Cultural Backgrounds
Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
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TO THE NIV CULTURAL BACKGROUNDS STUDY BIBLE
“Even though the Bible was written for us, it wasn’t written to us. When we take our Western, modern culture and impose it on the text, we’re putting in meaning that wasn’t there, and we’re missing the meaning that the text has.”
—Dr. John H. Walton
“Sometimes people get frustrated with the Bible because the difficult figures of speech and the images and the customs they read about seem foreign to them. But when we explain those, then we open up the text of the Bible in a fresh, new way to understand what the text of the Bible is really addressing. Ultimately, everything in the Bible was written in particular times and cultures. So even though everything in it is for all time, not everything in it is for all circumstances. The better we understand the circumstances a passage originally addressed, the more confidently we can reapply its message to appropriate circumstances today.”
—Dr. Craig S. Keener
Welcome to the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. You have in your hands a comprehensive, multiuse tool that has been designed specifically to enhance your understanding of and appreciation for the cultural backgrounds that form the footings on which the foundation of God’s Word is built.
About the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
This study Bible has been purpose-built to do one thing: to increase your understanding of the cultural nuances behind the text of God’s Word so that your study experience, and your knowledge of the realities behind the ideas in the text, is enriched and expanded.
This study Bible contains the full text of the New International Version of the Bible along with a library of study features designed to help you more completely grasp what the text is saying. These notes introduce and explain a wide variety of information on the Biblical text, providing deeper insights for individuals who are ready to devote themselves to serious study of the text.
What Help Do These Study Features Offer?
Each of the features in the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible has been developed with the goal of allowing readers to immerse themselves in the culture, the literature, the geography and the everyday life of the people to whom the Bible was originally written.
• Book Introductions answer questions about who wrote the books of the Bible, to whom, and when, as well as informing readers about the larger cultural and political context in which a book was written. In the Old Testament, dates of writing and specific authorship for each book are less clear than in the New Testament, where such information is marginally less controversial, although still debated. That’s why the Old Testament introductions include “Key Concepts” and the New Testament Introductions include “Quick Glance” information to help readers orient themselves.
• The Old Testament includes a helpful chart that explains the nuances of meaning contained in Hebrew words that don’t have exact equivalents in English. That chart is called “Hebrew to English Translation Chart,” and can be found on p. xix.
• Also included before the Old Testament is a helpful article entitled, “Major Background Issues from the Ancient Near East” (p. xxxix) that is a must-read before you begin your OT study.
• The New Testament includes a reference feature entitled “Key New Testament Terms” (p. 1584) that is designed to help clarify and further define the cultural contexts behind these terms. It’s included as a background feature to define and explain terms that often repeat in the New Testament notes.
• The NIV Center-column Cross Reference system aids in deeper study of the Bible’s themes, language and concepts by leading readers to related passages on the same or similar themes.
• Over 10,000 study notes have been placed close to the text that they amplify and explain. These have been designed to provide the reader with a deep and rich understanding of the nuances that the original readers and hearers of the Bible would have intuitively understood. They focus on the land, the literature, and the political and cultural contexts that the Bible’s authors lived in, and emphasize how the people of Israel were both influenced by, as well as how they were called to be different from, their surrounding culture.
• Full-color in-text maps, charts and diagrams, along with some 320 essays, summarize and explain important background information and ideas from Scripture.
• Front and end matter features include author information, an author’s introduction with helpful questions and answers about this Bible, more information on the NIV translation itself (in the NIV Preface), and many other helpful study tools.
• The NIV Concordance is a tool designed to help readers who remember a key word or phrase in a passage to locate the verses they are looking for. Words and names are listed alphabetically, along with their more significant verse references.
• Color maps at the end of this study Bible complement the color maps in the interior of the Bible to help readers to visualize the geographic context of what they are studying.
Please take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with these features as you begin your study. We’re confident that as you expand your understanding of the social, economic, literary and political culture in which the Bible was written over the course of many centuries, that your understanding of and love for God’s Word will increase all the more.
—The authors and editors
NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
For whom has this study Bible been designed?
This study Bible is for those who want more out of the study of the Bible than they can get by just reading the text on their own. The notes, illustrations, charts and other study tools offer content for understanding that goes beyond most study Bibles. It is for the reader who isn’t content with being told what they should understand from the text, or with being given what they could figure out on their own. It is for the reader who already understands the importance of reading in context and seeing each book of the Bible as a whole. It is for the reader who is serious about the Bible itself, but has not had advanced training in the world in which the message of the Bible first came alive.
Can’t I read and understand the Bible just from the text itself?
Study Bibles often focus on helping readers apply the Bible to daily life. To be sure, applying the Bible to daily life is very important. Yet those who read the Bible enough can glean most principles from the Bible directly. After all, God’s story in the Bible is designed to be understood by children. As Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children” (
Translation Philosophy
The Committee’s translating work has been governed by three widely accepted principles about the way people use words and about the way we understand them.
First, the meaning of words is determined by the way that users of the language actually use them at any given time. For the biblical languages, therefore, the Committee utilizes the best and most recent scholarship on the way Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words were being used in biblical times. At the same time, the Committee carefully studies the state of modern English. Good translation is like good communication: one must know the target audience so that the appropriate choices can be made about which English words to use to represent the original words of Scripture. From its inception, the NIV has had as its target the general English-speaking population all over the world, the “International” in its title reflecting this concern. The aim of the Committee is to put the Scriptures into natural English that will communicate effectively with the broadest possible audience of English speakers.
Modern technology has enhanced the Committee’s ability to choose the right English words to convey the meaning of the original text. The field of computational linguistics harnesses the power of computers to provide broadly applicable and current data about the state of the language. Translators can now access huge databases of modern English to better understand the current meaning and usage of key words. The Committee utilized this resource in preparing the 2011 edition of the NIV. An area of especially rapid and significant change in English is the way certain nouns and pronouns are used to refer to human beings. The Committee therefore requested experts in computational linguistics at Collins Dictionaries to pose some key questions about this usage to its database of English—the largest in the world, with over 4.4 billion words, gathered from several English-speaking countries and including both spoken and written English. (The Collins Study, called “The Development and Use of Gender Language in Contemporary English,” can be accessed at http://www.thenivbible.com/about-the-niv/about-the-2011-edition/.) The study revealed that the most popular words to describe the human race in modern U.S. English were “humanity,” “man” and “mankind.” The Committee then used this data in the updated NIV, choosing from among these three words (and occasionally others also) depending on the context.
A related issue creates a larger problem for modern translations: the move away from using the third-person masculine singular pronouns—“he/him/his”—to refer to men and women equally. This usage does persist in some forms of English, and this revision therefore occasionally uses these pronouns in a generic sense. But the tendency, recognized in day-to-day usage and confirmed by the Collins study, is away from the generic use of “he,” “him” and “his.” In recognition of this shift in language and in an effort to translate into the natural English that people are actually using, this revision of the NIV generally uses other constructions when the biblical text is plainly addressed to men and women equally. The reader will encounter especially frequently a “they,” “their” or “them” to express a generic singular idea. Thus, for instance,
HEBREW TO ENGLISH TRANSLATION CHART
Description of Meaning of Hebrew Words That Have No Exact Equivalent in English
One of the constant challenges of exegesis involves the understanding of words. Most Bible readers are dependent on translations and so must be content to interpret the text based on what words the translators of their Bibles have chosen. Even readers who compare translations or consult commentaries can sometimes fall short of finding answers to their questions.
What readers do not often recognize is that even translators work with significant limitations. No ancient lexicon exists that offers explanations of the meanings of words by those who spoke classical Hebrew. We have traditions, sometimes ancient ones such as the translation offered in the Greek Septuagint; we have comments made by Medieval Rabbinic grammarians whose expertise was substantial; and, of course, we have the multitude of translations that exist today as an outpouring of scholarly attention. With all of that said, the fact is that we only perceive the meanings of Hebrew words by their usage, not from following some ancient academic repository of lexicography.
Finally, modern readers and translators face the problem that some Hebrew words that scholars understand well enough still pose problems because there is no English word that corresponds sufficiently to capture the breadth of nuance that the Hebrew word contains. Many of these are significant words pregnant with important nuances. The following list deals with a number of the Hebrew words that fall into this category; also included at the end of the chart are three English terms that require further explanation.
Transliteration and Goodrick/Kohlenberger #
Hebrew
NIV
Select Key Verses
brʾ (1343)
ברא
create
THE TORAH
GOD ESTABLISHES HIS COVENANT
INTRODUCTION TO THE TORAH
A wide array of literature from the ancient Near East provides information that is helpful for interpreting the Pentateuch. Ancient Near Eastern mythology reflects ideas about creation. Though ancient texts provide accounts of creation from Mesopotamia and Egypt and in the process provide insight into the creator deities and their roles (which are far different from what we find in the Bible), they also provide important information concerning how the ancients thought about the cosmos (which is often very similar to what we find in the Bible).
The patriarchal narratives can be read against the background of family archives from the ancient Near East that explain customs and legal traditions that are unlike our modern traditions in many ways. The religious practices and beliefs of the patriarchs can be investigated in comparison to the ancient world. Though these practices and beliefs were rooted in the ancient world, God was also gradually drawing them out of their familiar ways of thinking. At the same time, we would be mistaken to think that Abraham’s theology was the same as ours.
Ritual descriptions can be illuminated by ritual texts available in wide variety. Covenant documents in the Pentateuch can be read in light of treaties between countries. Laws can be compared to a variety of law collections dating from the second millennium BC. Such comparison can not only focus on the form or content of the individual laws but, more important, it can expand to a study of the source of law and the literary functions of law collections. How did people in the ancient world think about such collections of laws? These collections certainly did not have the same role as our legislative literature does today. All of these studies show us that God communicated to Israel within the cultural context of their world.
Historical and archaeological studies can provide background information to help understand the situation in Canaan during the patriarchal period and try to resolve basic questions such as the historical setting of Israel’s slavery in Egypt and the date of the exodus. Of particular importance are all of the archaeological studies trying to bring further understanding to the Egyptian backdrop of these events.
Sociological studies can comment on the concept of sacred space and the variety of institutions that existed in a society to manage sacred space—from priests to sanctuaries to rituals. Additional studies in religion also help us understand some of the ways that God called the people of Israel to be distinct from the people around them. As we learn about the ancient perception of deity and the way that perception is reflected in ancient Near Eastern ideas about pantheons, images, divination and magic, we can understand more clearly some of what Israel was to guard against.
What eventually is included in the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy identifies Moses as the authority figure from whom the material derives, and there is no reason to doubt the centrality of his role. At the same time, communication in the ancient world was primarily oral, since these were hearing-dominant cultures. Writing was known and conducted largely by the specialists (scribes), but scribes primarily produced documents rather than what we call books. The scribes themselves were not authors; they preserved the words of authority figures such as Moses. We don’t know when scribal archives of this sort of document would have been compiled into the books as we know them today.
