# Background information



## arapahoepark (Aug 20, 2015)

I have been looking particularly into interpretations of Genesis and the NPP as of late and I have noticed how similar they are with regard to background information. Those who see no conflict with evolution argue Genesis is a borrowed ANE myth with theological significance. Similarly, the NPP argues its impossible to understand Paul without Second temple Judaism, qumran and other intertestamental literature. Both bring background information that was not available to many within the last 50-100 as presenting cases for interpretations that have never been since the Apostles, Moses, etc.
So my question is how is background information to be used in exegesis? It is relatively over the top today (parallelomania).


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## Contra_Mundum (Aug 20, 2015)

To an historically confessing Christian, the _most relevant_ background to the NT is the OT. The most relevant background of later OT literature is earlier OT literature. The Bible is a self-interpreting text, given the acceptance of basic reading conventions like preexisting rules of grammar which make communication possible, and the presumption made by the reader that the author hoped to be rationally understood.

The intertestamental period produced some mildly competitive schools of interpretation of the previously accumulated prophetic material. Different groups have different ideas about what tradition is most faithful to Judaism's ideals, or what those ideals actually are. It probably does no harm, and likely some help, to have awareness of the currency in religious themes into which the NT age dawned.

The fact is, the NT reveals what is probably the most significant of the different schools of thought, besides choosing FOR one of them, which is (according to the Mind of the Spirit) the true and faithful school. The Pharisees represent a major school (and probably at least two sub-divisions, in the schools of Hillel and Shammai), as do the Sadducees. And there is another "school" not so designated/differentiated/named in the NT, but surely implied; and that is the "school" of accurate Messianic expectation, of which Jesus becomes the chief exponent, and Subject.

Some suggest that because of Qumran discoveries, there is now new light shed upon the breadth of Messianic expectation in the intertestamental period. Scholars are finding religious affinities (ethical and doctrinal) between this more minor Jewish sect (and therefore unknown in NT literature), and themes that are found in the NT, and hitherto were considered distinctive to what became known as Christianity.

Previous liberal scholarship considered NT "distinctives" more in the class of "unique developments" for a "new" religion. Finding related ideas in a long-forgotten, newly discovered cul-de-sac of history helps the argument (opposed to liberal revisionism) that neither Jesus nor Paul nor later disciples/communities strictly speaking "invented" Christianity, viewed as its original proponents (on the face of NT documents) wished it to be recognized: viz. as the realized Hope of all the patriarchs, the true kingdom, and the believing exiles/returned.

As I see it (my philosophy, in other words), the right use of "background" drops additional light into a well-lit space. It is enhancement, primarily; although there are others who want to consider background in a more essential way. Many of these 1) don't see the Bible as one-book at all, nor the NT as the authoritative fulfillment of the OT; and 2) they consider Christianity's "privileging" 27 NT documents--as definitively interpretive of both Jesus of Nazareth, and of (in his day) 400yr old (and earlier) Jewish prophetic literature--they think that is hopelessly narrow.

To the modernist scholar/devotee, the past is not in continuity with the present; but any such claims are mere power plays. Either people accept the illegitimate claim of the dead upon the allegiance of the living; or else some living person is trying illegitimately to leverage the past and others' "felt" connections to it in order to dominate and suppress free-thought for their own selfish ends.

Their philosophy, then, about the past is that it is like a giant garbage dump (the Bible being a crud-encrusted set of beads-on-a-wire); and the best picture one can arrive at of odd beliefs belonging to a past-moment is to collect a mosaic of as much then-current sentiments as possible, and try to find common threads with which to partially reconstruct a picture of the time. To which they add the postscript, "This is our ephemeral impression of it."


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