How to Interpret the Bible
Languages
The Bible is written by people using the language of their contemporaries: the Old Testament in Hebrew and to a small extent in Aramaic, the New Testament in Greek.
Hebrew and Aramaic are Semitic languages, one of a group of languages whose literary accomplishments go back at least 5000 years and that includes languages that no one speaks today (Akkadian, Phoenician, Moabite) and languages that are still spoken (Hebrew, Arabic).
Abraham may have spoken a form of Akkadian (the language of Ur) and Aramaic (the language of Haran). The Israelites adopted a form of the language of Canaan which has come to be known as Hebrew. Hebrew and Aramaic are very close in structure and vocabulary. The Aramaic portions of the Old Testament are Dan. 2:4b-7:28; Ezra 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26; Jer. 10:11.
New Testament Greek is quite different from Classical or Attic Greek. Everyday or Koine Greek was commonly used throughout the Roman Empire.
At the time of Jesus the Jews of Palestine spoke Aramaic and probably also Mishnaic Hebrew and Greek. Fewer would have used Latin, the language of the Romans.
The study of biblical languages for interpretation of the Bible is very important in helping the reader to inch closer to the original meaning. But most beginning students of biblical languages do not gain the competence to bridge the gap between the ancient text and the modern reader, because this requires both a competence in the language and in the world of the biblical text, as well as a willingness to step outside one's own cultural context. Fortunately, very good translations are available in English and most other languages. These translations should aid the reader in approximating the experience of reading the original text within a modern context, even when it is admitted that any translation is, to some degree, an interpretation. The human aspect of the Bible occasions the necessity of interpretation, implies a willingness to consider alternative ways of hearing the text, and demands the wisdom to assess competing interpretations.
Writing
As early as the 4th millennium B.C. people had developed elaborate systems of written communication in both Egypt and Mesopotamia. Writing was for official administrative purposes rather than private communication. Scribes were schooled from an early age for the purpose of copying, writing, and reading administrative, religious, and literary works. Often the profession was hereditary, passed on from father to son. The office of scribe was a privileged position, and much power belonged to the literary elite.
Literacy was on the rise, especially among the Hebrews. The use of the short alphabet (see below) furthered the spread of literacy in Canaan. The encouragement to reflect on the law of the Lord motivated many godly Hebrews to listen to and even to read the sacred text for themselves.
The ancients used various kinds of writing materials, often whatever was readily accessible, including broken pieces of pottery (ostraca). It was easy to use soft clay and imprint characters with a stylus or reed. The clay, when hardened in the sun or an oven, produced a lasting document of political, administrative, and business records. Archaeologists have retrieved many fragments of pots (sherds) with such writing marking ownership or contents of various items.
A more enduring record was left on rocks or stone tablets. By chiseling in a stone surface, the ancients produced records that have endured for millennia (e.g., Egyptian stelae, the Siloam inscription). Inscriptions on tombs (funerary inscriptions) provide such information as the person buried, his profession, and an occasional warning to grave robbers (who probably could not read!).
Similarly the engraving of metals (gold, silver), though less frequent, was effective. Less enduring were records left on wood coated with plaster or wax. Plaster could be smeared on any material and provided a ready medium for writing.
Tanned hides were also employed and were a common material on which to transcribe the sacred Scriptures of Israel. A refinement in leather production produced parchment, a thin, paperlike material that could be used and reused.
The use of common reeds growing at the edge of the Nile River in paper production made writing materials more accessible. A page was produced by layering sections of the pith of the reed horizontally and vertically, then pressing or beating the pith to make it strong. "Papyrus" designates such a page or collection of pages glued together into a scroll. A page would typically have two to four columns. A scroll resulted from connecting pages together and keeping them in proper order. The codex, a binding of pages into a book, developed around the time of Jesus and was popularized by Christian scribes (e.g., Codex Vaticanus). A palimpsest is a page of papyrus or parchment that was reused by a later scribe erasing the original contents and writing over it.
Scribes used whatever tools suited the writing materials: flint or hard metal for stone, a stylus for plaster and clay, and a fine brush and a pen for leather and papyrus. Black ink was made by mixing carbon with water.
Little of the vast written materials in Canaan, Egypt, and Mesopotamia has been found. Some materials were reused for other purposes, others were lost, and others perished in the poor conditions in which the materials were stored. The ancient inscriptional evidence that does survive is the best witness to the authenticity of the historical records in the Old Testament.
Alphabets
Assyrian tablet showing pre-alphabetic writing. (Schoyen Collection)
A generalized portrayal of the development of writing in the ancient Near East takes us from pictographs and ideograms to sounds, which in Phoenicia and Canaan came to be written as alphabetic signs. Pictographs were originally pictures representing persons, animals, or things and later would represent activities (verbs) and eventually sounds. For example, in Egyptian hieroglyphics many signs (pictures) represent either words (ideograms) or multiconsonantal sounds. Other signs serve to differentiate between words (determinatives) or to mark consonantal sounds. In Akkadian cuneiform, named for its wedge-shaped form of writing, some 6oo signs represent various syllabic sounds. Because of the complexity of both hieroglyphic and cuneiform writing, trained scribes were essential for the perpetuation of writing as well as reading.
A great advance came when a limited number of signs were used to create an alphabet. Two such systems developed in Canaan ca. 1500 B.C. The Ugaritic alphabet has 30 cuneiform signs, including several signs for vowels. Words were written from left to right. A shorter system, written from right to left in Phoenician/Hebrew script, has 22 signs, none for vowels, and extended beyond Canaan to Phoenicia and Moab.
A consonantal sign was originally a pictograph, but the sign came to designate the sound of the first letter. For example, the sign 4., signifying a bull (eleph) in Hebrew, was the designation for aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Similarly, the letter beth ("house;' 9) originally represented a house and later became the second letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The Greeks took over the Phoenician alphabet (aleph became alpha, beth became beta), changed the orientation of the letters (4, to "A'"), adapted it to include vowel signs, and changed the orientation of the writing (from left to right).
The Qeiyafa Ostracon, one of the oldest known examples of Hebrew writing, in Proto-Canaanite script. (Khirbet Qeiyafa excavations, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Drawing of the ostracon by Haggai Misgav. (Khirbet Qeiyafa excavations, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Much inscriptional evidence reveals the extensive use of paleo-Hebrew script in Canaan and beyond, but the Samaritan Pentateuch and some archaizing tendencies in the Dead Sea Scrolls are the only evidence of biblical texts written in paleo-Hebrew. By the 8th century the Hebrews adopted the script employed for Aramaic, the international language of diplomacy in the Persian Empire. Now the letters no longer suggested pictures but were squared off (e.g., aleph, x; beth, n). This script is still used in Modern Hebrew.
As Hebrew writing continued to develop, consonants were used to indicate vowels in order to clarify meaning. For example, the two-letter words ('sh) could represent 'esh ("fire"), 'ishsheh ("offering made by fire"), 'ish("man"), or 'isha ("woman"). The addition of a yodh (y) clarified this word as reading 'ish, and the addition of the letter he(h) after 'sh helped the reader to read 'ishsheh or 'isha. Such developments help in dating Old Testament texts.
FOR FURTHER READING
Driver, G. R. Semitic Writing from Pictograph to Alphabet. 3rd ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Gelb, I. J. A Study of Writing. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.
Millard, Alan R. "Writing." NIDOTTE 4:1286-95.
WILLEM A. VANGEMEREN