anthropology 101 here, not 201. The word polygamy, too, is p-o-l-y-g-y. Correct. I wasn't sufficiently motivated to turn to my dictionary and actually look this up, but I knew we had two dictionaries here with us, so this is good. So what about this? The fact that this was a culture alarm in ancient Near East, according to this note of Burns here, is that God's intent?

Don't you think part of it had to do with the fact that children died? I mean, there was probably a high rate of death in childbirth. Also, the wife might die too. Yeah, the wife could die. I'm not trying to hurt her. Well, a lot of them died in childbirth. A lot of them died in childbirth, in fact. Or Jacob's daughters.

Multiple wives were the norm of the culture because They wanted to make sure they did have plenty of children because they needed children, not only to carry on the line, but also to gather food, the food gatherers, I mean, to work. I mean, that was your plan, sort of, your plan was, you know, you had to have people.

Well, what are our thoughts about this? Well, I think one of the interesting, this is one of those discussions that is actually pretty interesting simply because what did God do when he created Adam and Eve? He created Adam and Eve. He didn't make Eve and her sister. Eve, Taylor, and whatever their names were. Margaret. He made one wife and so this is one of those things that's kind of interesting because it was culturally acceptable but what does that intent based on having one wife.

And then even the requirement for the elders in the New Testament. And I think one of the things you see in some of these is over time God reveals more clearly that it's not okay. Where, you know, over time as God reveals his law and his character to his people, you see more and more these things aren't okay. So they may have been a cultural norm and sort of snuck in the cracks, you might say. But with dispensations and things like that, it makes it very clear that this is no longer okay. Okay.

And what was an example in the Genesis 12 through 50 record that ultimately would indicate that there was ultimately a mistake made when this type of behavior occurred? It relates to the next one. A wife who apparently could not conceive would offer her slave to her husband, right? Abraham for sure and although Abraham's lack of faith in fact led to that decision.

History has really been impacted in a major way by that. I think that Randy has hit it on the head. Adam and Eve were created as Adam and Eve and although early on marrying relatives was necessary, the condoning of multiple spouses is never really anything but a cultural influence as far as we can tell. and probably not consistent with God's perfect will. We okay with that, I think? Yet culturally, it was truly accepted.

Receiving the blessing of the Father had great and lasting impact on the sons and their descendants for many generations. How many have blessed their eldest son recently, as opposed to other children, in terms of what would ultimately follow? Unfortunately, this idea of blessing your children has kind of come back. people who have gone into the Old Testament, I think they're Christians, and they say, well, look what the Old Testament saints did.

We all do this too. And it's unfortunate they don't see the distinction between Israel and church. And so people have tried to use that blessing their children and bring it up, bring that cultural thing up into this, thinking that somehow they're going to receive additional blessing for their children. And I, you know, I kind of... The promise keeper movement actually did push that back in the 90s.

Yes. There was a book out, and I can't think of those two guys, but they were focused on the family. You know, on the program a lot. I can't remember what the name of the book was. The Blessing. Yeah, Smalley. I think it was called The Blessing. It was an awesome book, and it really, you know, discussed this. And so when our kids got married, and the parents were supposed to give a little speech, you know, normally at the reception, we did a blessing for both of our sons. And of course, when our daughter was married, their son, their parents gave the talk. But each one of them, and I specifically wrote in there, this is a blessing from God for you. And it was just a short paragraph. I mean, it wasn't anything long, but I felt that was being obedient to being a Christian. I really do. I just think that's important. You had a comfort zone about that?

But the wonderful truth is that all believers are blessed. As a believer in grace, we're all blessed. We spend all that time with the riches of God's grace, so all those are blessings we have. Unfortunately doing that, and I'm not trying to judge you, I'm just saying that unfortunately doing that diminishes the wonderful truth that we all have as believers. We're all blessed. Every believer is blessed 24-7.

And if we say, well this is an additional thing we're going to get, You know, I think it diminishes that. That's my concern. See, the same thing would go for the laying on of hands. I've gone to groups and things like that before where you are dating somebody. or a lot of Pentecostals, I'm not saying Pentecostals are right or wrong, but they will lay on hands. And I've seen some pretty phenomenal things come out of that. And you see it in the book of Acts. And so that's an important thing as well. I mean, if we're all blessed, it's absolutely unnecessary to do that or a lot of other things that people do when it comes to Christianity.

I think you get into a situation here where you want to, you know, what's the focus of New Testament. What's Paul's focus? The focus is that we are blessed. We are blessed. I think what this represents... It's culture. That's what we're talking about. Current or past. That's right, Doug. In context here, it's the identification of one of the offsprings for something special that the others don't get. That was culturally acceptable. and most commonly the oldest son, but think of Jacob and Esau, right? But I think what Stan is describing is something different. I agree. I do too. I think that's different.

I wasn't giving either boy anything special. All it was to me, it was very similar to putting a bunch of rocks like they did in the Old Testament next to the Jordan River so when people came by they could have that as a remembrance and say, God worked here. Okay, and I actually put that little paragraph behind the wedding picture that someday when they get that, it'll be a reminder to them that there was what I consider a blessing from Pat and I to them. And hopefully that will be carried on from them to their grandchildren if we ever get any. Right, I mean to just share a personal... I have that same feeling. In a sense, we've done the same thing.

If Margaret and I were both taken home at the same time, i.e. through an accident of some sort, ultimately it's my oldest son for one reason only that he would oversee the financial management of the estate. That's because his schooling is in business and finance. In other words, he's not picked because He gets a special blessing. In fact, it's a responsibility. Look, if I look at all five children, Peter is in the most reasonable and logical position to do that type of oversight in terms of everything. Not that he gets anything more than anybody else. It's just simply that's the way it's carried out.

In my case, I have the oldest daughter. Right, we'll see, but in a sense that's different than Old Testament culture that's Genesis 12 through 50 record here, I think. Culture at that time, the males, superior you might say, but today they're equal. Exactly, well look at Esau and Jacob, that blessing meant a lot in those days. The member at Esau really responded very negatively because of the importance of the blessing. In fact, Isaac, give it to Jake.

This brings up another thing that I think is pertinent to culture, and I think it's also pertinent to what it says in 1 John about becoming part of the world. Okay, we have a choice. to become part of the world and part of culture, or we have a choice to do our own thing and grow culture or to expand culture or for our own personal families and stuff, we can extend it. And I think this is, if you looked at culture of the world, from Adam and Eve until now, you would see a progressive, I don't know if it's progressive up or down or backwards or which way, but it's been expanded through the course of time, and that's all because certain people haven't always conformed to the rules that they were living under. Does that make sense? Absolutely, and I think we're going to see that if we get that far today. But yeah, I think it's a very, very good point. The final thing is the whole issue of covenants.

At the time, covenants were a very special part of the culture, particularly within the believing world, but also outside of the kind of covenant that God made with Abraham, with Noah, etc. These were typically covenants sworn by a deity, and of course God the Father Almighty is the one we look to in the biblical record.

The point here is archaeologists have looked into the culture of the times and come up with other examples outside of Judaism or pre-Judaic history that reflects the same kind of cultural values. In a sense, this isn't simply biblical record, although this is a great historical book. There are other examples of how the culture of the times reflected these types of scenarios. So let's now just turn to scripture for a second to kind of look at the fact that even though these cultural dynamics were important in terms of the times of the Old Testament, that in fact we continue to look at these through the eyes of the Holy Spirit. So Kurt, when you look at 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, and Roger, Romans 15, 4, and Stan, 1 Corinthians 10, 11, And we'll just read those verses just to remind us that faithfulness is really a response that God asks of us based on the entire Word of God. And going back to the previous section, how come the ladies aren't wearing hats? Well, that's New Testament stuff. Kirk's going to deal with that next week. Kirk, go ahead.

So 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Thank you. Roger? Okay, Romans 15, 4. For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction. that through perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. Okay, and Stan?

1 Corinthians 10-11. Now these things happened to them as an example and they were written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Okay, so how do those verses really relate to what we've just talked about over the last 20 minutes or so? Alright, so how do we interpret verses that reflect the culture of the time that seems at times to be somewhat inconsistent with our view of where God has progressed the written word?

This is an insert into something and I don't want people to grab it. We can hop down. Years ago, right after I was converted, Pastor asked me to go down to a WCTU meeting and listen what these women kept saying. So I went down there just for curiosity and see what the women talked about. So they were talking about the horrors of alcohol. At that time that was a sensitive thing to me because I had come out of alcohol.

One of the early part of my life on alcohol, which I didn't She didn't particularly or anything about it. Well, in the course of all that, as I was reading my Bible, I guess over here that one may wear out on second or on Timothy, but no longer drink water.

But what? A little alcohol for your, you know, whatever the line is. So a wine for yourself. I just don't think sake and all how they use that thing for so many reasons. And I was stymied, stymied by that. And then I got to thinking about Christ making the water and the wine, you know. Boy, you save the best stuff for the last. What is best wine? Is that fruit of the vine or is it just fermented? So I got hung up on that one and I asked him about that part. I said, that sounds like Christ made wine himself and allowed him to drink it.

But boy, look at how they've abused that scripture. Now it's justification to go on a six-day drunk. But it doesn't actually say you can't drink anything like that. And a lot of people are using that as a justification. I'm a Christian. I go down to the boys on Fridays and drink about 16 beers with them or something and think that's fine. I'm still a Christian. Oh, yeah. That is a rabbit trail. I see that.

But I have the same joke that is so consistently missing from this. But next week we'll be talking about education culture as well. And I think Kurt Stewart may touch on that a bit more. Kurt, women's hats and alcohol is your topic for next week. Although that's not what the text says your topic is. I'm not trying to make fun of a thing like this.

But I mean there are extremes in Christianity which would say if you in fact have alcohol you're probably not saved. I mean while I'm pointing out is these are issues of the times depending on who you hang out with and what your culture is, your local culture, i.e. Boulder. I mean, we look at Boulder, Madison, and Berkeley as three kind of communities that have a lot in common, right? I mean, in a sense, if you hang out in Christianity among those kind of legal beagles, ultimately, you may think you're not saved if, in fact, you have a glass of wine occasionally.

I think we'll have to know. That goes back to a previous study where it talks about context. You've got to read it in context. And I think we can bring this right back into what we were just talking about. In 2 Timothy 3.16, what we were getting into, all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. The scripture should influence how you look at culture, not culture how you look at scripture. And what you're talking about is people being in different situations where they're allowing the culture that they're sitting in to influence how they're reading the Bible. Well, it says I can have wine. I'm going to go have wine. Well, yeah, but Ephesians says don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. And the idea is don't be controlled by anything.

And if you're on a six-day binge, you're And the greatest scripture for that of all is the fact that don't let it master you, which is what Paul said. Money is the same way, right? Right. Curtis said that perfectly. Scripture is the metric for culture, not the opposite. But as we read the Genesis 12 through 50 record, and that's really where these ultimate points have been made, we have to interpret it in terms of the times in which this was written.

I think ultimately it was God's purpose for one man and one woman to be married and not to be marrying ultimately anyone other than one spouse for both men and women. But nevertheless we see, particularly in the Genesis record, look at Solomon too. How many spouses and ultimately mistresses did he have? I mean it's unbelievable, but yet Solomon has a place in scripture, doesn't he? So it doesn't make it right, it's wrong. And by the way, I don't think Solomon is raised up like David and Joseph and Jacob are. But nevertheless, Jacob lived in a time where obviously he had more than one wife too.

And I think this goes with where it says that you're supposed to get together ecclesia, where Paul talks about the church, and you're supposed to get together to fellowship together. And one of the reasons you do that is to interpret scripture so that you can personally and through group input understand it better. drinking 16 beers a night, most of those I don't think are probably going to be in church trying to figure out what the scripture says other than the fact that it's okay to drink.

So let's leave the alcohol theme behind here and let's turn to another example on the second page called gates. Now I don't want to spend a lot of time here, but what I do want to reflect is kind of how we interpret the gates. If somebody asked you what's a gate, how would you describe a gate? Pat, how would you describe a gate? Say somebody walks off the street and they maybe have been secluded for much of their life, not lived in a place where they'd ever seen a gate. How would you describe a gate?

It's an object that is placed in front of an opening that swings and allows you to and closer keep things in or out. That's wonderful. And what you're describing is what? You're describing hardware, aren't you? You're describing something that has a function that is made in swings and you're describing an object. But the gate, in terms of the Old Testament culture, really reflects a multiplicity of things. Let's just go down the list very, very quickly.

To possess the gate of a city is to possess the entire city. Many cities didn't have a designated marketplace, but instead had their marketplace around the gates. Official transactions took place there. Kings addressed people at the gates. Legal cases and judgments were made at the gates. Larger cities had temporary prisons at the gates. To sit at the city gate meant to be honored, and to enter the city gates often meant citizenship. To lift up the heads of the gate was an expression of opening of the gates and rejoicing. Gates could also be on the downside with expressions of hopelessness. You could look at those scriptures.

By the way, not all of those are correct, but most of them are. I went to some of these and even in context, I couldn't find a gate anywhere. I tried to look at if it was 1 Kings, 2 Kings. Anyway, almost all of them are okay. I don't want to spend a lot of time there, but it's not a piece of hard work. What Pat described in culture today is what a gate is. But in the Old Testament, the implicity of a gate was really complex, and you had to know it within context what the scriptures refer to. And by the way, if you look at all these verses that are stated here, you will see in context that the interpretation is consistent with what's listed on your page.

So this is very similar to town square. Could be, or city markets or things like that. But even, I think, more broadening in terms of the interpretation. Look at all those potentially different activities that took place at the gate. Then what I did is I kind of turned to the topic of the old city. Margaret and I have had the privilege of being in the Old City. Today they kind of recognize four areas of the Old City. The American area, the Christian era, the Judaic area, the Jewish area, and then the Muslim area. Four or five gates are recognized today. Many of these gates were built after the Bible was completely written.

But then if you turn back to the gates of Jerusalem and Nehemiah, you find eight different gates. And all of these had unique interpretations. These gates were the Fish Gate, the Sheep Gate, the Inspection Gate, the East Gate, the Horse Gate, the Water Gate, the Fountain Gate, the Dung Gate, the Valley Gate, the Dung Gate. And by the way, the Dung Gate was next to the Fountain Gate. And just for trivia, which gate will the Lord Jesus Christ re-enter the Old City through? The East Gate. And that's sealed right now. It is sealed. So when he comes down out of the mountain, he will enter the East Gate. He's the God of the universe.

Thinking about the timing of the destruction of the current temple, the rebuilding of the new temple, we think, gee, that's going to take 50 years to do all this work. Let's turn then to the last page, which I think really hits home a little bit in terms of the impact of culture over time. We've really focused in on the Genesis 12 through 50 period of time.

Here we're looking at how The Old Testament empires really dealt with the culture of all of the texts before, in fact, even the Gospel accounts, I think, because the Roman culture clearly was implicit in the interpretation of many things that reflect the Gospel account, and also, obviously, the Pauline epistles and those to follow. The table there is kind of an interesting one.

It gave me an opportunity to kind of probe into some of these various philosophies of the various empires over the history of time. How would you describe Egyptian culture? If somebody asked you, gee, what's the culture of the period of 5000 B.C. say up to 1000 B.C. which was probably the time at which Egypt was most relevant historically. You think of pharaohs and the building of all of those pyramids and all of that and what that took.

Polytheism. Yeah. That's what I was going to say, but polytheism fits every one of these. Well, it does some more than others. I would claim that there were some aspects of the Persian empire that was monotheistic, and part of that is kind of rooted in Islam, so that one god may not have been Jehovah, but in fact Allah.

So Egypt, I think to my best ability, I would summarize Egypt as balance and order. I mean there was a lot of impact on social justice. There was a lot of creativity. Moral actions were relevant in Egypt. This wasn't a Babylonian kind of empire. I've already given you a definition of what the Babylonian empire stood for.

Under Egypt, I think monotheism was really combined with a culture of multiple gods. There were some people who were monotheistic, actually. I've learned this actually in my study for today, is that Egypt wasn't entirely a multiplicity of gods, although if you think of King Tut, and all his artwork over the years, and many gods were represented in things that represented the time of King China. What would have been the god? Was it Pharaoh? Well, Pharaoh, I think, was kind of an earthly representation of the monotheistic view. But no, the god was a god. I mean, I'm not sure we can identify that god by name. But monotheism was part of the Egyptian culture, at least some parts of the Egyptian culture. Again, it's kind of like Boulder and Colorado Springs or something, right? Yeah, I mean, we're talking about a long period of history here. We're talking like, you know, again, around 5000 BC, probably to 1500 or around in there was when...

And different pharaohs represented different views on theists. on theism, so some of them would have been polytheists. There were pharaohs that believed in a singular god. That was my reading too. Right. And that would probably be Ra, the sun god, if anything, right? Because that was so identified with the pharaoh. I don't remember exactly. It's been a while since I've studied it, but I think it was Ra.

But justice was part of Egyptian history over the multiple millennia that Egypt existed. And good and bad was an issue. Moral actions were relevant. This is not entirely a reckless society. Obviously, the intellectual pursuit was clearly there in Egypt and the artwork is really incredibly demonstrable. They had certainly a desire of the culture to be one of favoring the influence of the culture on fellow man and the goodness of life kind of perspective.

What about Assyria? Syria, if we think about it today, kind of represents Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and probably the country of Syria. So it's kind of the northern, Middle Eastern. Nineveh too. Nineveh would have been part of that, yes. I think another distinction to make here about Egypt, where it says that capture slaves is needed defense, Egypt was not terribly interested in going out and conquering stuff.

They were happy to stay where they were. And the rest of these people we're going to look at are all people who want to take as much as they can. Right, and Egypt obviously was a place where slaves were very... They would go to other places and capture people and bring them back so they could build pyramids and do things like that, but they weren't interested in conquering their lands.

And you have some sense that the slaves worked hard but necessarily were important to the furtherance of the culture. And we're not necessarily, I mean, I'm generalizing here and I'm not a historian, but he had a sense that it was just treatment of the slaves, even though they had to work hard.

Right. But then again, what you're saying is, I think because of the Nile and the fact that- Well, the geography had definitely something to do with it. That's how they learned to live was next to this huge river. Right. And it was their source of life. And so if they got beyond that, they didn't really know. Sure.

Yeah, geography definitely had something to do with Egypt. But keep in mind this whole culture of Egypt is really much of the Pentateuch, right? Well, I think one of the things that's pretty phenomenal with Egyptian culture and history is because they did have a solid written language. That meant that as...

That's where writing began, in fact. Yeah, Joseph comes in, he becomes a prince in Egypt, and it's not recorded, but it's not unreasonable to think hey, here's my family, write down our history. And so when we talk about having the prehistory of Genesis, well if that was passed on by God through a line of people, they were brought into Egypt, it's not unreasonable to think that Joseph is going to write this down, and then when Moses comes later on, he's got access to written, documented records. It's not.

This is so important, Randy, because if you think about it, writing started in Egypt. And so isn't it interesting that the Pentateuch was written by Moses, and Moses was influenced by the Egyptian culture. There are indications in the Pentateuch that Moses is quoting something. So he's got something in front of him and he's quoting it. But as Randy pointed, even the Genesis record, through Joseph, ultimately through Moses, was recorded because of the culture and the cultural influence. So God uses the culture. He used the Egyptian culture to build the nation of Israel too. They were a very small nation and then they spent all that time in slavery. They were huge when they went out. Okay, we've got maybe four minutes.

Assyria, I think, was noted as a barbaric kind of empire. In here, what Burns put is the relocation of portions of captured people randomly. Although, culture and unification was still a part of the Assyrian Empire. They were a very cultured people, but the atmosphere surrounding the Assyrian Empire was somewhat different than the Egyptian. Here, the whole issue of conquering was really part of their domain.

Babylon stems from the Tower of Babel. Actually, if you look at the definition of the term Babylon, it means confusion. and it's entirely self-directed, self-preoccupation, self-furtherance, entirely God-denying. Here, good and evil really can be distinguished. This is an evil empire, and everything that it represents is evil.

Persia, monotheistic to a large extent, and Allah would be the god of the Persian empire. They were concerned about deeds, about doing good things, but before all, remember, the entire world other than Christianity is about works, and that is reflected to some extent in the Persian Empire. Keep in mind, when we think of the Persian Empire, what parts of scripture do we think about in terms of the influence of the Persian Empire?

Well, that would be Artexerxes, the one who allowed them to go back and build the temple. Cyrus is the one. Cyrus took over after. We didn't talk about Babylon with Daniel and Ezekiel and things like that. All right, so when we think of the Greek empire, what do we think about there? Well, Cochrane for sure. Alexander the Great took great masses of land. Okay, so if you had one phrase to describe the Greek Empire, would you say conquering? I would say probably intelligence or what would be the word? Philosophy. How about reason and inquiry? If you think about the Greek philosophers over the years, we've got Socrates and Plato and then the whole Hellenistic time of the Greek Empire.

Remember, we see this in the New Testament perhaps more than the old in terms of the way Paul had to interface with the Greek Empire mindset, particularly in Greece itself. Also, there was all the shipping and the trade that went on and the Lord used that to to spread Christianity throughout the whole known world at the time. Yeah, and I think that's going to apply even more to the Roman culture. Well, it was a carryover right into the Roman culture. But Roman, you know, we think about Stoicism as really being related to the Greek empire, but it's really much more Roman in terms of it being tough, being manly, and to really not be overly influenced by the strife and scenario around you.

I think this class should probably be two months long in terms of really drilling down and seeing how these cultures really impacted the Bible at various phases of development, but in 50 minutes today we've kind of given you an idea of the impact of culture on the Bible. I think we spent more time in Genesis, but nevertheless these cultures all I think relate to the Old Testament are important to put into context in terms of what we read in this various section of scriptures.

Randy? This IVP Bible background commentary for the Old Testament is one that I own it and I've recommended it to people. My dad recommended it to me first. It's definitely worth looking at, I think it's less than $30 on Amazon.com. Unfortunately, I wish I would have had that because I went to this too late to have been able to purchase it. I probably should have given you a call.

If you ever find yourself doing any studying in the Old Testament, and I would hope that the Lord would draw a time in your life where that's a priority, emphasizes and highlights the culture unlike any other book I've ever seen. Especially if you've ever heard a teacher say, well culturally blah blah blah something took place and existed. There are so many references that could be out there. It's hard to second guess or check that.

This isn't by any When I talked to Genesis last year, it was a nice study. I was really glad to have it. It's really handy. So, is it a big volume? It's roughly about as thick as the Bible there, actually. Okay, and written in 2000, right? Yeah, that's good. The New Testament, not so good for whatever that's worth. Yeah, in fact, your dad made that note there, I think. Good for you. There's probably not going to be any amendments to that, right? Okay. We'll see. All right.

Let's close in prayer. Kurt? I'm sorry? Good dude closes in prayer. Oh, yes, sorry. You caught me yawning. Anyway. Lord, we thank you for our time this morning. Thank you that When we go to your Word, there's a logical way to understand it, and you've given us logical minds, and you've written a very logical book. It really just is there to display your character and your love, and thinking that we can meet and grow in our understanding of how to go to your Word and how to understand and love your relationship that you want with us. Just pray that each of us would set time aside to be in your words so that we can be on the same page with you, be in the same relationship that you want from us. And just thank you for our time, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.