Embark on a thought-provoking exploration of the Old Testament's most intricate laws with Dr. Mark Braun and Pastor Bob Fleischmann. Why do some ancient mandates resonate in today's Christian practices, while others seem relegated to history? Our engaging discussion peels back layers of scripture, shedding light on the nuances of dietary codes and Sabbath rituals, and their implications for contemporary faith. With Dr. Braun's dual expertise as pastor and professor, we navigate the delicate balance between historical context and modern application, a journey sure to enrich your understanding of these timeless texts.
Understanding the Old Testament is crucial to grasping the broader narrative of Christianity, and in our conversation, we delve into its indispensable role. We confront the challenges that culturally specific laws present, sharing insights on how to approach Deuteronomy's directives and the significance of a savior in this mosaic of ancient teachings. Enhance your biblical literacy and prepare for richer theological dialogues, as we also address the parallels between secular moral codes and the Bible's commandments, emphasizing the universal threads woven throughout the fabric of moral law.
Embark on a thought-provoking exploration of the Old Testament's most intricate laws with Dr. Mark Braun and Pastor Bob Fleischmann. Why do some ancient mandates resonate in today's Christian practices, while others seem relegated to history? Our engaging discussion peels back layers of scripture, shedding light on the nuances of dietary codes and Sabbath rituals, and their implications for contemporary faith. With Dr. Braun's dual expertise as pastor and professor, we navigate the delicate balance between historical context and modern application, a journey sure to enrich your understanding of these timeless texts.
Understanding the Old Testament is crucial to grasping the broader narrative of Christianity, and in our conversation, we delve into its indispensable role. We confront the challenges that culturally specific laws present, sharing insights on how to approach Deuteronomy's directives and the significance of a savior in this mosaic of ancient teachings. Enhance your biblical literacy and prepare for richer theological dialogues, as we also address the parallels between secular moral codes and the Bible's commandments, emphasizing the universal threads woven throughout the fabric of moral law.
On today's episode.
Dr. Mark Braun:Even a lot of active Christians have a completely flat understanding of the historical unfolding of the Bible. We raise them on proof passages, you pull them out from all different places, you stick them together and when you try to put them back in their context, that's not something they're even typically used to doing.
Paul Snamiska:Welcome to the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
Christa Potratz:Hi and welcome back. I'm Christa Potratz and I'm here today with pastor Bob Fleischmann, and we also have a special guest with us today, pastor Dr. Braun, and I am really excited to introduce our guest on the podcast today because he was one of my professors when I was at Wisconsin Lutheran College. So nice to have you on the podcast here today.
Dr. Mark Braun:Thank you, good to be here.
Christa Potratz:Well we have, I think, a fun and exciting topic. We're gonna be talking about some obscure Old Testament laws. But before we kind of get into that topic for today, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Dr. Mark Braun:I was a pastor for nine years, partly in Western Michigan, partly in Western Wisconsin, and then I was at the college for 34 years at Wisconsin Lutheran College. I got to see it grow from a it felt like a big family camping trip, you know 200 students to still a small college by most measures but couldn't topple the size, at least during my years there. And I still have an interest in Old Testament and in American religious history Retired now but still have chances to write and do podcasts and things like that.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, no, we're happy to have you on today. I do remember having you when I was at Wisconsin Lutheran College, and I mean, despite the B I still remember on my paper about Abraham, I just enjoyed having you so much.
Bob Fleischmann:This is gonna be payback time, Mark.
Dr. Mark Braun:No, I get the last laugh because students will say you gave me a B and I say, no, you earned a B, I do.
Christa Potratz:I am pretty sure, knowing my writing capability, I'm pretty sure I did earn that B. But no, it was always a joy to have you in class, so yeah, just to remember that.
Dr. Mark Braun:So when you remembered Abraham, this was an Old Testament class.
Christa Potratz:Yes, yes yes, so it was the book of Genesis that I had you for Okay yeah, and so yes, today we are going to be talking about some obscure Old Testament laws. Is there anything you'd like to kind of start with today when we talk about this topic?
Dr. Mark Braun:Well, you cued me in a little bit that we want to touch the topic of how do we know whether some of these laws are true for us or not, and that's some.
Dr. Mark Braun:It's not a difficult subject, but you have to understand the right interpretational key. And this has been a challenge for Jewish people because they have to think well, what do we do with these? It's been a challenge especially for American Christianity, because some of what I used to call the homemade religions often were founded by a person or persons who were not deeply trained in theology yet. They believed that they were intense students of the Bible and they'd say I found where everything went wrong. For example, we don't keep the Sabbath day on Saturday anymore, and that became their thing. But they often didn't say well, now what are we going to do with all the rest of these laws that people also don't keep anymore? So it's a relevant topic for Old Testament study. And I think it's a relevant topic when people also who are pro-life sympathizers will quote Old Testament passages and not think about that context, and often their opposition is better trained or better to say, better prepared than they are. So we should talk about this.
Christa Potratz:So when we talk about obscure Old Testament laws, can you give us a few that maybe are something that are either talked about a lot or maybe might surprise people?
Dr. Mark Braun:Well, let me give you a scenario instead. I've been thinking about this, bob, and I would have had this experience probably more than you, because when we were being confirmed, there was just one Bible, the King James Bible, and so our pastor could quote that to us. Then he would say don't you change a syllable in this Bible, don't throw any of it out, don't add anything to it. And usually they could do that more or less with the wrath of God that we would listen. But if you were curious, or if you felt you ought to, you might say well, I'm a Christian, I should start reading, I should try to read the whole Bible. And somewhere in the second half of Exodus, you start encountering these laws and you think about your pastor because you realize, well, we don't do that anymore. We had pulled pork for supper last night. You can't have that. We have church on Sunday or on Monday night. That's wrong.
Dr. Mark Braun:So how do we know what? How to do them or not to do them? And so, relative to people who are supporting pro-life movements, they will quote the passage, let's say, from Leviticus. There are two of them in Leviticus that say a man should not lie with another man the way he lies with a woman is an abomination, and well-informed opponents will say yeah, but you went to Red Lobster, didn't you? And you had seafood. How could you do that? Or they'll have other ones that they grab, and so is it just a matter of circumstance that people choose some, or is there a dividing line? How do we know? And often the defender of the biblical passages about that ends up being in bigger difficulty than the other person.
Christa Potratz:Why do you think people do these type of I mean arguments with the Bible?
Dr. Mark Braun:Well, I think some of them are being entirely fairly questioning about why it is that way. The fact that we grew up with the King James Bible makes it looks like all of Christianity is a very ancient subject. Now, with contemporary translations, that's taken away. But it's confusing because it's such a different culture that those passages were written for. Israel is in a very different situation and it does appear to be arbitrary when we say, well, this one counts, but that one doesn't. And yet if you have the interpretational key, I would say it's. I'm not saying it's going to be simple, but it's a lot less difficult.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, and oftentimes when we're doing pro-life stuff, when I'm speaking or something, even other pro-life people, they're paralyzed by what they see as almost, they almost refer to as an inconsistency in the Bible. Like I was talking to my sister about this and she threw back you know this passage. Or I was talking to my neighbor and they and to the point where they become paralyzed, they don't want to even talk about it. And, you're right, they don't have the interpretation key. So and everybody likes to, well, I always call well, we used to call it in the seminary bumper sticker theology. You know they almost come up with like a slogan.
Bob Fleischmann:You know, like my favorite story is when I was speaking down in downtown Milwaukee for a television show on capital punishment and this lady came after me afterwards and I said well, what's your problem? I can't see how you could say God would permit capital punishment. Well, god, god may permit capital punishment. I'm not sure we can do it right, but he may permit it. And I said you know, we get the Genesis 9.6 and stuff like that and she goes well, that's a tribal God you know, yeah.
Bob Fleischmann:And so you get, you know, when that's all that higher critical stuff, and I said, well, what is the true God? And she goes well, god is love. I go nonsense, that's a tribal God, you know, because they also are not equipped, because if they think you're picking and choosing and ignoring other parts, they also will do that. And this is where you know we're talking about the interpretation key brings it together.
Dr. Mark Braun:Yeah. So, as I think I mentioned off air, this is an issue with Jewish people had to deal with too, because in one degree or another they have a regard for the Old Testament. So there were the rabbinical types of Jesus' time and thereafter collected additional sayings to help explain the passages that were there. And the example I'd always use in class is the Sabbath law, which is essentially a simple law Don't work on the Sabbath. But in time people said well, what's work? How far can you walk? How much can you lift? If you get sick, can you give some medicine to that? And there's hundreds of pages in what is called the Mishnah or interpretations on this. And so really the Orthodox Jews, the Hasidic Jews, try to follow not only all the laws in the Hebrew Bible but all these additional ones besides. Many of them will say this is a wonderful, liberating thing. But from my point of view I can't see that at all. And then there are some who just take a more generalizing principle and say well, we know God doesn't care about that anymore. But if you say well, how do you decide that? When is that anymore? They're very different in their opinions. And then Reformed Jews said none of it has any authority, except the parts that we find agreeing with moral law, which sounds a bit like the passage of Paul that the Gentiles, though they do not have the law, do the things contained in the law. And so there's a wide range there. You'll hear some Jews say call. Others so-called Jews will say this.
Dr. Mark Braun:Now, typically Protestants have learned if there's a bumper sticker for this, there are moral, civil and ceremonial laws in the Old Testament. And then the teacher says do you have any questions? And the teacher is desperately hoping that we don't, because he has hardly ever looked at them. He doesn't want to talk about them. Some of them are embarrassing, but I remember well you wouldn't have done this in Genesis, but I do remember having students look at this some more. What kind of a society would this have created?
Dr. Mark Braun:And the law, all laws, work to in one way give you a guide or a rule for life, but in another they will make you feel guilty and say I need help, I need a savior. And the laws, as you see, are not particularly organized as moral, civil and ceremonial. And then you take a commandment, like the third commandment which we learned all in catechism is a moral law. Remember the Sabbath day. And yet we don't keep the Sabbath day anymore in the New Testament, and there's a reason for that, because Paul said since Christ has come, one person can regard one day as special, another day can person can regard every day alike. Let each person be convinced in his own mind.
Dr. Mark Braun:Old Testament believers never had that freedom, and so for me an even simpler guideline is if there's a law in the Old Testament, body, check to see whether it is repeated in some form in the New Testament after the death of Christ, and if it is repeated, then it's part of God's unchanging will for us. If it's not repeated, then it was meant only temporarily for Israelites. So a passage that talks about dietary laws the New Testament not only says there are no dietary laws, it says the opposite You're free to eat whatever you would like. If it comes to the Sabbath day, paul said another person regards every day equal. Either day, the content of a man should not lie with a man like he does with a woman is repeated and amplified in Romans 1, where it even says the man left the natural use of the women and were in flame for each other. So then it's repeated after the death of Christ. Therefore, the Old Testament law is no longer in effect.
Christa Potratz:So when we talk about that, is that part of this interpretation key that you and Bob were kind of talking about.
Dr. Mark Braun:I believe that's absolutely the interpretation key, and sometimes when we read the Old Testament, we have to realize that this was written to an Old Testament audience.
Dr. Mark Braun:So when, for example, you're looking at a text and it talks about keeping the Sabbath, we know that that part of it doesn't apply to us. But the part that talks about gladly hearing and learning God's word does apply to us, and that's not limited to any one particular day. But I think it's easy for people to make dramatic cases out of these and simplify it and then get again. Like you say well, you must never go to Red Lobster because they have their shrimps fest. So therefore, why do you do this and not do that? And they may have a sincere question, but they may be also trying to put you into a box that you feel you can't answer. But we hear conservative preachers also, often the kind that wave a floppy Bible in the sky and then they'll say every word of this book and yet they'll turn around and have a dinner afterwards where you couldn't eat with eight in the Old Testament. So I sympathize with people who are confused.
Bob Fleischmann:Now, how do you handle Mark, the temptation that some people would have and say well, why do we even bother with the Old Testament? Why don't we just use the New Testament? That way it clears it all up.
Dr. Mark Braun:Well, there is that temptation and even before I was a pastor I mean before I was a professor and I was a pastor I did try to get people more in the Old Testament and there were nights when I made the long walk across the street from the church to the parish. And it's thinking why am I doing this? I remember at the time I was working on Deuteronomy and I had a group of mostly kindly older ladies in the class and I said you know, I just don't know what to write about this verse. I would like you to read this on your own and then decide what you think I should say. And the law said if two men are fighting and the wife of one man grabs the other man by his private parts, you ought to cut her hand off. And these women look at it. Then they look at each other, then they clean their glasses, then they start poking each other and laughing. And you think why did I even get them into this? And yet, in context it can have a broader application because, as we know, injuring someone like that in a momentary fit of anger can have a permanent effect on him and his possibility to have his descendants there. So even a lot of the Old Testament laws that we don't follow anymore are kind of culture-specific for that time and would work there.
Dr. Mark Braun:And yet the Old Testament also gives us many indicators about what Christ is going to be like. And when people came to Jesus and said I'm not sure if you're the one or not, he pointed them back to the scriptures. What do the scriptures say? That I will do so. If you don't use the Old Testament at all, you don't really have an explanation for why we need to have a savior. Why is the world the way it is? And people can, of course, come to trust in Jesus without knowing much about it, but it really limits what they're going to understand. There are cultural issues too. The stories are so well, at least by name, so a lot of stories are still kind of well known Adam and Eve, cain and Abel, those kinds of things. You're culturally at a disadvantage if you don't know some of them. But that's really not why I teach. It's to improve their cultural understanding, but to see that this is really a long, detailed plan that has worked out when Christ comes.
Christa Potratz:When you mention these things, I think, yeah, that sounds really great. But how do you talk to somebody, maybe, who doesn't have that theological background when they start bringing up some of these things?
Dr. Mark Braun:Well, if you have some with that kind of background, I would say don't take them in the Old Testament at all if they don't want to go there. The passage in Romans 1, the passage in 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1 are very strong passages and the Old Testament is four times as long as the New Testament. But people are probably four times as familiar with the New Testament than they are with the Old Testament. Many will not go in there and sometimes it's because somebody quoted the Leviticus passage to them that they're going to come back and try to defend it. Or they'll say I've looked at all the references to Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament.
Dr. Mark Braun:Most cases the sin of Sodom is not homosexuality, it's failure to care about the poor and about inhospitality. Well, I would say that threatening homosexual rape is a huge example of bad hospitality. But if they aren't going to go there, I would say to students either don't go there or be prepared if you are, because you will find that they will come back at you with answers and if you can't give some kind of reasonable explanation for them, it's worse than if you'd never have done it.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, Now I remember too, just when we were talking about you coming on the podcast and doing this topic, you had said too that sometimes it is people like non-Christians that seem to know more about these obscure laws than the Christian community.
Dr. Mark Braun:Yeah Well, I think that's a problem in a lot of areas. It will happen every so often that some devout Christian will say something or write something to the newspaper. There still are newspapers, I guess, that would say God would never say this or that's not in the Bible. And then someone who's not a Christian but far better familiar with this will say well, yeah, it says this and this and this. That should be humiliating to the Christian. To not know the issue and yet to pick a fight is not a smart thing to do. And so it's a wonderful advertisement for being a theology minor or going to Bible classes or doing your reading.
Dr. Mark Braun:And when we talk about the Old Testament, it's also helpful to learn more about the culture outside the Bible at that time. We have over a thousand documents from the ancient world that are not from the Bible, that have all the same kinds of qualities. There are poetry, there are laws, there are historical narratives about people, and we find that the Bible, I find that the Bible is not quite as strange as one would think when you look at the language those laws will use, because some of them are quite similar, which, when you think about it, shouldn't surprise us, because the New Testament says that even people without the law written in their heart do by nature the things contained in the law. So other cultures will come to some of the same laws about what things are wrong. Now there's usually some allowance for some cultural uniqueness some places.
Dr. Mark Braun:But when I taught world religions, students would recognize that all the law codes if the religions had law codes had very similar properties to both the Old Testament and New Testament. There's none that's saying blessed are those who lie. It just doesn't say that Usually people are trying to justify why in this case they felt they had to lie, but they're not saying that the prospect is wrong. So I read, read, read is good advice.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, and sometimes you encounter people who will. I remember I had a lady in the congregation who I just couldn't talk into coming to Bible class ever. They were faithful. Every Sunday Her husband would come to Bible class but she wouldn't because her argument always was I want to keep my faith simple. When you start going into Old Testament, when you start talking about some of that stuff, it does require more understanding, more kind of cultural placement of where you are at that time, and a lot of them don't want to do that. Well, one of the things that we do at CLRs we try to talk about taking people where they're at Rather than assuming everyone's going to be as theologically built up as I am. That applies culturally and historically as well.
Bob Fleischmann:I mean there are things when you and I read something in the Bible, we're immediately reading it through the lens of my family, my neighborhood, my period in history and so forth. But the reality is you start changing that and I always remember it was a few years ago. The Methodists were having their big conference in Milwaukee and they were pushing, I think, gay pastors permitting gay pastors, and the pastor from one of the African nations got up and said you know, we don't need Western culture pushing on their notions of what this should be. In other words, what they were talking about that seems very accepting today, nowadays, is this idea that you have homosexual pastors and so forth in many churches. They were saying in our culture, even in the 21st century, in our culture, that just doesn't go, that doesn't fly. Now you throw history in it, you've got a whole different thing.
Dr. Mark Braun:Well, and just to that example, I think when I went along with the Mission Board to Africa, to a man, the missionaries that are, said to me it is easier to teach the Old Testament here than in the States, because so much of the life is already like this tribal warfare and village life and people indenturing themselves, all these things were. We end up spending the first 15 minutes of the sermon explaining the circumstances, and there they knew that already and so in a certain sense they're in that timeframe more than we are. Even a lot of active Christians have a completely flat understanding of the historical unfolding of the Bible. We raise them on proof passages, you pull them out from all different places, you stick them together and when you try to put them back in their context, that's not something they're even typically used to doing. I think that's one of the things that makes Buddhism easier is because they don't really have historical scriptures. They have a lot of sayings and aphorisms, I guess you'd call them, but they don't begin to learn the history of Siddhartha Gautama the way we learn the history of Jesus or Moses. And I've said to students it's kind of unusual that we go to church every week and we hear every week a message based on a text that's at least 2000 years old, maybe three, maybe four. That's very unusual when you think about that, and yet that's just second nature for us.
Dr. Mark Braun:Again, I'm not saying this is easy to take people back there. I don't really know what percentage of any congregation is in a position to do that. I can think of a couple of women it's usually the women, I must say who come to Bible class and they were there always and they ask good questions. And then they brought their husbands along and he was just looking at his watch the whole way through, hoping I'd never ask him a question or ask him to read. Now maybe he still decided I'll get more out of this being here than if I were watching television. But in other cases they did it out of loyalty, but maybe they never. It was difficult for them to do. Is 10% of the congregation going to do this kind of Bible study? I don't know. I think most people go to Bible study and talk about books they already know.
Christa Potratz:So then, what is maybe our benefit then from knowing some of these Old Testament laws?
Dr. Mark Braun:The primary one is that it shows us how God is putting together a plan to fulfill in Christ, and it's almost like a child's I don't really call it a pictograph, where they put different pieces on it and as you go along it gets more detailed, it gets fuller as you go along and it's clear that New Testament people were using that as a picture of who the Christ is going to be.
Dr. Mark Braun:Besides that, there is a great sense of the freedom that we enjoy now that those Old Testament laws are no longer in effect. Paul says these things were a shadow of the things that were to come, but the reality is in Christ. So if someone walked into my class or stood at the doorway of my classroom as an imperfect illustration, but they're in an angle that where I was, I could see the outline of the person, but not who it actually was I could draw some conclusions about the person, but once the person steps in the room I'm not going to go back to the shadow, so I'm not going to go back to those laws. There are also some very interesting stories too. I mean, whereas in Catechism you often get this boiled down into big words that end in T-I-O-N, in the Old Testament, you get life illustrations of this, and that's helpful that way.
Bob Fleischmann:in many ways people haven't changed that much.
Dr. Mark Braun:Oh no.
Bob Fleischmann:I mean they're still David looking at Bathsheba. It's still the sons of Eli. There's a competitiveness. I mean you get a lot of the things that you have today. It's just made up with different pieces.
Dr. Mark Braun:Yeah, and sometimes what it takes is to study the stories more carefully and then you catch on to what they're trying to do, what their interest is and what they're trying to prevent. To use a story from Genesis, there's always a story about Onan, the second son of Judah. There are three boys and, as things worked out, according to their laws of inheritance, the oldest son would get half of Judah's stuff and the other two a quarter each, so the oldest one dies. So now he's got two sons. So that means that Onan, as the oldest, is supposed to inherit two thirds, but the culture required him to try to have a child by his sister-in-law, who would be the legal heir of the dead brother. Now, of course, this is when people poke each other to Bible class like, oh my goodness, and I say how many of you would like to sleep with your brother-in-law? But yet Onan wants to appear that he's doing his best to try. So he goes into the tent with her, but then he makes sure that the sexual act is interrupted, that he couldn't have a child.
Dr. Mark Braun:We often use that passage to make some absolute rule about birth control or masturbation, although not so much in our churches and some others. That was not his motivation. When you understand his motivation, it does make some sense why he wanted to do that. Now it was wrong because he was deceiving people. But I mean, I'm in judges now and if you don't study judges in some detail, it looks like it's just one horrific activity after the next. You get to see what they're doing in that culture and there's really some fascinating stuff in there, but not many people want to take it on.
Bob Fleischmann:You know earlier, Mark, you had mentioned about, what you're reading is 2,000 years old and greater than that. More than that, About 10 years ago, Mark and I were doing a little bit of a dog and pony show where we were traveling around talking about church and state issues. Remember that.
Dr. Mark Braun:Yeah.
Bob Fleischmann:Yeah, what I made in my presentation was that I sat down one day to read the Federalist Papers. Federalist Papers are about 250 years old roughly. The Federalist Papers were designed to convince the American public of a Federalist's form of governing. That's what it really was all about. Sit down and read it 250 years old, it's almost like reading the foreign language.
Bob Fleischmann:I mean, they used a lot of ways of talking that's very different than us. Well, now multiply it times 10. You've got different ways. One of the questions I've always wrestled with is Old Testament cliches. We have cliches. We have ways that we got so upset you just flew off the handle. But okay, you try to explain that to a foreigner.
Bob Fleischmann:My mother is from the Netherlands and she tells me stories about when she learned the English language and how there's a lot of it that just didn't make sense. Well, every language and every culture has their way of saying things. I sometimes wondered, too, if we've missed out on some of the richness of the ancient culture and that there were ways of talking about things. There was a way that they colored their phrases the way they emphasized it. You'll see efforts trying to bring that out, like the chosen television series. They're trying to bring out some of that, the way that they talked back then, while still keeping it contemporary enough so that you can identify with it Sure, yeah Well, my wife and I are teaching English as a second language.
Dr. Mark Braun:We have a portion of the time every week to say just explain what idioms are and then say, if you ever knew idioms this week, they always have ones. They have to ask about One man who keeps track of politics. He says what does this woke?
Paul Snamiska:mean.
Dr. Mark Braun:Because that's the wrong way to say it, isn't it? You don't say that you're woke, you say you woke up and we said well, we're still working on what people mean with woke also, and I think every translator and every student of the Old Testament has to admit that there are some parts of this we're never going to recapture. There was, we say that there was an originally intended meaning of every part of the Bible, but some of it may be beyond our recovery. What exactly did those women and Corinth intend to communicate when they went with their head uncovered? I've read some really authoritative sounding arguments that it's this or it's that. I can't tell.
Christa Potratz:Some of the laws and everything I was reading in Leviticus, and some even on sex and marriage and not sleeping with certain people and I think, oh yeah, that sounds pretty good. And not sleeping with animals and things like that too.
Dr. Mark Braun:You would have hoped they wouldn't have had to say that, yeah right.
Dr. Mark Braun:But then again they were now moving into a culture where sympathetic magic, as an effort to try to create things to happen on earth, was very common in Bale worship, and you find this in cultures all over the world. So they believe the Bale worship. People believed that there was a male-female god, goddess in the sky, and when they were getting along then the rain fell and the crops grew and they would even talk about it as Bale's sperm and pregneating the land. But then the Bale worshiper said what am I going to do about this? How do I influence them? And so this was a kind of a romantic slash, pornographic way to encourage them to do this. And so homosexuality, bestiality, group sex in really urgent cases, offering a child as a sacrifice you think of the prophets of Bale who were all cutting themselves when Elijah was there. That's another interpretational key, in a way.
Dr. Mark Braun:When you realize, I always used to think, well, why was Bale worship such a big thing? And then I taught Sunday school one year and then Sunday school teachers manual said Bale worship was worship of the sun god. That is a way over-baptized explanation for what that was. You felt that you could control the uncontrollable forces of nature. That's what made it so very popular. So I think that's another thing to keep in mind when you read some of these things that they were following a cultural story that was in competition with the story they got from their prophets of the Lord. And so when Elijah looked at Ahab who had married a Bale priestess' daughter and he says it's not going to rain till I say it's going to rain, the Lord says, and I bet business just went up unbelievably at the Bale. And the thing was the Bale worship. You thought you could control nature and therefore control your gross national product. It counted as religion and you could do all kinds of sexual things you couldn't do at home. That was a powerful combination.
Bob Fleischmann:And the children of Israel were vulnerable to it.
Dr. Mark Braun:One person of the dissertation said 90% of the Israelites followed the Baals 90% of the time. And much like with African tribal religion today, you don't have to leave one to join the other. You're trying them both as though what's going to work.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, no, I mean just some of those things. It does sound very foreign, but you're right, I mean once you kind of learn the context of it, and it's not Veggie Tales, no you know it's more true than that. It is. It is so, as we kind of round out the conversation a little bit here, what are maybe just some takeaways people can have from these things in the Old Testament that maybe are difficult to understand. I'll go back to my most basic key.
Dr. Mark Braun:If a law in the Old Testament, if the content of it is repeated in the New Testament, then it is God's will for all people. If it's not repeated, then it was only temporary and only for Israel, and when Christ came those laws are no longer in effect. That's your most basic key to use. Beyond that, I think learning about the ancient world more aside of the Bible gives us a context for what some of those things are that were said. And third, I would say, don't go over your head.
Dr. Mark Braun:If the familiar parts of the Bible are the only ones that speak to you, then that's okay, because the Bible is known so much a book as it is a whole library. I can get through some arithmetic books in the library, but most of it I can't. The mathematics, the plane geometry I was pretty bad at that, but I have enough to function and they'll have enough to function even with even only portions of the New Testament. So the New Testament is more challenging than others. Venture out of what you know only when you have a sense that going farther will be of help to you, Dr Darrell.
Bob Fleischmann:Bock, when you've got people who are wrestling with, how do I read the Bible in general and relatively new to it? Do you have a recommendation on a Bible translation, Dr?
Dr. Mark Braun:John L. Well, you either choose something which is more literary or something which is more colloquial. So I think the Living Bible is a little too colloquial and I think some of the higher translations are too distant from us, I have to say. For as brilliant a man as he is, john Brug has a remarkably down-to-earth way of communicating His evangelical harvest version of the Bible, which is not in every store but is easily available, speaks very much to the average person and to their, let's say, way of looking at things. Dr John L, it's not common for someone with that level of intelligence to be understood by hardly anybody, and I imagine there are contexts in which he can speak in that language. But there are many others where he's down-to-earth and I'm sitting in church saying I really like that translation. I'll page to the back, used by permission of the EHB, and I'm thinking, oh, this deserves to have a life, dr.
Bob Fleischmann:John L. Yeah, no, I agree. A lot of times when people are really new just haven't started it, I'll talk to them about the message which is Peterson's, eugene Peterson's Bible, and I've given that as a gift, even to some people, to help get into it. But I always remember when we were in the SEM, when you're trying to or college and you're trying to meet a deadline, what was it? The standard. There's a standard Bible. It was like almost a word for word.
Dr. Mark Braun:New American standard New.
Bob Fleischmann:American standard. Yeah, it was like the Cheaters Bible. I got to get through a translation here I don't have time but those are so rigid that sometimes they don't offer any clarity.
Dr. Mark Braun:Dr John L. There are people who do that inner linear version of studying and for some of them it really helps to look at what that word originally meant. But, as you know, individual words can change a great deal of meaning. Also, and you want to teach English, I would put the word through, the word tough and the word though on the board. They're all spelled the same way. At the end they have completely different meanings and pronunciations. And I'll say English is a difficult language, isn't it? Compared to some? And there are some words in the Bible we just don't know what exactly they meant.
Dr. Mark Braun:We don't have enough background to know Even, let's say, kind of vulgar or scatological language. There's a pretty awful part of judges where one of the mothers of a general is waiting for her son to come back from battle. She doesn't know he's had his head cut off and she says well, but you know it takes time. Two girls for every boy, and of course what she's alluding to is the spoils of victory to rape the women. But she didn't say two girls for every boy. The Hebrew literally says two wombs for every man. Now does that mean the physical apparatus to have a baby, or is it a highly vulgar way to think of females. We just don't know enough for sure what she was saying. It sure doesn't any sympathy had for her, though it's just wiped off the slate once you hear that she said that.
Christa Potratz:I mean, apart from the Bible translations too, which is a really good point. But if you're reading something and you just don't really get it or understand, what is your advice?
Dr. Mark Braun:I don't know, however, survived without a study Bible, a Bible that has notes on the bottom that explain it. They are so authoritative and reliable in many cases that I had to convince students they were not inspired. Now, surprisingly, you can get a flavor of different denominations by their study Bibles, because both the ELCA and the Missouri Senate published a study Bible called the Lutheran Study Bible. They're by two different publishers but their notes are really different on some topics, some subjects, so I would recommend some more than others because of the background and the assumption of the whole church.
Christa Potratz:I mean thank you so much for coming on here today and talking to us about the Old Testament. I mean we really appreciate it. There's just a lot of clarity in what you have shared with us, so thank you.
Dr. Mark Braun:Yeah, some things don't look nearly as formidable if you know what's going on. That's right, yeah.
Christa Potratz:If any of our listeners have any questions, please reach out to us. You can reach out to us at lifechallengesus. Yeah, and we look forward to having you back next time. Thanks, bye.
Paul Snamiska:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends. We're sure you have questions on today's topic or other life issues. Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help. You can submit your questions, as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes, at lifechallengesus or email us at podcast at christianliferesourcescom. In addition to the podcasts, we include other valuable information at lifechallengesus, so be sure to check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit christianliferesourcescom. May God give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in Christ for every life challenge.