Wise words from respected Old Testament John Walton that I cannot agree more emphatically with, “We are not free to impose our own questions, our own culture, our own agendas, our own issues on the biblical text, and demand that it address our situation. It’s addressed to an ancient culture, in an ancient language, in an ancient time. And we need to make sure that we are entering that world instead of dragging the text as if it were talking to our word and in our terms. The message transcends the culture, but the form is culture bound. And so we have to recognise then that we are reading the text as outsiders… If we are going to get the full focus of God’s revelation to us and get the full force of its authority, we have to try to take our place in that audience, and try to hear as that audience would have heard it…”
Source: Outsiders: Reading the Bible Out of Context
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