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Part One:
Old Testament
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The Ancientâs Guide to the Galaxy
God chose a specific time, place, and culture to inspire people to produce what we read in the Old Testament: the ancient Mediterranean and the ancient Near East of the second and first millennia BC. Understanding the worldview of this culture can lead to more faithful understandings of Scripture on our part, especially when it comes to understanding how the Israelites viewed God and the universe.
Old Testament Cosmology
âCosmologyâ refers to the way we understand the structure of the universe. The biblical writersâ conception of how the heavens and earth were structured by God represents a particular cosmology.
The Israelites believed in a universe that was common among the ancient civilizations of the biblical world. It encompassed three parts: a heavenly realm, an earthly realm for humans, and an underworld for the dead. These three tiers are reflected in the Ten Commandments: âYou shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earthâ (Exod 20:4).
The Heavens
We find an Israelite understanding of the heavens in Genesis 1:6â8, which describes it as an expanse, with waters above and below: âAnd God said, âLet there be an expanse (רק×ע, raqiaĘž) in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.â ⌠And it was so. And God called the expanse (רק×ע, raqiaĘž) Heaven.â
The sky, thought to be a solid firmament, separated the waters above from the waters below: âWhen he established the heavens, I [Wisdom] was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deepâ (Prov 8:27â28).
The firmament dome surrounded the earth, with its edge meeting at the horizonââthe boundary between light and darknessâ (Job 26:10). It was supported by âpillarsâ or âfoundations,â thought to be the tops of mountains, whose peaks appeared to touch the sky. The heavens had doors and windows through which rain or the waters above could flow upon the earth from their storehouses (Gen 7:11; 8:2; Pss 78:23; 33:7).
God was thought to dwell above the firmament, as described in Job 22:14: âThick clouds veil him, so that he does not see, and he walks on the vault of heaven.â
The Earth
The earth sat upon the watery deep. The âwaters belowâ speak not only to waters that people use, but also the deeper abyss. Thus, the earth was surrounded by the seas (Gen 1:9â10), having arisen out of the water (2 Pet 3:5). The earth was thought to be held fast by pillars or sunken foundations (1 Sam 2:8; Job 38:4â6; Psa 104:5).
The Underworld
The realm of the dead was located under the earth. The most frequent term for this place was sheol (׊×××; Prov 9:18; Psa 6:4â5; 18:4â5). The word for âearthâ (×ר׼, Ęžerets) is also usedâthe graves dug by humans represented gateways to the Underworld. In Job, the realm of the dead is described in watery terms: âThe dead tremble under the waters and their inhabitants. Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no coveringâ (Job 26:5â6).
Jonahâs description is perhaps the most vivid. Though in the belly of the great fish, Jonah says he is in the Underworld: the watery deep âat the roots of the mountains,â a âpitâ that had âbarsâ that closed forever (Jonah 2:5â6).
Becoming familiar with the ancient Near Eastern worldview can help us interpret the Old Testament. By understanding the Israelitesâ concept of cosmology, we have a better idea of their perceptions of God.
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Walk Like an Israelite
Cuneiform tablets changed my life. Iâm not kidding. As I look back on my 15 years of graduate school in biblical studies, the turning point in how I view the Bible was my course in Ugaritic, a cuneiform language very similar to biblical Hebrew. This class compelled me to transform âread the Bible in contextâ from a naĂŻve platitude to an issue of spiritual integrity.
A Bible Study Epiphany
I had the impression that interpreting the Bible in context meant learning about a piece of pottery here, an odd custom there, or having a factual acquaintance with who was alive, and what those people were doing at the time of the biblical events.
But in my Ugaritic course, I learned that all of that can divorce the Bible from the ancient world in one critical way: It can exclude religious or theological ideas from all the âcontext talk.â Itâs easy to presume that most of the Bibleâs theological content was unique to Israel. I basically thought that Israel shared some cultural customs with pagan Gentilesâlike diet, dress, marriage, and family structure. But I thought Israelâs religious worldview was handed down from heaven, having no common links with paganism. Not trueâand the content of the tablets I had to translate in my graduate school course was Exhibit A.
For starters, the people of Ugarit, a city-state in ancient Syria, described their gods with words and phrases that were in the Old Testamentâin a number of cases word for word. Their chief deity shared the same name (El) as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (But the El of Ugarit could hardly be called holy by biblical standards.) The honorary titles and other descriptions of the Ugarit El and his primary assistant, Baal, are applied to the God of Israel in many passages in the Old Testament.
There are other examples. The behavior of prophets and the use of divination (casting lots, consulting the ephod) have clear ancient Near Eastern parallels. The design and purpose of the ark of the covenant align well with the use of sacred boxes known as palanquins in ancient Egypt. Trial by ordealâsuch as that found in Numbers 5, where a woman accused of adultery must drink a potion to test her fidelityâoccurred in surrounding cultures. Terms for Israelite sacrifices are found in ancient Gentile religious texts. The belief that the sky was solid is part of the ancient Near Eastern cosmology shared by the Bible (Job 37:18; Prov 8:28).1 The notion that the seat of our intellect and emotions was our kidneys or intestines was common throughout the ancient world.2
Spiritual Lessons and Implications
Discovering all this was a little shocking. But God used that temporary discomfort to produce honesty with the biblical text. I needed to think like an ancient Israelite to understand the Old Testament.
Israelite religion had some significant divergences from the religions of other surrounding nations, but on the whole, there were more similarities than differences. I came to the realization that the correct interpretive context for the Bible is not the early church, the Protestant Reformation, the Puritans, or modern evangelicalism. Those historical contexts are alien to the Bible. Rather, the context for understanding the Bible is the historical, literary, intellectual and religious context in which it was written.
Although He could have done so, God didnât change Israelâs culture wh...
