Cultural Historical-Grammatical Context

As we are helping those who have level-left cults and non-Christian religions, as well as those in the church who have been confused or deceived, we talk a great deal about the historical-grammatical context of the Bible. When this is missed, it paves the way for false beliefs. This is true in non-biblical material as Alab Jacobs notes in Unbiblical Scholarship: The persistent problem of biblical illiteracy in the humanities:

Timothy Larsen is not an eminent Victorian, but he is an eminent Victorianist. (Full disclosure: he is also my dear friend and former colleague of many years.) One of the chief themes of Larsen’s scholarship is stated most straightforwardly in an essay he published in 2009: “It would be hard to set any limit on the extent to which Victorian culture was shaped by a shared knowledge of the Bible.” Indeed, “There are only two kinds of eminent Victorian authors: the kind who have had a whole book written about their use of Scripture and the kind who are ripe for such attention.”

In a recent issue of the venerable academic journal Modern Language Quarterly, Larsen returns to this theme to discuss, not the Victorians themselves, but those whose profession is to study them. About such scholars Larsen is seriously concerned, and states his concern in forceful italics: “an alarming amount of work done in the field of Victorian studies today… is marred by biblical and theological illiteracy.” 

After giving examples of scholars attributing the words of Jesus to John Stuart Mill, he writes:

But unfamiliarity with even quite well-known passages from the Bible is only a part of it. Larsen also documents theological ignorance—e.g., confusing the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth—and a wide range of historical errors, often arising from complete unawareness of the differences among various Christian traditions. For instance, a scholar today may think that a Victorian Protestant who speaks sneeringly of “priests” is condemning Christian ministers in general; but almost certainly he is expressing his contempt for those he would have called Papists.

And—here I go beyond Larsen—errors like this tend to snowball. The first scholar Larsen mentions who attributed Jesus’s words to Thomas Carlyle published his book in 2004; the next one published in 2007. It’s very likely that that second one was relying on what he read in the first. How many other scholars have by now passed the error on? And how many more will do so in the future? 

Ah, context. It is important in reading any writing. Lacking the context can lead to many false beliefs.

https://mailchi.mp/38d2c92e4fa5/theyre-just-jews?e=169825fd77