The Culture and Context of the New Testament

Today we will be talking about the religious, political, geographical, and cultural climate in which the New Testament was written. Do you think of reading the Bible as an exercise in cross-cultural communication? It really is!  As a missionary needs to learn the culture of the people among whom he or she will live and work, we need to immerse ourselves in the study of the culture(s) of the biblical world. Though we have excellent translations of the Bible into our language, it is still challenging to “hear” these documents as the original readers would have heard them, since we are not immersed in the same cultural context.  Chapter 2 in our text book is a good starting place, but as students of the Bible we need to be life-long learners of the biblical world and its culture. The better we understand the setting and context in which these documents were written, the better we will hear their message(s) as the writers intended. In reading the Bible we need to seek to discern the meaning that the writer intended to communicate to his original audience. Only after we understand what it meant "then and there" can we ask the questions about its meaning "here and now."

Why did the Pharisees have such a problem with the teaching of Jesus? And why is it in Acts that the Sadducees are the ones who seem to have the biggest objection to the preaching of the apostles? Understanding the religious context helps us to grasp what is happening and why. Other examples that would impact a first century reader differently than they do us include the relationship between Jews and Samaritans. Why was it so shocking for Jesus to have a conversation with a Samaritan woman (Jn 4), and why would he make a Samaritan the “hero” of one of the stories He told (Luke 10)?  Why does Luke point out that of ten men who were healed, the one who returned was a Samaritan (Luke 17)? 

The apostle Paul says that God sent His Son when the “fullness of time had come” (Gal 4:4,5). How did Jewish history in the centuries before the coming of the Messiah prepare the way for his arrival and the unfolding of God’s plan? The messianic hope was dynamically alive in the first century, but was it complete and balanced?

I hope you read this chapter carefully, and that you are intrigued enough to continue your study of this important background to the most important Book you will ever read. Your comments are invited below, what stood out to you in this chapter?