Distance of Time, Culture, Geography, and Language

In regard to the bible, the distance of time teaches us that the world has changed much in the last nineteen hundred years. (Klein, 13) The distance of culture in the bible teaches us that we must learn its cultural perspectives employed as it cannot be read like a newspaper of today. (Klein, 15) The geographical distance of the bible teaches us that unless a person sees the geography for themselves they cannot fully understand what the text is conveying in many instances that refer to geography. (Klein, 16) The distance of language teaches that a vast language gap exists between the languages of the bible and the languages spoken today. (Klein, 16) Overall, in many regards interpretation of the bible is challenged by all four types of distance, but some types of distance have a stronger impact upon interpretation than others.

Although the distance of language (best defined as inadequacy of the reader to understand the writer because of language differences) has perhaps been the hardest distance to overcome historically when trying to interpret a text that is thousands of years old, this distance now is the easiest to overcome. Now contemporary translations of the bible make the bible available in almost all languages of the world for little or no cost. Not only that but language study tools are readily available that use lexicography to document biblical language. Although most all seminary schools and universities offer a very light instruction in biblical language, the fact remains that education in biblical language is available. The point is that the distance of language has been made into the easiest distance to overcome when interpreting the scripture.

The hardest distance to overcome in interpreting the bible today is the distance of culture, and this distance is defined as the challenge of a reader to understand a writer as a result of differing cultures. The culture of the bible separates the people of today from the way that people commonly lived thousands of years ago. When for example people read the story of Jesus turning the water into wine (John 2:7-10), some are left to question if Jesus was simply upholding a cultural mandate to serve liquor as weddings or if he was plainly promoting the consumption of alcoholic beverages. In this regard the distance of culture renders a lot of puzzles in interpretation as people seek to understand the true meaning of the text.

Many times contemporary readers are unaware that many ancient people married at very early ages such as fourteen, that women sometimes would be bought and sold for marriage, that ancient nomadic people would have been governed by the head of the tribe, and that a king usually governed a people that comprised only one city. In this regard most of the book of Genesis is often unintelligible culturally to people of contemporary times. Now that polygamy is almost unheard of, a person for example may not grasp the social, political, and economic implications of the families of Abraham, Israel, David, and Solomon.

Although the distance of language can be difficult as ancient people thought of things much differently and described things much differently, it is almost completely overcome in its simplicity with the availability of resources that translate and interpret language. The same cannot be said about the distance of culture because although movies can demonstrate biblical events from a cultural perspective, the fact remains that biblical culture is very difficult to visualize as working throughout the text of the bible. Overall, the distance of language is thus the easiest distance to overcome while the distance of culture is the hardest.

Bibliography:

Klein, William, Blomberg, Craig, and Hubbard, Robert. Introduction to Biblical Interpretation. Revised and Updated. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1993.