Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Dr. Walton Intro 0:00
What I'm doing is asking the story, what part of the story of creation does the Bible want to tell? Because you can do it different ways. And one of the examples that I use, I didn't use it in Lost World of Genesis. I hadn't thought of it yet. But one of the examples I use is that when we talk about the place we live in, we could talk about its origins as a house or we could talk about it origins as our home. Both of them are origin stories. Both of them have some significance. Certainly you can't have the home without the house. And you wouldn't want to have just a house that wasn't the home. So they're both origin stories, but you can choose to tell one story or the other.
In our scientific world, we always want to tell the house story of the cosmos, how God made the material stuff. That to us is what origins and creation are. I think suggested in the ancient world, they always want to tell the “Home Story”, because they consider that much more important that deals with God's purposes and what God's up to. In that sense in the ancient world, their creation account, a “Home Story” is all about God's agency and God's purposes. Whereas in our modern world, the house story is all about the material stuff. It's about the mechanisms and the scientific processes. They can both be true, but they're different kinds of stories. And the Bible doesn't have to tell the whole story just because we like it better.
Seth 1:50
Oh, man, welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast! I'm Seth, you are you and I am excited that you're here today. Thank you for taking the time to download or listen or stream the show. Before we get started, hit pause for me real quick. And wherever you downloaded this show, just please leave the show rating of each and every one of you left one. I can't tell you how grateful I would be for the 47 seconds that that took. And that will help more people hear the conversations that we're having here on the podcast. Today I spoke with Dr. John Walton, who is an author, professor and an Old Testament scholar currently residing at Wheaton College. He specializes in the Ancient Near East (ANE) and you'll hear us call that in the conversation as he specifically in the Old Testament and Genesis, and Joshua and the Canaanites and he is a scholar on many things that we were not able to discuss, but he's written a series of books called The Lost World and each of them deals with a different topic. So, John was not on my radar of people to talk to. And now one of the listeners had sent it in as a recommendation and said, “Hey, you should really talk with john and the more that I researched John”, I can say that I'm glad that I did. And I look forward to hopefully talking with him again.
So a little bit of what you can expect. We're going to talk quite a bit about Genesis, and creation, and canon and how the Bible at least the Hebrew Scriptures are interpreted and how they were put together and why that matters for when we read them now. And you'll also hear me really struggling with…with Genesis. I didn't realize until I listened to back to the episode in editing that I am really still not at a healthy place with Genesis and I'm gonna have to do some more wrestling with that. And that's okay. But I hope you enjoy it. I know I enjoyed having the conversation. Here we go. Dr. John Walton
Seth 4:09
John, thank you so much for being able to join the show today. I appreciate your willingness to come on. And I'm excited to talk about the Old Testament, primarily for two reasons. One, I feel like most churches spend entirely too much time in the New Testament. And as such to our detriment, many of us don't know anything outside of those placating answers that we were taught in Sunday School growing up. And I may not be right on that. But that's what at least where I come from, I think. And so I appreciate you making the time to come on today.
Dr. Walton 4:37
Glad to be here. Happy to talk about the Old Testament.
Seth 4:40
Let's start with that. What's a bit about you? And the question I always like to ask is, kind of what was your upbringing in the church or if there was one and what brought you to doing the work that you do today? And then and then we'll dive off from there because the books that you've written surrounding the you know, the title of the Lost World, I feel like we could talk about for many, many, many hours, which we don't have. And so hopefully this will be the beginning of many conversations. But um, what is kind of that foundational upbringing that has impacted the way that you are now in the way that you teach, and in what you believe?
Dr. Walton 5:13
Well, I was raised in the church in a very religious family. So Bible and theology, we're very much a part of our home part of our church experience. I was raised in it, I was taught it early and project thoroughly. And so I have a very deep roots in the Bible and in theology. I always loved the Old Testament. It's hard to figure out why that was my preference. I tend to think that when I was growing up, lots of what we did with the Bible involved in some part trivia, and the Old Testament as a whole lot more trivia, and I learned the trivia well, and so as a result, I felt like I really knew the Old Testament. Well. First, we all know that the Old Testament is far more than the trivia People in places and dates, but that was my start. Of course, that's you have to start somewhere. And so I developed a love for the Old Testament. But I never saw that as a career track. I just couldn't think of anything, you know, being a pastor, a missionary isn't a career track for an Old Testament interest. So I majored in business in college, and just never thought about the Old Testament as a way to move on into life. But somewhere near the end of my college career, it suddenly occurred to me that, number one, I wasn't really that much interested in business. And number two, there's such a thing as teaching the Old Testament, which was an interesting possibility. And so at that point, that's the direction that I went.
Seth 6:45
Yeah and you're at Wheaton now? Correct?
Dr. Walton 6:49
Correct.
Seth 6:50
And so I went to liberty. So where is Wheaton that on the scale of, I guess, looking at something like who do we always pick on, Bob Jones, to someone I guess that's on the other spectrum, what a Fuller or something that kind of that. So whereas we can kind of in that in that spectrum?
Dr. Walton 7:06
Well, certainly we're not in the category of Bob Jones, and really not even the same category as Liberty. For instance, I suspect is much more traditional, although I'm, you know, some professors are different than other professors. Unlike a place like Fuller, we do have inerrancy in our statement of faith. And so we all signed to belief in inerrancy. So, we don't have particularly denominational aspects to our statement of faith, as many schools do. We are broadly interdenominational. And so it's on the spectrum probably closer to Fuller than it is to Bob Jones.
Seth 7:50
That's good. Yeah, I hear the name and you'll see it on the back of you know, book jackets or other things and I just, just not extremely familiar with it as a as a University. So what do you find is what drew you to wanting to teach the Old Testament? What about it besides trivia, speaks to you in a way that you're like, no, this is this is what I am called to do. This is what I was designed to do is to teach this to people. What is that?
Dr. Walton 8:19
Well, I came to recognize as you started off the show with the idea that lots of churches don't give much attention to the Old Testament. And I came to believe that that was their loss, that there's so much in the Old Testament that we need to understand better, that it's God's word. It's God's revelation. It's authoritative, how can we neglect it? It has things that we need to learn. Our Christian faith certainly has a lot of focus on Jesus, but it's not really only about Jesus. There's a trinity out there.
We've got the Father and God, the Holy Spirit, and that, you know, our attention needs to focus on all of that. When God spoke to the Israelites, even though Jesus had not yet come, he was giving authoritative revelation to them. And therefore it is worth our time and effort to read it. But I felt like lots of people were misunderstanding it because they were unable to read it in its own context. And unable to think about the the contribution that it made to theology outside of just what Jesus is as important as Jesus is.
Seth 9:31
What do you mean in its own context? And I assume, by that when i when i read some of your writing and what you'll say, you know, on Biologos, or other places, you'll say an abbreviation of ANE, which I assume means Ancient Near East, I assume that's right.
Dr. Walton 9:47
Yeah.
Seth 9:48
And so how does…how, what, do you mean when you say context?
Dr. Walton 9:52
Well, the Bible is written in a language. It's not everybody's language. It was the language of the Israelites. And when you write in a language, you also are writing within a context. The Ancient World context is a lot different than ours. I call it the Cultural River. You know, we've got things like: democracy and freedom and rights and market economy and the expanding universe and naturalism, individualism, consumerism, social network, those are all part of our cultural river. Ancient Israel had none of those, and they wouldn't understand those. And so God communicates to them in their cultural river. And their cultural river is made up of a lot of things that we don't understand. The significance of idols. The idea that the gods, or God, are involved in every aspect of what happens in this world. The importance of kingship and the relationship of the king to the gods. The importance of magic.
Some parts of our world today have much more understanding of that that we have in our Western culture. But still those are elements that are unfamiliar to us. And we have to read the Bible in light of them, because that was the reality for an Israelite.
Seth 11:17
If I think about context. And so when I hear you say that, what I can hear is, you know, 500 years from now, someone can go back and look at public posts on Facebook or Twitter or blog posts, things that have been printed out or stored on a hard drive somewhere. And we don't have that for the Old Testament.
Dr. Walton 11:36
That's right.
Seth 11:37
How can we then know that what we're reading is contextually accurate? Like what, where do we even start foundationally like someone like myself that does not have a huge library of knowledge or the infrastructure to even know what what interstate I need to get on to get there how do I begin that?
Dr. Walton 11:56
Well, of course, the only reason why we have all of this access to the ancient world is because of the texts that have been found in archaeological excavation. That means that this information is for the most part less than 100 years old. But it's those texts which give us a window to the ancient world so that we can understand beyond the Bible how people tended to think in the ancient world.
Now still, while Christian saying in the church might feel like well, I'm not going to go read texts from the Syria or Babylon or Egypt. I have no access to that. How would I get to that? Well, fortunately, those of us who do study those areas have begun to publish tools that people in the church can use.
So for example, most recently, I was the general editor for the Old Testament for the cultural background study Bible. And all the study notes are background notes. They talk about history or archaeology or geography or Ancient manners and customs, ancient literature, and just basically the way people thought in the ancient world. And so, in that way, we're able to make that information accessible. Just like theologians make theology accessible even though the people who read it might not be theologians.
Seth 13:19
Yeah. You know, I agree and, and I wonder if that's maybe why churches lean more towards the New Testament? Because there's there seems to be more works for you know, Rome, and all the things that are surrounding that time period. Maybe there's not, maybe I'm ignorant of that. But I wonder if that's not why they do that just because it's easier to get source material to cross reference and further examples, as opposed to just quoting the Bible to prove the Bible.
Dr. Walton 13:43
Not only is it easier to get those source materials, but also the Greco Roman culture is closer to our own Western culture than the ancient Near East is; there still, of course, very important differences, but it's closer so it feels a little more familiar.
Seth 13:57
So I'm curious. So in in preparing for this. And one of the questions that I'm that I would love your perspective on is how the Old Testament is, is come together. And so there, from what I can tell, there's like three, I believe there's three hypotheses or theories for how the Torah came together. And so you got the documentary, the supplementary, and another one that I can't remember…Which one do you hold and why?
Dr. Walton 14:28
It's probably some very complicated combination of many of those things. The fact is, we don't know much about how it's come together. We put together models that either have supplementation or kind of a gathering together of sources or all of these things, and probably some things in the history of the compilation of the text touched on lots of those different ways of thinking. But again, we only have models, it's very difficult to delve tell from the documents we have in from the history that we know how those models came into play in the actual compilation of Scripture. So all we can do with the models is to say, here's some things that are possibilities. And that may lead us to be more cautious about some of the traditional ways we might think like, the writers of Scripture went into a quasi-trance while the Holy Spirit dictated to them.
You know, that's a model too, but it's one that is less and less accepted. But then so, how did it happen? And again, lots that we don't know we know that the chronicler used sources because he tells us he did. We know that the culture was typically a hearing dominant culture, not a text dominant culture. So in a hearing dominant culture, what you hear has more authority than what you read. And of course, lots of people could not read, or could not read well, and therefore documents were not made widely available for them to read, because that wasn't how society worked. I've written about these things in a book that I did with Brent Sandy called The Lost World of Scripture, which explores some of the the models and the possibilities.
Seth 16:25 Yeah, that's not one that I've read. I believe that I'm gonna it's gonna get order today. I have fallen in love with your last World books very much. So because you bring up a lot of things that I question all the time in a way that I can understand as someone that does not have a degree in theology. When we talk about Genesis, or when you write about Genesis, I want to make a distinction because it's something I had not really given much thought about until I read what you wrote about it. So you kind of propose that there is no material creation and that there’s some form of a cosmic, I'm going to say this wrong. Can you speak a bit? Which when you mean in for Genesis one into the I don't want to say it wrong (laughter from John) and not correctly? The material creation versus the cosmic temple?
Dr. Walton 17:14
Yeah, thank you for that (my reluctance to say it incorrectly). What I propose is that in the ancient world when they thought about God, or the gods, creating they thought of something very different than what we think. We're in a scientific world and therefore we think about creation or origins, we tend to think automatically in scientific terms. I proposed that in the ancient world when I try to demonstrate both in the Bible and outside the Bible that in the ancient world, they thought of creation primarily in terms of ordering.
Certainly, they believe that the gods made the physical cosmos, but that's just not a very big issue to them. The fact that he orders it, sustains it, maintains it, makes it work, set it up to work the way you wanted it to. Those are all much more important things. And that comes out in terms of like naming and separating which both the Bible and other Ancient Near Eastern texts have. Those are all matters of ordering. It doesn't mean that God didn't create the material world. Basically, what I'm doing is asking the story, what part of the story of creation does the Bible want to tell? Because you can do it different ways. And one of the examples that I use, I didn't use it in Lost World of Genesis one. I hadn't thought of it yet. But one of the examples I use is that when we talk about the place we live in, we could talk about its origins as a house, or we could talk about it origins as our home.
Both of them are origin stories. Both of them have some significance. Certainly you can't have the home without the house and you wouldn’t want to have just a house that wasn't a home. So they're both origin stories, but you can choose to tell one story or the other. In our scientific world, we always want to tell the house story of the cosmos, how God made the material stuff. That to us is what origins and creation are.
I suggest that in the ancient world, they always want to tell the Home Story, because they consider that much more important; that deals with God's purposes, and what God's up to. In that sense in the ancient world, their creation account, a Home Story is all about God's agency and God's purposes. Whereas in our modern world, the house story is all about the material stuff. It's about the mechanisms and the scientific processes. They can both be true, but they're different kinds of stories. And the Bible doesn't have to tell the whole story just because we like it better.
Seth 20:00
In a different interview, and I can’t remember which one I think it was one with Alexander Shaia, he had said when I asked him a similar question, he's trained in anthropology and he was talking about the Gospels. But he had said that, that when they tried to write about truth or speak truth in you know, in the ancient Judaism, in ancient Israel culture, they weren't speaking in a truth or a history the way that you and I would read an accounting of one of the Korean wars or the election that they were trying to speak a truth to get you to realize the intent and the emotion behind it, not a quote unquote, factual accounting. And I'm probably saying that wrong, is that kind of where you're getting at with that, that it's not about…
Dr. Walton 20:43
It's the same kind of thing. We have to define our terms carefully. They were much more interested, for instance, in outcomes than in the events themselves, and they constructed their interpretation of events to highlight the outcomes. That doesn't mean that they're false or made up or fictional. It's just a way of trying to get at the truth of what's taking place.
Seth 21:11
When I read Genesis, am I reading it as six literal 24 hour days, which in there's a portion of my mind that knows that the Greco Roman Gregorian calendar didn't exist when the Genesis was written? And so who knows what a day was? But am I supposed to read it in a literal six days seven day rest? Is Adam an actual person? Or is it all myth? Like? How do I then ride that line of knowing what to read with what I need to feel and what to read? And how to read with what I need to act upon?
Dr. Walton 21:44
You can't read a text any more literally, than to read it precisely how the author intended it to be read, what he expected his audience to understand. So I'm always on the quest to be a faithful interpreter by being accountable to what the author intended. If the author intended something as a metaphor, we better read it as a metaphor. If he intended to do the parable, we'd better read as a parable. That's what literal reading is. It's our accountability to the author's intention. So when I read Genesis 1, I want to get a sense of what the author intended that involves the words that he chose the literary structures that he set up and the cultural context in which he's in.
Now to the specific questions you ask, do I believe that the author is intending us to think of six literal days? Seven literal days? Yes, I do. And I think that the evidence is pretty clear that that's what the author intends for us. What's less clear is what is he suggesting took place in those 7-24 hour days. Is he thinking that the house was built in the 24 hour 6-24 hour days, or that the home was being made, that's a big difference.
Okay, so when we think about our houses being built its foundation, its framing its roof. It's the, you know, interior walls, it's the furnace, the air conditioning, the plumbing, the electricity, that's the house being built. But then the home being made, is when you come in with your boxes and unpack and set up the furniture, you could understand that you might be able to make your home in seven days, but they're not going to build your house in seven days.
So they're both origin stories, which story is the text telling. I think that they are intending us to read them as literal days, 24 hour days, but the literal reading would be that this is a Home Story, and therefore that's a different set of things that happens In those days, if it's a Home Story and not a health story, then those seven days say nothing whatsoever about the age of the Earth, because age of the Earth is a health story question.
Seth 24:13
So I recently read Ask the Beasts Darwin and the God of Love from Elizabeth Johnson and and she was saying that that creation and evolution can coexist and that the two don't necessarily believing in one doesn't break the other for any for many reasons. And so, so the house story then of evolution, does it not, or the theory of evolution? I'd hate to say that that's a fact. don't hear me say that. I don't think anybody can prove that it is or isn't. Where does where does science then where does that tension begin to nuance in the center? How can someone listening to this that is, you know, an atheist or someone that's listening to this that doesn't believe in six literal days because it just logically can't work in their brain. Can't evolution Or do you think evolution can be true or the premise of it and still hold those six days being that I guess when you say the literal is the house? Are you saying that that it's the temple that it's the people that are being created in those six literal days? Or am I way off?
Dr. Walton 25:23
Okay, that was too many questions at once. So when we think about the, the literal reading of the text, if that's accountable to the author, and if the author did not intend a house story, then the house story is not the literal reading. The house story is a scientific reading from today. It's not a literal reading if the author intended otherwise (and) if I am right that the author intended to Home Story, then that really says nothing much about the house story. And since evolutionism is a proposal for a house story the Bible not talking about the house story, then the two can't really come into conflict.
Okay, if the home story is true, then I propose that the Home Story is that God is ordering this world to be sacred space. By sacred space I mean, it's the place where he tends to dwell among his people. He intends to be with us. He intends to be in relationship with us. He intends to dwell among us. That is his purpose and that is why he sets up this home. It's a home that functions for us because he doesn't have any needs but it's a home which he intends to share with us. That's all Home Story. And I believe that's a literal reading of the text because that's what I believe the author intends.
Seth 27:46
When would you say then that the creation story in Genesis was written? During Babylonian exile or during a different time altogether?
Dr. Walton 27:56
I really have no idea since the text doesn't tell us, we have no information on that. If I mean, to me, it is likely something that maybe didn't find its final form until late in Israelite history. But that's the writing part writing comes at the end, not at the beginning, because they're hearing dominant culture.
So these traditions, these stories, these accounts, these narratives could have been circulating and accumulating all through the period of the Old Testament. Maybe they weren't put together in the writing form that we know that till later on in the process, but that doesn't mean that they were just kind of invented that are made up then they represent the accumulated traditions of the Israelites whenever they were written. Maybe they were written early, maybe not.
I don't know.
Seth 28:51
Yeah. So am I wrong then in saying that Genesis 1 and I want and the reason I want to clarify is because of the next question. I'm is a creation story of the of the, of the temple, cosmically of the purpose for Israel, correct? Or am I getting it wrong?
Dr. Walton 29:10
The purpose is that it's God dwelling among his people. Israel is not the only one, that thinks god's dwell among the people. So that's not limited to a purely Israelite type of view. Although again, the Israelites framed that a little bit differently than others. But this is a book written by Israelites to Israelites.
Seth 29:32
If I think about its purposes is to tell me about God coming to dwell among me, how then and I would have to infer that the people writing the text would be some form of a of a priestly. Someone with the knowledge base to do so. I can't see, you know, someone like myself writing a book of the Bible. I don't, I can't do that.
And so if when I think about a flood narrative and just a destruction of everything that was created chapters prior, how can the question arises? To me, and maybe it's a bad question is when I read up this total destruction of a temple that I created, but I, here's the reason I'm creating it, I can't seem to reconcile the two.
So what is the purpose then for you know, Genesis 7 when we think about you know, the purpose of Genesis one and two in correlation there?
Dr. Walton 30:21
When Genesis 1 conveys its message that God has brought order to the cosmos that his creation. He has brought order to the cosmos and that order has to do with him dwelling there that is he's preparing it to be a place for his dwelling, because he is the center and source of order. And so when he takes up his dwelling place there, resting, in this world his rest is his rule. And so he is maintaining order, yet people choose their own way of ordering the world around themselves. That's Genesis 3, and it doesn't go well. That's Genesis 4-7.
So at that point already people have lost access to God's presence, though what he's doing with regard to the cosmos in terms of this dwelling place, we don't know. It's not going to be reestablished until the tabernacle in Exodus 40. But at that point, people are kind of pursuing order their own way and that doesn't work so well and so we end up with the flood. The flood returns, creation, the terrestrial cosmos, to a non-ordered state, just like Genesis 1-2 all water and then God recreates. This is a recapitulation of ordering, if we understand creation as ordering, this is a recapitulation of creation.
And so God reestablishes order in the cosmo, the dry land emerges, people come forth from the ark. In this case, animals come forth. The Blessing is reiterated all of this. Now we talked about this in the last World of the flood, all this is lined out there and that just came out last month. So in that way, this is a recapitulation of creation. But there is still some disruptions of order as we read in the Tower of Babel narrative. And that leads to God pursuing order through the covenant, which launches us then into Genesis 12.
Seth 32:39
You said something earlier of “gods” and I want to make sure wasn't a slip of the tongue. So and I've read a bit about this and other places, and I'm at an nanscent level of knowledge about it. And so I assume when you say that there's gods and some form of court of heavenly host and who creates what and who gets to be worshipped is it was there a time That the Israelites worshiped more than one God but just elevated, quote unquote, Yahweh to a different level, or is it always just been one?
Dr. Walton 33:09
Oh the Bible tells us that they worship other gods in Egypt. The Bible tells us that Abraham's family came from a polytheistic family. During the Judges period that was one of the recurring problems over and over. They worshiped other gods. So they weren't supposed to, at least in the Judges, period, once you get the covenant, it's the covenant which lays out the idea that you are in relationship with me, I am suser, you are vassal, you do not have loyalty to anyone else. And so it's the covenant that frames that more exclusive relationship and of course that happens with Abraham. But again, we know that the Israelites continued to worship other gods much to their loss. So I mentioned other gods because I was also talking about the literature of people like the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and they saw their gods doing the same thing that Israel saw their God doing. So that's why I kind of expanded that to both.
Seth 34:14
When I think about a creation story with the intent of putting things into order, that in my mind presupposes those things. were already there. So I just showed up at this building side of the house. And how did this stuff get there or is that a question worth asking?
Dr. Walton 34:37
Well, there's no question that the Biblical authors Old and New Testament believe that even the material stuff, the house, was something that God did. But still, there's which question are you asking which question are you answering? You know, when I have students over at my place for dinner, they might ask us about our place and they don't want me to describe the electricity in the plumbing. They want me to talk about how we made it our home. And so I don't talk about the electricity, the plumbing there is electricity and plumbing. But I don't talk about it. Because that's just not the question on the table.
And so there's no question in the ancient world that God, or the gods again, whether it's Israel of the others, were the ones who if I could say it this way, “manufactured the material cosmos”, but they're not interested in that. It's just like, you know, we rarely when we pull out our laptops or our iPads, we rarely ask questions about the you know, who wired the motherboard or, you know, what kind of materials-chemistry-polymers are in the casing. We don't care. We know it's there. And if somebody asks, you say, “Well, yeah, I know that”, but that's not the thing. We're interested in apps and operating systems and things of that sort. How do I use it? So again, it's a matter of what questions you're asking.
Seth 36:01
Right, and, I apologize to keep going back to that. But I think that is one of my biggest struggles personally. And it's something that I see most often spoken back to me or preached on, or the and that's the questions that I most often get from younger kids, including my own. And so there's a part of my brain that I can't shut off with that but I do want to try to switch gears.
So how do I…how should we deal with with with God as as a supreme, divine, kind of warrior? And I think of that in terms of just the violence that's involved in Passover, and in texts like Joshua 5, how do I sit with that? Because I struggle to reconcile that with with with Jesus?
Dr. Walton 36:50
As well, you should I mean, people struggle with that all the time. Again, another of the last road books is Lost World of the Israelite conquest. My son and I wrote that together and tackled that topic, at least on the conquest issue. Lots of the other places in Scripture, where God is seen as bringing about death. That's considered a justifiable act of judgment that the people brought on themselves.
And so you find that now you look at the Passover, you say, wait a minute, those are just kids. So what, what did they bring on themselves? And again, then you have to recognize this is operating within an ancient world context where they thought differently about identity. They thought differently about, you know, corporate identity, and the solidarity of a family, and that they all kind of operate together. So, again, you've got a different worldview there.
But when you look at things like Sodom and Gomorrah, or the Amalekites with Saul, those are places where its judgment, even the destruction of Jerusalem, where many of the Israelites were killed by the Babylonian invaders, yet this is God's judgment and punishment on them. You know, we can't remove from God's profile that he's carries out justice and that that sometimes means punishment. Now, my son and I tried to build the case that that is not the same with the Israelite conquest.
We suggest that the reasons that people think the Canaanites are being punished, cannot be substantiated in the text, and that there's a different sort of thing going on there. So, not every situation falls into that category. But still, you know, Jesus dries out the money changers. Jesus is us very strong words about the destruction of his of the destruction of body and soul. I mean, Jesus is a pretty strong words of judgment and how seriously we should take judgment.
Seth 39:09
Thinking about, you know, all of the Bible, when people speak about the issues that are plaguing this century, you know, justice and reconciliation and slavery and apathy, and sex trafficking—everyone tends to quote the New Testament at excess, which is fine, it's fine. How can we infer text from the Old Testament though into the issues that are dealing with us for this century, this one now, not ancient Israel?
Dr. Walton 39:37
Well, it's really difficult because the Old Testament is framed and addressed toward ancient Israel. I have a book coming out early next year called Lost World of the Torah. And we talked about this very issue because people in the church are very willing to grab a verse from the from the Torah from Exodus or Leviticus because it says what they want to say. But they tend to neglect all the other verses in those books and they end up being very selective. And we can't do that we have to use a consistent method. And so the question of, do any of those things from the Old Testament carry any kind of weight for us, and if so, watching, how do you get at it?
And that's what that book is trying to work on, to try to have a consistent hermeneutic. The fact is, all of the Torah is within the framework of the Israelite covenant. Israelite covenant was made with them, not with everybody. And while we might suspect that it contains some morally important ideas, how do you figure out what's morally important and what's not? If you only use the criteria of what I already believe; well, that is not the Bible that's establishing that.
So the idea that the Bible, the Torah, is situated is in an ancient context, in a covenant relationship, and in the context of Israel living in sacred space, God dwelling in their midst, all of those make it very different from what we have today. So it requires a much more complicated process. And again, that's why we tried to write a book to clarify.
Seth 41:20
I want to end with this final question which which may be broken into two parts, because that seems to be my thing today. Being that you get students coming to you, and they've got a certain level of knowledge base. And I have to think there are some commonalities as they approach you, or they wouldn't be, you know, going to study courses in Old Testament. So what would be something that you would say, “All right, I'm going to get all of the pastors that have taught these kids growing up, you have got to let this go. This is not helpful for teaching people about theology or about the God that we worship!”
What would be that thing that you would say no stop teaching this this is horribly, horribly unethical? Is there anything that would fall into that category that would then make it easier to not have to break down a bunch of foundations to then rebuild?
Dr. Walton 42:16
There are kind of loads of things in that category! You know, in general, we've already talked about the idea that we don't read our modern cultural context back into the text. That is we don't treat the text for instance, as a science text, that's teaching science.
But I think the one that I would emphasize most is that, this happens from little kids all the way up into our our church context, when people read Old Testament narrative, they tend to treat it as if it's number one, a compilation of role models that we are supposed to follow. Be a leader like Nehemiah, be bold like Daniel or that it's behavioral objective that we should follow. Abraham let Lot choose first. So are you letting other people choose first? And we use them those ways. And that's all we ever do with them.
And I would want to help Sunday school teachers, and parents, and pastors, and youth pastors understand, that's not what we're supposed to be doing with Old Testament narrative. Now, I wrote about that in a book called The Bible Story Handbook, where we talked about exactly what we do with Bible stories. And is there a way to do it wrong?
Yes there is!
What is the way to do we actually get God's message, instead of kind of making things up that we shouldn't be doing. So I think that's, that's what shows up day after day after day, week after week, year after year in curriculum and in sermons that use the Old Testament.
Seth 43:53
And I asked that for a very specific reason. So I do have young kids that asked me questions constantly and I do teach Sunday school to middle schoolers. And so I, one of my biggest fears is they'll ask me a question that I don't know how to answer. And I'm realizing that not answering and just telling them, I don't know, is a fine answer.
But I can't, I can't leave it at that. And I also don't want to, I don't know, I'm not a pastor, like, I'm not trained for this. I don't want to…I don't want to break something that doesn't need to be broken. And I don't want to build up something that should have never been there. So for those listening, I have bounced around and if you haven't noticed many of John's books. So John, where would you direct people to engage in a knowledge of Ancient Near East culture so they can better read, you know, the Scriptures and then how would they engage with you?
Dr. Walton 44:49
Well, engaging with with me, they can just Google my name on YouTube. And you'll find all kinds of things that I've talked about. My books are all on Amazon, you know, they're about 30 of them by now. And they can go into Amazon and find lots of those, if they want to engage in the Ancient Near East. I already mentioned the cultural background study Bible, which is available in NIV translation and KJV version, and is in preparation for the NRSV version; so of variety of translations. So that's where they could get some of that if you didn't want to get a study Bible, the IVP Bible Backgrounds Bommentary, the Old Testament one I did with a couple friends and the New Testament, Craig Keener did, so they could get into it on that as well.
Seth 45:42
If I learned anything doing this show and in the lead up to the show, it's that learning about the culture and who was Paul was writing to and who Nehemiah was listening…everybody matters and we can't read it in a vacuum. And I can't stress enough that as I've gone through this, I humbly have learned to admit how very little I know about anything, which is frightening, to say the least, but truthful.
Dr. Walton 46:11
We're all learning. We're all on the learning curve. And we just try to get as much as we can.
Seth 46:18
Well, John, thank you so much for today. I enjoyed it, even though I know my questions were scatterbrained.
Dr. Walton 46:24
You're quite welcome. Glad to do it.
Seth Outro 46:47
So there we have it. History, context, scripture, Empire, idolatry, everything that we still yell and argue about today. Everything that matters About the Bible is present in the Old Testament and is worth engaging in, in a way that is hard and healthy. I know for me, I'm gonna have to do some more wrestling with some of these texts.
I'm not at a place that I can adequately answer. Even the questions that I'm asking, or the next question that comes after. It's fine to be in a place for that, that I think is healthy to be in a place that you're still searching for truth. And I know that the truth is there. And I know that with consistent prayer and study and willingness to press into hard spaces, I'll arrive at a place that I am comfortable with and that I believe in. And that is beautiful. And that is holy. And I hope the same for you.
If you haven't yet, as you heard in previous episodes, I've got big plans for the show, and we need your support on Patreon for that to happen. You will find links to that at www.CanIsaythisatchurch.com top right of the website.
Today's music was provided by The Silver Pages again, thank you for that to support their music. You can find everything for that at silver pages com. I look forward to talking to you. I look forward to your feedback on the show and I will speak with you next week.