Foundations of our Faith: Scripture (Part 2)

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Shabbat shalom, everyone. Welcome to our regulars (guests?), both here in person and digitally. Today is part 2 of what I started last week. That is, as a continuation of the series we’ve been doing called “Foundations of our Faith.” Last week I started a two-parter on the topic of Scripture. Why do we have the Bible? What books are in it, why, and what about others? Those are the sort of things discussed last week, so I won’t re-hash all that. It was a bit dense, so my apologies.
As for the rest of the foundations series, so far we’ve covered:
Identity - who we are as image-bearers of God
Gospel - what is the Good News of the Kingdom?
Sabbath - Why it matters that we keep it
Shavuot - The significance of the giving of both the Law and the Spirit
Tithe - How we tithe today, and how it is an act of worship
Food Laws - Why they matter, and how we address some of the common attempts that people make to subvert them
For today we will continue looking at Scripture, our doctrine of Scripture if you will. We first must understand authority. Why does Scripture have authority? It has the final say, it determines our doctrines, our morality, our worldview. Or at least, it should.
Scripture has authority because God inspired it. God, as Creator, is the definer of things. He gets to dictate the terms of morality, and He has done so in His word. We most often point to the Torah to tells us if something is right or wrong, moral or immoral, but in reality all of Scripture is useful for this. We learn from the prophets how mechanical observance of the Law itself is not what God has ultimately desired. We learn from the Gospels that loophole legalism is not the same as being an obedient servant, nor especially as being one who truly loves God and neighbor.
The whole of Scripture is useful for training in righteousness. 2 Tim. 3:16-17

16All Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for restoration, and for training in righteousness, 17so that the person belonging to God may be capable, fully equipped for every good deed.

All Scripture, Paul says - not just the Torah - is useful for teaching. Clearly the Torah is the foundation on which the rest of Scripture rests, but it is not the entirety of it. All Scripture, Paul says, is useful for reproof and restoration. This tells us the expectation is that we will go to the Word to determine how we ought to reprove someone, that is, offer correction. Also how we go about restoration. These things are somewhat sequential. We teach Scripture; we use it for reproof, but the purpose of reproof is not to put someone down, to condemn them, or to unfairly judge them. Rather, it is to bring about their restoration. Then ultimately, it is for the purpose of equipping people for every good deed (some Bibles will read “good work”).
This is, at its core, why we have Scripture. I have often been asked, “Why don’t I hear God speaking? Why doesn’t He speak to me, and tell me what He wants me to do?”
I usually respond with, “He already has. There are 66 books in here, filled with His words. Do you know them all?” It is not uncommon for us to expect the “easy way out” when it comes to the Word. Studying can be tedious; the Bible can be confusing. We oftentimes have more questions than answers, and every time we study we come across new things, even with passages we’ve studied before. That’s kind of messy. It would be way easier if God would just download what He wants us to know into our minds. But that’s not how He has chosen to do this.
Hopefully this also serves to help answer why we don’t see things happening like they did in Ancient Israel. We don’t have a prophet who goes to the king and delivers a message from Adonai, which turns the tide of a war or topples a kingdom.
Personally, I believe this is linked to why we don’t see a lot of what we often want in terms of prophecy and the workings of the various gifts. Why was prophecy necessary in the first century? Because people needed the Word of God. The average person couldn’t even read and write, and certainly didn’t own a copy of the Scriptures. Today, more households have Bibles than not, and with Internet access, nearly everyone can read the Bible.
It isn’t that God stopped speaking to His people; it isn’t that there’s no such thing as prophecy anymore (in my view). It’s that the need for that decreased as access to the word increased.
When it comes to authority, Yeshua, like Paul, affirmed the authoritative nature of Scripture. John 5:39

39You search the Scriptures because you suppose that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about Me.

Yeshua did not refute the purpose of searching the Scriptures because of supposing that life is found in them. Rather, He builds on that idea and says that the Scriptures testify - they bear witness - of Him. The same as we see Him doing after His resurrection. Luke 24:44-49

44Then He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you—everything written concerning Me in the Torah of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

45Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46and He said to them, “So it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance for the removal of sins is to be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49And behold, I am sending the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

We have life in Messiah, and the Scriptures are our source of learning about Him, and about how we relate to the rest of Creation.
It may seem a circular argument, to say that we believe in the authority of Scripture because Scripture says so. But it is more complex than that. This really gets more into the topic of revelation, than it does just the Bible. God has chosen to reveal Himself through His word. As such, as followers of Yahweh Elohim, it is our responsibility to encounter Him through His word. Scripture is for teaching, for correction, for understanding the ways of God, for understanding the mission of the Messiah, and for understanding how we play a part in all of that.
To help us craft this Biblical theology of Scripture, we will address three primary points:
Inspiration
Inerrancy
Interpretation

Inspiration

What do we mean when we talk about inspiration? When we say that the Scriptures are “inspired by the Holy Spirit”, or that they are the “inspired word of God”?
First, a definition. As we read in 2 Tim. 3:16, Scripture is “inspired” by God. The word in question is theopneustos, a combination of theos (God) and pneuma (spirit, breath, wind). It is literally not mere inspiration, but “God-breathed.” Scripture is God-breathed. So when we say that it is inspired by the Spirit, we mean that the words words, the revelation, the intent behind it all, is what God wants us to understand.
Different revelations of Yahweh have come in different forms. What didn’t happen, however, was what some people seem to think was meant by “inspiration.” That is, that God possessed say a prophet, and caused that person to write what God wanted to say. Then the prophet woke up or came to their senses and saw this new scroll on their table, with the pen in their hand, and said, “Oh wow, I guess God used me to write His words down.” That is not a biblical picture at all of what happened.
To be sure, there are instances where someone had a vision, or even like Peter, fell into a sort of trance. But this is God’s method of conveying information to them: by showing them something apart from reality. This is not God taking over and possessing their bodies. They would, in turn, then go write down - in their own words - what they saw. This is why some things may sound odd when they describe them. A fiery chariot, a wheel within a wheel, a locust with a scorpion tail and stinger, etc. These descriptions are using the terms that the writers knew, in their own language and vernacular.
We see this example further with Moses. There was a time God wrote something Himself, namely the two tablets of stone. But when it came to the majority of the Torah, we read all over “Yahweh spoke to Moses saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel and say to them…’” XYZ. God spoke, and humans relayed the message.
This is how God chose to reveal His word: through human means. He certainly could have written down everything He wanted us to know, packaged it up with a neat little bow, and given it to Adam, or Abraham, or Moses, or Paul. But that’s not how He wanted to do it. He chose to work with humans in the process.
So when we say that something is the inspired Word of God, we mean that it is ultimately a revelation or word that God wanted revealed to us.

2. Inerrancy

We say that the word of God - and here we really mean the Bible - is inerrant. Simply put, that means it is without errors. God revealed His word to us, and what He revealed has no errors. It is truth, and that absolutely.
But many people hold a view of inerrancy that makes the Bible say something that it does not claim of itself. As we saw from 2 Timothy, the Scriptures do claim to be inspired or God-breathed. Do they claim to be without error?
I would suggest that they are error-free if properly understood. A good example here is found by using the Gospels. The four Gospels - and especially the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke - are all Scriptural texts. They recount many of the same stories. But at times, the details differ.
Mark 1:11 -

And there came a voice from the heavens: “You are My Son, whom I love; with You I am well pleased!”

Matthew 3:17 -

17And behold, a voice from the heavens said, “This is My Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased!

According to Mark, this was the Father speaking directly to the Son, and speaking in the second person “you.” “You are My Son…with You I am well pleased.” But according to Matthew, the Father spoke in the third person, “This is My Son…with Him I am well pleased.” So which was it? Was the Father speaking only to the Son directly, or to the crowd?
This sounds like a contradiction, it sounds like one of those atheist “gotchas” that claims the Bible contradicts itself and is therefore not inerrant. But again, where does the Bible make such claims about itself? We in the West today would say, they can’t both be correct when they don’t say the same thing. But we have a different mindset than the Biblical writers.
To them, both accounts are equally true: Yeshua is the Son of God in whom the Father is well pleased. That statement is an absolute truth. But Matthew and Mark had different focuses when they wrote their books. As I mentioned a few moments ago, the writers wrote the words that God breathed, that He inspired, but they wrote them in their own words, language, and terms. Matthew was focusing on the proclamation made by the Father to all: This is My Son. Mark, however, was more focused on the intimacy and relationship between Father and Son: You are My Son.
If one person quotes something, and another paraphrases, would that make the paraphrase an error? It isn’t wrong, as long as it conveys the same truth even though it uses different words. This is why I don’t dislike some Bible translations that are a little less literal, and a little more of a paraphrase. Sometimes that is needed to really convey the intent of the author in our modern English language.
So will we find differences like this in the Bible? Yes. We will find places where the Tanakh (OT) is quoted in the New Testament and it seems to be used out of context, or perhaps even quoted slightly different from what the Tanakh itself says. This is a complex issue, but the point remains: the Bible is inerrant in that it contains and communicates the words and revelation of God without deficiency.
I have mentioned before an example of parables. Take the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew 22.

1Yeshua answered and spoke to them again in parables, saying, 2“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who made a wedding feast for his son. 3He sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they wouldn’t come. 4Again he sent out other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who were invited, “Look, I’ve prepared my meal. My oxen and fattened cattle are killed, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast!” ’

5“But paying no attention, they went away, one to his own farm, another to his business. 6And the rest grabbed his servants, humiliated them, and killed them. 7Now the king became furious! Sending his troops, he destroyed those murderers and set fire to their city.

8“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. 9So go into the highways and byways, and invite everyone you find to the wedding feast.’ 10And those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all they found, both bad and good; and the wedding was filled with guests.

Now is this story about a king hosting a feast for his son a true story? Who was this king, who was the son, and who were the servants? Who were the invited guests that didn’t show up? Was this about David? Solomon? Hezekiah?
As we know, the king is the Father, the Son is Messiah, the invited guests are the Israelites who rejected them, and the strangers from the highways and byways are the nations, being offered the Gospel. The way to understand a parable is to start by understanding its limitations. It is a true story, even if there wasn’t a physical, literal feast, king, son, servant, guest, and stranger. We could ask who was Lazarus and who was the rich man from Luke 16? Who was the father of the prodigal son, and who was the faithful brother? Again, these parables are truth, but that doesn’t man they had to literally be “true stories.”
Another example is
Inspiration pertains to how God worked through human writers, through human means, to produce Scripture. Inerrancy refers to how the word itself continues to speak truth about the revelation of God, free of any errors.

Interpretation

The third point is that of interpretation. Interpretation is how we uncover the meaning of a text. If inspiration is the revelation that God is giving us, and inerrancy is the way that revelation conveys truth, then interpretation is how we discover what it means. There are principles of interpretation, referred to as hermeneutics. That may be a churchy or seminary-sounding word, and it kind of is, but it just means the principles you use to interpret Scripture.
I think most people would agree that the meaning of the text is not determined by whatever we want, right? I can’t go and read about God blessing Abraham with so much wealth, and then go to the end of Job where Job is blessed with wealth, and decide that all of this belongs to me, right? Never mind what the prosperity Gospel says.
There are two determiners of meaning when it comes to a Biblical text, and spoiler alert: neither of them is me. The first determiner of meaning is the One Who inspired the text to begin with: Yahweh. His Spirit breathed the truth, the revelation, to the author. Be that Moses, Isaiah, Peter, John, or any of the others. The second determiner of meaning is the writer themselves. Since they are putting God’s words, His revelation, into their own words, they also determine the meaning of what they write.
This is what we call authorial intent, or the intention of an author. Communication is only successful is the author’s message is understood by the recipient.
I won’t turn this into a hermeneutics class, but one of the best ways we can understand principles of interpretation is to see how the Apostles interpreted the Tanakh. We do this by studying their letters, and seeing how they quoted it. Our interpretation must be guided by the text, not by what we want to make it say.

Summary

In closing:
We looked at three aspects of Scripture.
Inspiration - God breathed out the inspiration of Scripture, that which He wanted to reveal, to human authors.
Inerrancy - Those human authors took that divine revelation and wrote it in their words and vernacular, to convey Biblical truth to their audience.
Interpretation - We must let the original intent of the words speak to us, and not try to redefine the words or force a new and unintended meaning onto them.
So what can you do with this?
First, understand that Scripture isn’t just words on a page. It’s not just the words of some guy that’s been dead for thousands of years. Though neither are they the words of a modern American. Rather, they are the words that themselves contain the revelation of Yahweh Elohim, Creator of all that exists.
Second, understand that we grow and mature by consuming the Scriptures. We may not be literally eating them like Ezekiel was told to eat the scroll; but we do consume the Word.
1 Peter 2:1-3:
New American Standard Bible, 1995 Edition: Paragraph Version (Chapter 2)
1 Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, 2 like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, 3 if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.
We are to long for the pure milk of the word, so that we can grow, so we can mature. This maturity comes by digesting the word, and wisdom contained therein. It will also increase our faith. Romans 10:17:

17So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Messiah.

Studying the word is part of our acts of worship. It helps conform us from who we are, into Who He is. When you start a new job, you train for it. You work hard to do your best at it; you read the training materials. That’s one way of looking at Scripture, that it is our training manual in being a Kingdom worker. But it isn’t just that, it is more than that. Hebrews 4:12 says the word of God is living and active. Matthew 4:4, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, says that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word from mouth of the Lord. We need only read Psalm 119 to grasp just how our attitude towards the Scriptures should be. Here’s a few verses to close us out with:
Holy Scriptures: Tree of Life Version (Psalm 119)
9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to Your word.

11I have treasured Your word in my heart,

so I might not sin against You.

16I will delight in Your decrees.

I will never forget Your word.

23Though princes sit and talk against me,

Your servant meditates on Your decrees.

24For Your testimonies are my delight—

they are also my counselors.

27Help me discern the way of Your precepts,

so I may meditate on Your wonders.

34Give me understanding,

that I may keep Your Torah

and observe it with all my heart.

38Fulfill Your word to Your servant,

which leads to reverence for You.

50My comfort in my affliction is this:

Your word has kept me alive.

59I have considered my ways

and turned my feet back

to Your testimonies.

66Teach me good sense and knowledge,

for I trusted in Your mitzvot.

71It is good for me that I was afflicted,

so that I may learn Your decrees.

73Your hands have made me

and formed me.

Give me understanding

that I may learn Your mitzvot.

88Revive me with Your lovingkindness,

so I may keep Your mouth’s testimony.

89Forever, ADONAI,

Your word stands firm in the heavens.

90Your faithfulness endures

from generation to generation.

You established the earth, and it stands.

97O how I love Your Torah!

It is my meditation all day.

98Your mitzvot make me wiser

than my enemies

—for they are mine forever.

105Your word is a lamp to my feet

and a light to my path.

116Sustain me according to Your word,

so I may live, and let me not be ashamed

of my hope.

128Therefore I esteem all Your precepts

as right in every way

—every false way I hate.

133Direct my footsteps in Your word,

and let no iniquity get mastery over me.

142Your justice is righteousness forever,

and Your Torah is truth.

148My eyes are up before every night watch,

as I meditate on Your word.

149Hear my voice with Your lovingkindness.

Revive me, ADONAI, with Your judgments.

160Truth is the essence of Your word,

and all Your righteous rulings are eternal.

164Seven times a day I praise You,

because of Your righteous judgments.

175Let my soul live and praise You,

and may Your rulings help me.

These are just a handful of the 176 verses of Psalm 119. It may be tempting to read “Torah” or “law”, commandment, statute, judgment, etc. as only a reference to the Torah proper, or Genesis through Deuteronomy. I think that is not the point. Rather, I think we should read Psalm 119 with a mind set on the entire word of God, and let us have the heart an attitude displayed by the Psalmist here towards all of Scripture.
Amein?
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