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Wednesday, July 3, 2024

Inerrancy or Contextual Incongruities?


The diagram shows Nimrod's Sumerian wife. She named their firstborn son after her father, Asshur. This is an example of the cousin bride's naming prerogative, a distinctive feature of the early Hebrew marriage and ascendancy pattern.



Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Understanding the biblical texts requires paying attention to the anthropologically significant data. The empirical approach of Biblical Anthropology rejects the notion that there are "errors" in Genesis. Instead, it recognizes contextual incongruities. Consider a Native American chief with a fleet of birch wood canoes controlling trade between villages on the Mississippi in 1720. Fast forward a mere 200 years to 1920 when a river magnate controls commerce on the same river with his fleet of riveted steel ships. Same river, very different cultural contexts.

The contexts of the biblical persons in Genesis 4-12 were as distantly in the past to First Century Jews as they are to most readers today. Adam and Eve lived around 5000-4800 BC in a vast well-watered region called Eden. One of their descendants Nimrod left Kush (East Africa) and established his territory on the Euphrates River around 3500 BC (Gen. 10). Abraham was one of Nimrod’s descendants. Abraham the Hebrew controlled the water systems at Hebron and Beersheba and the wells that he dug in Gerar around 2000 BC. To understand biblical history, we must grapple with these contextual incongruities and the best disciplines to apply in this effort are cultural anthropology, archaeology, DNA studies, and linguistics.

Critical reading avoids imposing a presumed order or interpretation on the text. To flesh out the narrative we must notice the incongruities and discrepancies, trace the layers, and listen for the subordinated voices. Those often are the voices of women.

The term "layers" is helpful if we imagine the growth rings of a tree. The oldest rings are near the center of the tree. The layers are visible when we cut through the tree. That is what Biblical Anthropology does with the canonical Scriptures. It seeks to identify the oldest layers and to use that data to gain a clearer picture of the social structure of the early Hebrew. Antecedents matter!

Biblical anthropology asks about antecedents. It explores what comes before what is described in the text. What events preceded the events recounted? It seeks to understand the cultural context of the earliest persons named in Genesis: Adam, Eve, Cain, Seth, Noah, etc. It is concerned with ancestors and received traditions. From what earlier context did certain practices develop? What traces of ancient memory can be uncovered?

Over the past 7 years the international forum The Bible and Anthropology has helped to advance the science of Biblical Anthropology. If this research interests you, consider joining that forum.



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