Tools for the Toolbox:  Is a Cookie Always a Cookie?

Context - Does it Really Matter?                                      By Drew & Deborah McKenna

If I said to you, "Here is a cookie." What did I mean by that? Am I offering you a chewy homemade double chocolate chip cookie that I just baked? Am I speaking about my lawyer, who is "one tough cookie?" Or did I find a "cookie" in your computer browser collecting your personal data? Not knowing I am actually standing in my kitchen holding out to you a plate of freshly baked cookies, it could have been any of those.

The same is true with the wording in the Bible.  As Christians, we say we are "people of the book" and often pick out our favorite inspirational scriptures, promises, stories, and "sound bites" from the Bible. Frequently they are hung on the walls of our homes and underlined or highlighted in our Bibles. We say, "all scripture is inspired by God" and might even remember that this verse is from 2 Timothy 3:16, yet have no idea what came before and after this popular quote. We may never have given a second thought to the author's possible original intent and in doing so, may be misrepresenting what he had intended to say.

How then should we approach our study of the Bible and get to know His good news as intended? Simple!  Never forget "context is king!" Context is the circumstance that forms the setting for an event, statement, or idea in terms of which it can be fully understood. 

Context is king, and knowing it does more than change the meaning; it can change the world.

Context - Accurately Understanding Ancient Words

What is the first step in understanding that context rules? Realize that just like people, nations, cultures, and ideas change over time, so do the words representing these. Many words within a language change or evolve over time —usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original, causing confusion and misunderstanding, especially when reading an ancient document such as the Bible.

For example, most of us have sung the delightful Christmas carol God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen so many times throughout the years that we don't even stop to ask what those confusing lyrics actually mean. Yet, when we look at this old English carol dated to the 16th century, we find that the word "rest" doesn't mean to cease work or relax, but instead means to make."Ye" means you, and "merry" doesn't mean jolly or happy, but mighty. Altogether, they read, God Make You Mighty Gentlemen1.  What a difference knowing this makes to help us understand what the author intended!

Let's take another look at a line from Shakespeare's famous play Romeo and Juliet. When Juliet walks out onto her balcony and says, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou…" what is she saying? Could it be she is wondering where her love, Romeo, is? Actually, "wherefore art" doesn't mean "where" as in location, but "why.”2 Juliet is wondering why Romeo was born into the Montague family, which is the source of all their troubles. Maybe it would have made more sense to our modern culture if she had said, "Oh Romeo, why were you born so far away from me, why oh why a Montague?"

Like Juliet's question about "where" her love Romeo is, it is recorded God said something familiar about His love. In the book of Genesis, God calls out to Adam after he has eaten the forbidden fruit and proclaims, "Where are you?" Why would God ask a question like that? Isn't He all-knowing? Of course He knows Adam and Eve's location, but what if He isn't asking “where” His creation is?

In his book, The Beast that Crouches at the Door 3, Rabbi David Fohrman revisits this unusual statement.

"As it turns out, there are two words for 'where' in Biblical Hebrew. The more common one is eiphoh - but that's not the word God uses when questioning after Adam. He instead uses the less common word for 'where' - ayeh."

Rabbi Fohrman explains the meanings behind these two Hebrew words commonly translated into one English word, "where." The first, eiphoh, is a more common kind of "where" and is generally a straightforward request for location. The second word for "where" is ayeh, and when it is used, the questioner is really not interested in a location at all. Rather, they are expressing wonder that the thing is not here, where one would've expected it to be. Instead, God is asking, "Where have you gone?" "Why are you not here?" "Where are you?" in a figurative sense.

Let's face it, God knows the location of Adam and Eve in His Garden, and yet here He is crying out, "Where are you!" It's a cry of sadness and anguish because Adam and Eve have chosen a path away from God, one in which a gulf now exists between them and their Creator.

Not all of us have access to teachers like Rabbi Fohrman, who know ancient Biblical Hebrew, so how can we see these nuances that have been lost in translation? An excellent way to gain a better understanding of Biblical Hebrew words is to use a concordance. A concordance is a book that lists each occurrence of every word in the Bible. By finding the first occurrence of the word and following its occurrences through the Bible, we can understand how it was used and understood by the original writers. By connecting the dots of a word's usage, we begin to paint a picture of the word's unique meaning, resulting in a greater understanding of the Bible's message.

Context - Misquoting the Text by Dropping a Word from the Text

As a child, my grandmother's visits to our home were very special. She would travel from out of state several times a year for holidays and other family gatherings. During one particular visit, I remember snuggling up next to her on the family sofa where she sat knitting. She was a quiet, devout, gentle woman who seldom made comments during family discussions. But at one particular family gathering, she made this comment to me, "Money is the root of all evil." It wasn't until years later after I had become a believer and started to study my Bible seriously that I noticed that one word had been dropped from her quote from 1 Timothy 6:10 that changed its entire meaning. "The love of money is the root of all evil." (Emphasis added.) Although removing the single word "love" seems minor, dropping a word from a portion of scripture may cause serious doctrinal difficulties. Let me give you another example of a very commonly "dropped" biblical citation.

Most Christians have been taught, "All our righteousness are as filthy rags" from Isaiah 64:6. Did you know that a word has been dropped from this passage? Remembering Isaiah was writing to the people of his day at a specific time in history, it has to be understood that this is not a generalized statement on the condition of all humanity. Let's read the fragmented portion of the verse this quote comes from: "…and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment…" Did you see the one word dropped or left out of our generally accepted quote?

The one word left out of this popular quote is “deeds”.  Leaving out this one simple word changes the entire meaning, blurring our understanding, making the text unclear, vague, and easily misinterpreted.4

If a word or phrase is quoted out of context in which it was written, it seems to mean something different than the author intended. A passage that is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning is called "quote mining”. The news, social media, and politicians are quite good at this.

In our quest for truth and accuracy, don't drop words from the text.

Context - In the Text Surrounding the Verse

Let's put the phrase "…and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment…" back into its context of Isaiah 64:4-9 and read it again. (Emphasis added).

"For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who acts in behalf of the one who waits for Him. You meet him who rejoices in doing righteousness, who remembers You in Your ways. Behold, You were angry, for we sinned, we continued in them a long time, and shall we be saved? For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on Your name, who arouses himself to take hold of You; for You have hidden Your face from us and have delivered us into the power of our iniquities. But now, O Lord, You are our Father, we are the clay, and You are our potter; and all of us are the work of Your hand. Do not be angry beyond measure, O Lord, nor remember iniquity forever; behold, look now, all of us are Your people."

Notice in the verses above, God meets with the person who rejoices in doing righteousness and remembers His ways. Isaiah cries out that they had sinned, and their righteous deeds were like a filthy garment. He then compares their iniquities to leaves blown away in the wind. The Hebrew word for iniquity is "awon," a description of a particular type of sin. It means deliberately twisting or perverting. Iniquity is often used to describe how we behave towards others, but it also can describe how we bend God's Word to change its meaning to fit our own desires.

One of the most common mistakes in interpreting the Bible is to take a text out of its context. The danger is if you leave out a word or remove a short verse out of a paragraph, chapter, or even a book, it may be that the shortened verse will sound like it is saying something completely different from what the author intended.

Context - Are There Additional Scriptures Being Alluded To?

Over the centuries, Christian tradition has failed to acknowledge that Jesus was recognized and accepted as a rabbi by the people of His day. And as such, He used the standard teaching methods of the rabbis of the first century. One of the teaching techniques extensively used by the rabbis, and still is today, is called "remez." Remez in Hebrew means hint or clue.

It is common when teaching, for a rabbi to quote a word or short phrase from the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament), which points to the greater meaning in the text surrounding the word or quoted verse. The technique assumes the rabbi's audience knows the Bible so well, by quoting a word or phrase from scripture, they will know the entire context. Jesus was a master in the use of remez and used this uniquely rabbinic technique frequently when He taught.

Because the Jewish people living in Israel during the first-century had large portions of the Bible memorized and knew the context to which the scripture hinted, they immediately understood the point the teacher was trying to make.

Let's look at one of the many instances where Jesus used remez while teaching.

In Matthew 21:42, Jesus is addressing a group of chief priests and elders of the people. He says to them, "Did you never read the scriptures," and then says, "The stone the builders rejected, this has become the chief cornerstone; this came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes." This is an example of remez and is a quote from Psalm 118:22-23. As a modern reader of Jesus' quote, would you know what the next verse, 24, in Psalms said? Probably not, but you can rest assured the chief priests and elders did!

"This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it."

I'm sure most of our churches in the USA have sung these words at one time or another. We write them in greeting cards, hang them up on our walls written in fine calligraphy, and never once tied them to Jesus' teaching on the chief cornerstone. Why is it we never ask ourselves this question, "What is so special about that day that we should rejoice in it?" And yet here, if we understood the remez, Jesus teaches that the day that the rejected stone became the chief cornerstone is the day we are to rejoice in!

Because we aren't familiar with the Old Testament as well as Jesus' audience or understand the teaching technique of remez, we miss the greater meaning to which He was hinting. Therefore when we read Jesus quoting from the Old Testament, it is essential to read the Old Testament passage in its full context. By doing so, we will begin to understand His teachings more fully and then live it out in our own lives.

Context - Understanding the Culture & History of First-Century Israel

In the past, using the Bible as the primary source of information about the Bible was the accepted standard for studying the scriptures. However, we live in a time with unprecedented access to history and scholarly research. In the last couple of decades, the average person has access to more information, history, and new discoveries than the previous two thousand years of church history. The ability to learn about and understand the land, the people and, the culture where God chose to place His Son is critical to understanding the Bible's message.  We tend to read the teachings of Jesus as if they can be removed from any context, making them timeless and universal. Devoid of context, His words can can become cryptic and strange.  In doing so, we fail to understand clearly and a deeper message escapes us because we fail to see how Jesus was brilliantly commenting on ideas from His time. 5

The exciting news is every year new light is being shed on the gospels by scholars fluent in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek by studying the Jewish literature from the time period from which Jesus lived. As a result, this new research aids the twenty-first-century student of the Bible's understanding of the ancient people and culture of Jesus' world, giving us a better ability to understand His message. 

In the book Roots and Branches, David Bivin poignantly writes, “The church, conservative by nature, has not yet adequately incorporated this knowledge into its teaching and preaching.  Paradoxically, many Christians are not even willing, for theological reasons, to use rabbinic literature in rounding out their picture of the life and times of Jesus.…  Let us hope in the new millennium, we will redouble our efforts to learn more about Jesus.  May we not ignore Him as a teacher within First Century Jewish society.”6

Quoting Out of Context  - The Evils of Contextomy

What if we altogether remove the passage from its original source and context? We have a "contextomy," and yes, Wikipedia has a page dedicated to this operation:

"Contextomy refers to the selective excerpting of words from their original linguistic context in a way that distorts the source's intended meaning; a practice commonly referred to as 'quoting out of context.' The problem here is not the removal of a quote from its original context per se (as all quotes are) but the quoter's decision to exclude from the excerpt certain nearby phrases or sentences (which become 'context' by virtue of the exclusion) that serve to clarify the intentions behind the selected words.Comparing this practice to surgical excision, journalist Milton Mayer coined the term 'contextomy' to describe its use by Julius Streicher, editor of the infamous Nazi broadsheet Der Stürmer in Weimar-era Germany. To arouse anti-semitic sentiments among the weekly's working-class Christian readership, Streicher regularly published truncated quotations from Talmudic texts that, in their shortened form, appear to advocate greed, slavery, and ritualistic murder. Although rarely employed to this malicious extreme, contextomy is a common method of misrepresentation in contemporary mass media, and studies have demonstrated that the effects of this misrepresentation can linger even after the audience is exposed to the original, in context." (Emphasis added.)

Don't become a specialist in contextomy. Endeavor to understand what the author and God is teaching from context to context.

Context - A Cookie Should Always be a Cookie

Cookies aren’t like a “box of chocolates”.  You should exactly know which one you are eating!  

A cookie is always a cookie, however, the kind of cookie depends on the context of the story.  Why is it important to to know the context of the story? Because if we want to know Jesus and His kingdom in all its fullness, then we must get to know the time, the place, and the culture He lived in. The danger of not knowing is both straightforward and stark: we may miss the truths God wanted for us to learn and live out. 

Knowing "For God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son…" without reading the rest of the story is like a tree without leaves or a flower without petals. See the forest in all its color and meaning by hearing Jesus in the culture and context in which it is meant to be!  Hearing Jesus’ teachings in the context of His world will cause your world to explode with amazing moments, satisfying answers, and peace in the midst of the cacophony of our day.

1 Diana Leagh Matthews, “Behind the Christmas Carol: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”  http:// dianaleaghmatthews.com/god-rest-ye-merry-gentlemen/#.X96SfC2cbOQ

2 From an article at No Sweat Shakespeare, ‘Wherefore Art Thou’, Meaning & Context, https://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes/famous/wherefore-art-thou/

3 Rabbi David Fohrman, The Beast that Crouches at the Door, HFBS Publishing, Hoffberger Foundation for Torah Studies, 2007, ch 11.

4 See the article “Righteousness -The Hebrew Concept of Tzedakah” on this website.

5 Bivin, David.  New Light on the Difficult Words of Jesus, Pub. En-Gedi Resource Center, Holland, MI, 2007, Editors’ Preface.

6 Bivin, David. Roots and Branches, Published by PWM Trust, Bedford, England 1998 pg. 67.

More information on this topic my be found on the Books / Video page of this website.  

We recommend the book:

New Light on the Difficult Words of Jesus by David Bivin

And by visiting the outstanding website: Jerusalem Perspective.org.