How to Study the Bible III - New Testament Cultures

Okay, this one, I'll step up here, this is looking at New Testament cultures. Now, what are some of the New Testament cultures that you can think of? The United States? Well, but the New Testament cultures, right? New Testament cultures during the New Testament times.

What were some of the background cultures during that time? Whose empire was in charge? The Roman Empire. So you've got Roman culture to consider. And before that, what had been the dominant culture and language in the Eastern Mediterranean? They had the Greeks, right?

And here's an interesting thing, is when a culture comes in, its language tends to predominate long after the culture is gone. Example, it was commonly spoken in the Eastern Mediterranean up to about the year 300. was Greek, although Alexander the Great came and spread it around 600 years before that. So it lasted for 600 years, even though the culture had fallen apart. The Assyrians spread Aramaic, but that had been many centuries before. And still, in New Testament times, the common language among the Jews in Israel was Aramaic. So languages, interestingly enough, commonly last much longer than the empires that begin them.

And then there's the Jewish culture during New Testament times, right? And was it all the same? Is the Jewish culture during New Testament times, was it uniform? No. What were some of the different groups that you had? You had the Pharisees. You had the Pharisees. And you add the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Zealots. So you've got these different groups and so there isn't uniformity even in Israel at that time. And let's ask this question, were the Pharisees all the same? No. And so the Pharisees would have debates and go back and forth, and there would be differences of opinion. I mean, it was amazing.

So what we'll be taking a look at here, we're not going to cover everything, but we're going to kind of introduce you to some of the resources to look at. And one of them is from the Hollyhoff Bible Church Bible backgrounds. that we had, that was 2012 was the last time we taught it. It went for six months, the first half of the year in 2012, and we covered history and culture aspects of the Bible, including New Testament cultures. One thing to keep in mind was we're always trying to match up the culture with what we're reading.

Alright, so this is one resource and you can either go at it through the website, through the sequence of things I've got there, or there's a tiny URL website link that I've put on there as well. Another resource is available in print. I've got just volume one of it.

This is just volume one, there's four volumes, and this covers Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and it's just in New Testament order. In the same way that you go through New Testament, there's Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, and Acts, and then you go chapter one to the end of the chapter for each book, that's what this is in. So it's in the same order, you don't have to look up in some index and find it. So you just look it up in the same order as the Bible.

So, that's a great resource. It's available not only in hardback and paperback, it's available on Kindle, Olive Tree, Logos, and some other software packages. So, it's one that's generally recommendable. It's not perfect. There are a few places where I'm disappointed with it, but in general it's a good place to start.

There are a great many books on various aspects of Greek and Roman culture in the New Testament times. For my granddaughter's school, they're homeschooling now, but when they were in school, they had me come in and teach on Roman culture in the classroom and go through that. And there are just a great many books on different things. There are whole volumes on the Roman army. and hold volumes on Jewish culture, things of that sort.

So those are available on lots of different things. In addition, there are some really good websites that are out there. I go to Livius.org. It's a website with a great deal of information on the Romans. Lots and lots and lots of detail on the Roman Empire so you can look up things there. BibleArcheology.org, Associates for Biblical Research.

Dr. Bryant Wood, who is the head of that, has spoken here in this room about a decade ago. But at any rate, it's recommendable. Biblicalarcheology.org, however, is sometimes recommendable and sometimes not. So at any rate, those are a couple that are great resources. And you can look online. It doesn't cost anything. Yeah? Your handout is correct. Yeah. Yeah, the handout should be correct. I just hadn't caught up with it here. OK.

Alright, so one of the things that we went over earlier and we went over in fair detail in the Bible backgrounds elective that's applicable here is each of the empires that the Jews were influenced by or subject to had a philosophy of empire. And they're fairly simply stated. You see them all for Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. You see them all here just on one slide. And their philosophy of empire can be easily summarized. And each one of them impacted the Jews in a different way.

And what we find here with Rome, they would allow the present culture but require payment. Rome was a military empire but it was also a taxing empire. Really, really big on taxing. And so they didn't care what religions you had. They didn't care what cultural patterns you had. In the main service, we'll eventually be going through the Book of Acts. We're going to find we have different titles for different people in different places.

They allowed lots of variation in culture, as long as the Roman military is in control and they're getting lots of taxes. That's what they pressed for. And of course, then the last one impacting the New Testament is the Roman Empire. Actually, all of these empires continued, even the older ones that had gone out of power, continued to have some impact on the Jews for centuries to come. One of the things to do is to match the right background to the text. Let's think about it in terms of our own culture. Can a variation in even decades matter in our culture?

Oh yeah. If I told you when I was a kid, I used to call up George Washington on my cell phone all the time. You would go, what? There's something about that that doesn't fit, right? In fact, a couple of things about it that don't fit. It would have been great to have had cell phones when I was a kid, but they didn't exist.

Even a matter of decades or a change of location can make quite a difference in what something means. What would you have thought of if somebody said to you, cell phone? you would have had no idea what they're talking about. We think of cells, we generally think of something out of biology, and you connect that up with foam and it doesn't make any sense. So, matching the right background to the text, even as to decades of time.

The Apostle Paul, when he was in prison in Caesarea, could have been let loose, but what did he say I appeal to Caesar and so then that meant that instead of being freed he was going to Rome. That's actually safer because the Jews had promised that they were going to kill him. So it was safer for him to go to Rome. So he appealed to Rome by about 50 years later having a Roman citizenship would not have gotten you that privilege of going to Rome.

So a change of 50 years is enough to make a difference. However factual, the historical and cultural background information must also fit the text so as to illuminate the meaning, not eliminate the meaning of the text. Ever hear somebody say, well, it's all cultural? They just kind of wave it off, right? And what that's doing, that's an ignorance because we should have the cultural understanding illuminate the meaning of the text, not eliminate the meaning. Somebody tells you that's all cultural, it means they don't understand. Next, matching the right background to the text requires that we respect the inspiration and authority of scripture and take each text in its normal literal sense. Going back to your first point there, can you put that in context for me? Is there an example you can give? Here's an example. The Apostle Paul in 1 Timothy chapter 2, he says that a woman should not have authority over or teach a man.

Now, so some have said, well, that was just in the culture of the time, and we're just going to discount that because that was cultural, right? And so I guess one way I would look at it is, OK, on what biblical basis do I write it off as being irrelevant, especially in view of the fact that he says the origin of that teaching is he points back to Adam and Eve, OK? He points back to Adam and Eve, and he says, and the woman was deceived, right? And Adam, of course, at that point in time was not taking his place of proper authority. But that's one of the ways in which culture is used to set aside what scripture means rather than having a deeper insight into what it means. Yeah? So the example that you just gave, so the deeper meaning is We're talking not about this culture and this time frame, we're talking all the way back to Adam and Eve.

Yeah, this is a biblical issue, not a cultural issue. Thank you. Right? If Paul just simply said, you know, we never allow the women to teach, you know, because that's just not fitting within our culture, that would be one thing. But instead of that, he goes back to the beginning and bases it on Adam and Eve and what was taking place there and makes it a biblical issue, not a cultural issue.

Thank you. All right, for the sake of focus, because there's actually too many New Testament cultures to cover, After having given you some general resources and principles, there's Jewish background in history from Abraham to the present for Israel from the far corners of the planet. Now, think of it.

Not only would we say that the Jewish culture of New Testament times is not uniform. There was all kinds of difference of opinion, right? But Jewish culture changed over time, impacted by each of the empires that the Jewish culture had contact with. For the sake of focus, we'll center our attention on the New Testament era of Jews. And in fact, even within that, I'm going to pick a particular path through that. One should keep in mind that the Old Testament has Jewish background and history, which will vary by both time and place.

Here's Daniel. He is in Babylon. He's with his friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, which are, by the way, Babylonian names. And so the Babylonian culture is significantly influencing the account in Daniel. As here, by the time we get to New Testament times, the Babylonian influence is diminishing, while the Roman Empire's influence is huge. All right.

So here's by the first century AD, the Jews were centered in. Of course, Judea, and the main reason why there was a population center in Judea and Israel is because Ezra and Nehemiah brought people back. Otherwise, there'd be a low population of Jews there.

Additionally, the Greek governor following the time of Alexander the Great wanted to get the Jews a little more dispersed and so he told the Jews in Babylon in Persia where he had authority I will give you a 10 year tax waiver no taxes for 10 years if you'll just move to the area around Ephesus So that made a significant minority population of Jews in the area around Ephesus in order to get the 10-year tax breaks.

The next one was Alexandria. By the way, that was only one of a number of Alexandrias that Alexander the Great named after himself. He established a new city and he asked the Jews who actually had a peaceful and favorable relationship with him, he asked the Jews if a number of them would not move down to Alexandria and so the southeast border of Alexandria was the Jewish quarter.

And that's where a number of them moved. It's quite possible, we don't know for sure, it's quite possible that Joseph and Mary and Jesus, when they went down to Egypt, went to the southeast quarter of Alexandria because there was a large population of Jews. So there was a third area where there were a number of Jews. And then there were still a number of Jews who stayed in the area around Babylon and Persia, because they'd been moved there and they remained there on into New Testament times. So those were four major concentrations. Were there only Jews in those four areas? No, they also spread from there further. You see to the west is Cyrene on the North African coast. Who was from Cyrene that was famous in the New Testament? Who carried Jesus cross piece? Simon of Cyrene.

And interestingly enough, it appears that his son's bone box has been located in Jerusalem. Isn't that interesting? So you have this phenomenon where they're spreading from these areas as well. And that's why we find Jews in various locations as we read through the New Testament.

And Acts 2, remember there was a listing of where different people were from, Jews, were from, not only in the Roman Empire, but also in the Parthian Empire to the east. So in Jerusalem, and then in the area that is north of and slightly to the east of Ephesus, the area around Ephesus there. And then over the Parthian Empire to the east, that's the one shown here in kind of an orangish color. And so some Jews had come from there, which would be understandable.

That's around Babylon. There were Jews in Crete, which is marked next there. And then Bithynia. which is now northern Turkey. We know Cyrene is another place where there were Jews located. Another area in the Parthian Empire, and then Alexandria is given in that list there in Acts chapter 2, out in the Arabian Desert, which may also be closer to Petra.

And then Rome itself. So you'd have Jews coming all the way from those long distances. And by the way, 20 miles a day was about considered a good day's travel in those days. So you imagine going from Rome to Jerusalem for a pilgrimage. That's quite a trek. Here you have them from Corinth and Thessalonica, Tarsus and Galatia. Cyprus, and then around Antioch. So they all gathered here in Jerusalem. So on that day of Pentecost, these Jews from all over the Roman Empire, and even to the east of and outside of the Roman Empire, were all gathered there that day.

And a number of those are outside the areas of concentration we've talked about. Stan? What's the difference between the red and the yellow? Let's see. That's a very good question. You know what? I've forgotten what the difference is, but I originally had that in mind. I'll have to take a look at that and see what it is and get back to you on that. But yeah, I originally had that in mind as a difference, and maybe a language difference. But I'll take a look at it and get back to you on it.

OK, now, we talked about from the time of Ezra, Jews known as the Hasidim held to the Old Testament scriptures. These were the roots of several groups which began in the third and second centuries BC. And so we have, in the New Testament, reveal several of these groups. Pharisees is one of them. And the Pharisees were, again, not uniform. They were probably, among these various groups, the majority during the early New Testament era. The Zealots and the Sicarii are two kind of military sorts of groups that became more prominent. But initially, the Pharisees was the majority group. They went way far.

I mean, all these places where the Jews were, they would go to all those places and spread Pharisee teachings. The Sadducees didn't do that. But the Pharisees, they were missionary about it. They went all over the place spreading their Pharisee perspective. And so they went all over the Roman Empire. They went into the Parthian Empire, spreading Phariseeism. The Pharisees believed in a resurrection. They believed in all the books of the Old Testament. They believed in a Messiah. And they believed that the Bible should be translated literally.

We also have the Sadducees who are influenced by Epicurus, the philosopher. And where does Epicurus show up in the New Testament, aside from the Sadducees? Paul, in Acts 17, runs into two kinds of philosophers, Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. And so this fellow, Epicurus, influenced the Sadducees. And one of the things that Epicurus taught was when you die, your soul dies.

Therefore, the Sadducees did not teach the resurrection, whereas the Pharisees did. So the Sadducees were influenced by Greek philosophy, specifically Epicurus. The Pharisees thought that teaching Greek philosophy was as bad as feeding pigs. So that was an area of tension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

You have then the Zealots and the Sicarii. The Sicarii are a slightly different group. They eventually just merged. Sicarii, you may also hear the Sicarians. It means the dagger. The dagger. You could call them Jewish terrorists. So anyway, these were New Testament groups. Somebody said, well the Jews did this or they believed that. That's a bit too general. The reality is there's lots of variety and a lot of times these groups were in tension with one another.

The Zealots and Sicarii who are seldom mentioned directly. Simon, one of the disciples, was a Zealot. But otherwise, you rarely hear them mentioned. And the Sicarii are only mentioned once. They're in the reference we gave in the prior slide in Acts. So they're not mentioned a lot by name.

But they were the ones that stirred up the revolt, which led to the Roman assault and the defeat of Jerusalem in 70 AD. They were so extreme that if a Jew would not fight, they would kill them. They would kill their fellow Jews if they refused to fight, when things came down to the heat of battle. So this would be an artistic portrayal of the Romans' battle against Jerusalem. These groups would not be stopped there, however.

There were subsequent failed revolts in 73 AD in Masada, which is also where the revolt began back in 66. The Jewish people weren't part of the Roman military system. How did they learn the military works of art and their implements that they had problems with later? Was it only homeland protection? The answer is a bit complicated. I'll try to summarize it.

Back in about two centuries before the New Testament era, there was the rebellion of the Maccabees. They rebelled against the Greek Empire. And they maintained independence from the Greek Empire, which tended to reinforce their military capability, until the Romans came in in 63 BC. And then when the Romans came in, the Jews still had a temple guard. They were allowed to have a temple guard. And so the temple guard was kind of the core of their ability to bring military expertise and weapons and things of that sort. And that temple guard ended up getting folded into the revolution against the Romans, and of course that was the end of it because that was the end of their temples too. There was later the Bar Kokhba rebellion. And Bar Kokhba, by the way, was called Messiah by Rabbi Akiva. And so it was one of those things that there were repeated instances of people being called Messiah.

And this is an example of it. It also was failed. Here's a letter in Hebrew written during that rebellion. We have very little in the way of inside documentation about the Jews' rebellion, almost everything that we have is from like Josephus and his record and the record of Suetonius and a few others. So at any rate, now, so here's Masada.

And you can still see the Roman siege ramp, the Romans in the 73 AD attack. The Romans were attacking using catapults and things of that sort. When they finally got up there, the Jews had all killed all of themselves up there. And so the Romans were not able to conquer anyone because they were all dead. Yeah, you have your hand up. Yeah, so on the right hand of this picture, that stage ramp is that elevation. This is this, let me see if I can point it out here, right here.

During those days that was a common way of attacking raised fortresses or cities in order to be able to get people up there. One of the things they would do, the Romans anyway, they actually made a tube. that would allow the soldiers to go up un-attacked without being attacked until they came up to the very top. So it would keep, for example, soldiers from being able to shoot off the wall and nail them before they got up there. So they would have these tubes that they would build. People couldn't tell where the soldiers were and you had a hard time penetrating this thick leather on the outside.

Now, there were even those Jews who favored the Roman occupation by support of the Herod family, and even by collecting taxes for the Romans. So you have Matthew, a tax collector, Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector, and you had other people who favored the Herods and their rule, the family rule.

Herod had this pattern, recently I was reading of a conference in which Bible scholars and mental health scholars assessed Herod and said he was a paranoid schizophrenic. And his pattern was this, he'd go out and do some horrible vile thing and then try to get his mind off of it by starting a building project. That was his pattern which he did again and again and again. So his killing a bunch of babies in Bethlehem was completely consistent with what his personal pattern was as he ruled.

37 B.C. to 4 B.C. So here would be a picture of the upgraded temple. Now something interesting, they started planning and going with this upgrade under Herod in 20 BC, they didn't finish until 63 AD, they hired as many as 18,000 at once. But it was a working temple, right? So you had to plan everything around continuing to use the temple, and you can't have just craftsmen going into this inner temple, can you? So they had 10,000 Levites that were trained by the craftsmen to do the things that were in the inner temple. So amazing there. So now the tightrope.

The arrangement of the Roman government, the minority Sadducees, and the majority Pharisees were permitted to maintain a tradition of self-rule in areas impacting their practice of religion. And that allowed for a temple guard, not to battle the Romans, but allowed for a temple guard to keep peace and to have these guys just kind of keep control of the temple courtyard and the areas around it. Were the temple guard Romans or Jews? Jews. Yeah, they're definitely Jews.

So here the Sadducees, held to the five books of Moses, did not believe in a resurrection nor in angels. By the way, the Sadducees, because they hung around the temple, and everything about them was all around the temple, when the temple was destroyed, guess what? Not only did you lose the Sadducees, but you lost any record of them. We have no records written by the Sadducees, so everything that we have written about the Sadducees was from those who opposed them.

And there are three areas. One, the New Testament. Secondly, Josephus, who was a Pharisee, who was opposed to them. And thirdly, the early church authors. So these were Christians. The best record that we have, because it was not only inspired, but written during the time when the Pharisees were still around, is the New Testament. more reliable even than Josephus, more reliable than the early Christian writers. It was written during the time when the Sadducees were around.

Okay, so here we have a picture of Caiaphas' ossuary box. Caiaphas was a Sadducee. We also, by the way, have his granddaughter's ossuary box. So we've got a lot of New Testament connections. They're very good. So now, they also had, one at a time, a chief priest from 18 to 36 AD. He had Caiaphas reigning, but he was the son-in-law of Annas. And Annas managed to get a son-in-law or a son as the chief priest for several generations, basically, until he passed out of the picture. So he maintained a lot of control.

The Pharisees held to the entire Old Testament scripture, believe in a resurrection and in angels, literal interpretation of the Bible. The Pharisees taught this, they taught that The 70th week of Daniel, a seven year period of time, was going to come. It was a horrible period of time. The Antichrist they called Armilus. And at the end of that horrible period of time on earth, the Messiah would come and destroy his enemies and rule on earth for a long, long time. That's what they taught. And that's consistent with scripture.

It's just the question, is this his first or his second time? And the people in general regard the Pharisees as the Jews' heroes. We read in the New Testament, here's John the Baptist and Jesus pronouncing bad, bad things about the Pharisees. Do you know that the New Testament is the only place that criticizes the Pharisees? Yeah. It's really rather amazing. It's the only place where you read criticism of the Pharisees.

The rest of the Jews thought they were just great. They did it best. They did it right. They did have a concern with temple activities, but they were also concerned with matters of daily life and with the establishment of synagogues everywhere. You had to have ten Jewish men, this is tradition, not law, right? Ten Jewish men in order to establish a synagogue. And let's ask one other question.

What language is the word synagogue from? Is that Hebrew? Is it Aramaic? It's Greek. To lead together is what it means. Greek. Synagogue is Greek. It was established after the time of the Babylonian and Persian captivity, so that by New Testament times, the Pharisees, not other groups in general, the Pharisees were going around establishing synagogues wherever Jews were spread, and spreading Phariseeism. Not the Essenes, not the Sadducees, not the Zealots. They spread Phariseeism everywhere they went. And so if you had ten Jewish men, you could have a synagogue. Here's Paul, he goes to Philippi, and the Jews are meeting at the river. Why? They don't have ten Jewish men. That's why. They can't establish one yet. That's where Paul met Lydia, who became the first believer there in Philippi.

OK, now, shifting directions here, this is about Jewish marriage customs. So here we have Ephesians 1, 3, and 4. Bless me, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love. Now, most people read that and they will not understand that verse 4 is a bunch of wedding custom words. So, let's talk about this. He chose us in Him. Who chose the bride for the young Jewish groom? Who chose the bride? The Father would choose the bride. He chose us in Him. And when were we chosen?

Before the foundations of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love. And where does holy and blameless, that word pair, show up again in Ephesians? In chapter 5 about marriage. And so the bride was to be kept and brought to the groom, holy and blameless. And here Paul introduces it right there. So we have been chosen to be holy and blameless, and we were chosen as the bride before the foundation of the world. So these are all wedding words.

Yes? So in order to find this kind of thing, you would use some of those resources that you mentioned at the very beginning. And as you looked at that, you would say, oh, that refers to Ephesians 1. Or you might look at a Bible dictionary and it might give you that information. Yes.

So here's, you know, holy and blameless before him, right? that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. When is that presentation of the church before Christ going to take place? Yeah, when we go to be with him. Yes? Another question.

Wouldn't the father frequently choose the bride for his son when they were just children? That might be done, but typically it would be something that they'd wait until they're mid-teens, until he was mid-teens. But you can imagine in some small village, he'd be keeping his eye out. The father would be keeping his eye out and be watching. It's interesting. We'll take time for that.

So Colossians 1.22 and 2 Corinthians 11.2 are consistent with that. So here's the Apostle Paul writing in that character elsewhere. So at the appointed time, the father would send a prospective bridegroom from the father's house to the home of the prospective bride. That's how it would happen. The father himself who sent me, And Jesus is the Father who sent me.

So here we look at sent, and we don't always understand that what he's saying there, those are wedding words. There he would negotiate with the father of the woman to determine the purchase price of the bride. But it would be a price that the father of the groom had already set as the limit. For us, the Church, the bride price was Christ's death on the cross.

And I put Hebrews 12 too, but you could also see that in Ephesians 5. Once the bridegroom paid the purchase price, the marriage covenant was thereby established, and the young man and woman were then to be considered husband and wife. They were betrothed. It had a legal import, whereas our culture, engagement is informal. In this culture, it was formal, and it even required a divorce certificate to break it.

Since Christ the bridegroom has paid the price, the marriage covenant has indeed been established, and the church is now betrothed to Christ, which is what 2 Corinthians 11.2 says. The church is now betrothed to Christ. The marriage will take place when we're out of here. This probably doesn't make any sense, but where it says here, negotiate with the father of the woman. So does that mean the father of the church before Christ died was Satan? I mean, the bride price. Here's the interesting thing.

When did he choose us in him? Before the foundation. Before the foundation of the world. So what's interesting is we were chosen before he said, let there be light. And so this is kind of a mind-boggling thing. Here we are, we're born in Adam, but we've already been chosen in him.

So he just kind of negotiated with himself. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Yeah, essentially, yes. Right. And the father says, this is what it's going to take for me to be satisfied. Right? Right. So then the bridegroom would declare to the bride before the father of the bride that she was consecrated, sanctified, and set apart exclusively for her bridegroom.

That's why Paul would say in Ephesians 5.25 that Christ paid the bride price so that he might sanctify the church's bride.

As a symbol of the covenant relationship that had been established, the groom and the bride would drink from over a cup of wine over which a betrothal benediction had been pronounced. Our taking of the Lord's table is a commemoration of the betrothal we have with Christ. who paid the bride price in full with his own blood until he comes. Then the betrothed bridegroom would begin preparing a place for the bride and the bridegroom to live in which they would live together once the wedding had taken place. I go and prepare a place for you, and I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also." Those were words spoken from a groom to a bride. when everything had been made official.

Crystal? The disciples who became the apostles, they would have understood the disciples and they would have been totally confused? They would have been very puzzled only to understand it years later. So they understood at the time when the Lord was saying this and putting this in place. They had no idea what was going on. They thought that this is as confusing as it gets.

Right? Thank you. So this is not the new covenant that you talk about from Jeremiah 31, 31. This is a different covenant, right? This is a different covenant and it's not the new covenant with Israel. Right? Yes. And this one would have started with what?

Because the father did the choosing. The father decided upon the price and the son agreed to pay it. From then until the time of the wedding, the father was to keep the bride consecrated, sanctified and set apart exclusively for her bridegroom. Family and friends were expected to help in the task. along with the groom himself. Everybody in the family and friends, along with the groom, had a responsibility to present her holy and blameless before him. And for him, the groom, to present her holy and blameless to himself. Yes? When he grows up and says that we ought to stir each other up for the works and that sort of thing, are we part of the family and friends that are expected to work within the lives of each other so that...

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians chapter 11, he wrote to them, he says, I desire to present you as a pure virgin before the Lord. That's the Corinthians, right? Pardon? So that should be our mindset? Yes. In other words, if you look at it, this was the mindset among the Jews, is that it's everybody who knows her, including the father, including the husband-to-be, everybody is to preserve her, holy and blameless. and appear in spotless virgin at her wedding day. And everyone has a responsibility in that.

So Jesus praying to the Father said, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. Who is he praying for? You and me. Praying to the Father. Sanctify them. So why? It's the Father's responsibility. And the groom, Christ, joins in on that. 2 Corinthians 11.2, Paul does this. He says, I long to present you as a pure and spotless virgin. And the bride was also to prepare for the wedding day. She was in preparation for the wedding to take a customary bridal bath, not just so she was physically clean, but to picture her moral cleanliness.

And 1 Corinthians 6.11, but you are washed, you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the spirit of our God.

1 Corinthians 6.11.

On the wedding day, the father of the bridegroom would say to the bridegroom, go get your bride. He calls the timing. The bridegroom would go to receive his consecrated, sanctified, set-apart bride into himself and be presented to him by the bride's father, family and friends, and the groom also presenting her to himself, she being holy and blameless. And by the way on this, go get your bride, when is Christ coming for his bride? at the rapture, and who's going to call the timing on that? The father will say, go get your bride. The father will say, go get your bride. He calls the timing.

Now, we'll switch slightly to Jewish women in Israel. We haven't got much time, but we'll take it. Typically, Jewish women in Israel were trained for the responsibilities of family life, for raising children, making food, drawing water, keeping oil lamps and weaving.

In our culture, we could hardly understand it, but some of these things were like, you do not fail in these duties. You do not fail in these duties. You cannot. That's just simply not allowed. So, for example, keeping oil lamps and keeping at least one lamp lit all the time, was a woman's responsibility. The woman in the household had that responsibility, and boy, she had better keep it. That's why with the parable of the ten virgins, and some of the virgins started to run out of oil, that was unthinkably irresponsible. Unthinkably irresponsible it was.

And so they asked the ones who weren't irresponsible, can we? No. No, because I'm going to be responsible even if you weren't. So there was that. These were done according to the requirements of the law of Moses, right? You couldn't go on, boom, here's some ham and beans, right? Couldn't do that. So you had to fulfill all the requirements of the law of Moses.

The training the young woman received was aimed at carrying out these things by the law. So it was the part of her domestic duties that fit with the law that she was trained in, according to the law. She did not generally get the larger training in the law beyond that. When you have, for example, the expression, two women grinding at the mill, right? And one is taken and the other left, right? A home grinding mill is commonly run by two women.

There would be a top part which would be round. It would have a hole in the middle and it would have a handle. It would go like this. So one of the women would turn it and the other woman would go and drop grain down in the middle of that and then it would go out and get ground up and end up in the outside where they had kind of a trough to catch the ground grain.

One woman would just kind of move it steadily and the other woman would let it out except when the arm was going by, going over the hole. So that was the pattern. And so there would be two women grinding at the mill. You would very rarely have one woman doing it because that would be quite a thing to keep both of those things going.

But two women grinding at the mill, that was done in basically every Jewish household unless you were well off and could afford to go to a place where they milled it. Meal preparation and serving is typically centered around bread, which would be milled and baked at home. except in upper class households.

The bread was broken, and the broken piece used for dipping in sauces and pâtés. Whole fruits or pieces of meat or fish might also be served. And hospitality was very important. And there were social rules about meals that were observed differently than ours. What do I mean by that? You could not, if you had a guest, you could not take a partial loaf or a partial piece like a flat bread, unleavened bread, you could not serve to a guest a partial loaf or partial piece. You had to have a whole loaf. It was considered rude and insulting to present a partial piece of bread.

So it was even, and you'll find Jesus tells a parable about it, it was even okay to wake your neighbors up at midnight if your guests came in, because how many people could call ahead, right? So if your guests came in late, and you need to serve a whole loaf, you could wake your neighbor up at midnight to make sure you had a whole loaf to offer to your guests.

Isn't that an interesting culture? And the other thing, when we see it in the Gospels quite a bit, is it was permissible for other people to look in the doors and look in the windows. Windows are typically high and small. But to look in the doors and look in the windows, and to make comments about your meal, and to interact with your guests. We'd be calling 9-1-1, right?

But in that culture, that was permissible. And so very different cultural rules relating to meals. And then of course they had to ceremonially wash your hands in a certain way with water that had been set aside for that purpose. You couldn't dip your hands into it, you had to pour the water over. your hands, they'd be all done in a certain way.

So we think of them as being fairly informal, sitting on pillows with low tables, but actually a great many rules about what and how you eat and how you go about it. Typically, if you had guests, the men would sit down and eat first, and the women and children later.

Spinning, weaving, and fabrics. First, the fiber was, whatever it was, a single kind, spun and rolled up and set into a ball, and then set it aside, typically for about a month, to let the twisted fiber set, so that you wouldn't have this stuff that wanted to untwist on you. The fibers may also be dyed at this point as well. Then the fibers may be woven into a fabric on the loom.

Fiber types could not be mixed. You could not have mixed fiber types on a single article of clothing, either in the fabric itself or sewn together, according to the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses is Leviticus 19.19. You may not have two different kinds of seed in the same field. You may not crossbreed your cattle. You may not mix fibers in the same piece of clothing. So all those were things they had to keep track of. In raising animals, in domestic things, in casting grain, all those things had to be remembered. OK, so we've run out of time. But anything you'd like to ask questions about?

Yes, Dan? What's the difference between tradition and culture? Ah, that's a good point. Are there cultures that don't have heavy tradition? Our own is moving in that direction, right? We're moving away from a lot of traditions. And so do we have a culture? Yes, we have a culture. Are cultures becoming less traditional? Pretty quickly. Things are being embraced now that nobody would even think of embracing those when I was a kid. So within my lifetime at least, there's been a huge drift in our culture and it's been away from tradition for the most part.

So being politically correct is in a sense tradition, right? It's establishing a new tradition. It's an attempt to establish a new tradition. political correctness. So we're moving away from some of the traditions that we had even a couple of generations ago.

So one way to define culture, culture is what we do without thinking. Culture is what we do without thinking. And traditions may or may not be a part of that. A tradition would then go from one generation to the next. And as the culture dumps that increasingly, then the culture becomes defined by dumping the tradition. What are the traditions that we define?

As a church, it's becoming increasingly more challenged, things that two generations ago would have been assumed and not thought of differently. Very good question. Other questions, thoughts? In 50 years, culture will still be the same, but the traditions will be different. The tradition in the early 21st century are not the same as they were then, nor were they at the beginning. I would say that in the next 50 years, our culture is going to continue to change. Culture does change.

As a matter of fact, something that I could say two generations ago, now that's wrong. Now if I tell somebody that that's wrong, they'd look at you like you're nuts. You're trying to control them or something. So that's a radical change. And the reality is that our culture kind of remakes itself every few years. Yes? It gives new importance to the statement, what is true? Yes. Or pilots. Other thoughts, questions? OK. Yes, Marilyn?

Well, a lot of this tradition, well, it's part of the law. And I know we're not under the law. But I guess it seems like there's parts of the law that are still followed by the NFL. I mean, like homosexuality and In other words, Scripture will point to, under both law and grace, to certain ethics and morals, consistently. But the basis for doing those is different. An example that I frequently give is, here Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says you'll be forgiven under what conditions? If you forgive others.

Ephesians 4.32, are you to forgive? Yes, so the same ethics and morals applies, but I forgive under grace because I've been forgiven, not in order to be forgiven.

And that's something we're going to introduce here. Comparison and contrast. Very important one. And frankly a lot of Christians have not gotten that. And there have been some bad consequences from it. Okay, we've got people pressing up against the window.

Lord, we do thank you for your word. We thank you for the insight and understanding that we can have because of the understanding of history and culture. And we just pray that you would use this in our reading of your word and our growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.