Decoding the Bible: Layers of Meaning

🎙️ In this episode of the Navigating An Ancient Faith Podcast, we explore the many layers of meaning within Scripture. Using films like The Matrix and Fight Club as modern parallels, we discuss how stories—ancient or modern—can be read on multiple levels. 🎞️ We unpack five key ways to interpret the Bible: the literal and historical, theological and allegorical, ethical and moral, eschatological, and symbolic or mythic. ✨ Each layer reveals new depths, inviting us to see beyond the surface and discover the richness of God’s story. 📖 We close by encouraging listeners to apply these perspectives to familiar passages, like Jonah and the Whale, for a more transformative reading experience. 🌿

-----------------------------

Visit our website: Navigating An Ancient Faith

Sign up for our Newsletter

Email us at info@navigatinganancientfaith.com

Follow us on Instagram

Discuss on our Facebook Group

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

The Layers of Meaning

J.R.: [00:00:00] Well, I can say, unless you're getting it.

David: No, I think I've lost it. 

J.R.: I hate that 'cause stuff pops in your head. You know? 

David: It was like. I'm not gonna say it was profound, but it was a deeper thing too. And I'm like, maybe this is the way to say it. And I'm like, oh, that's good.

And then I lost it. So it's not very profound, 

J.R.: But no, that one was cool because I saw that when I was probably early high school, I don't know when it came out. The Matrix.

David: Mid to late nineties.

J.R.: Yeah. Okay. That would've put me outta high school. It seems like I was in high anyway.

David: Maybe even 2000. I'm trying to think. Yeah, it was right around that time.

J.R.: I was younger when I watched that, and it was cool because I went to see the movie and it was a cool sci-fi movie. You know, you're like, oh man, this is wild. Your mind's in the Matrix, but then there's a real world.

And it was several weeks after I saw the movie that, somebody was talking to me about it and he's like, yeah, man. Did you notice that Neo's name spelled backward is the one. Is ONE [00:01:00]instead of NEO. And I was like, oh, that's cool.

And so anyway, we started getting into all this, I guess what you would call it, symbolism. I wouldn't have called it that back then, but it was one of those things where I started having conversations with friends and I was like, oh yeah, I think that's what this movie's saying.

But I didn't catch it at the time. First time I saw it, I just took it at face value. Here's this cool sci-fi thriller with cool kung fu moves in it. But it was only later that I understood the symbolism. And now, you know, if me and you talk about it, we would be all about, there'd be Christian symbolism.

There'd be, 

David: Yeah. So you have Neo as maybe the Messiah figure, right? That's come in to save this world. And so we started out, I guess by saying that you go into the movie understanding this is science fiction. But then there's all these different ways you can interpret what's going on in the movie.

Yeah. So you can see it as purely a science fiction film that all these people are just what their food for the machine. Right. Right. Yeah. But then anyone who doesn't catch the symbolism that it's also a [00:02:00] allegory of maybe our world today. 

J.R.: Yeah. Our culture. Right. 

David: And of course, even as we get into AI and the internet, which, like you said, The Matrix predated all that really, right?

J.R.: Yeah.

David: But then you can see, okay, and we often say , are we just living in a matrix? Right. Are we living in this online world that's not reality? And so there's that layer. So in that way, you could see The Matrix as almost predictive of a future that was only Yeah. 10, 15, 20 years in the future.

J.R.: No, that's cool that you said that because the Matrix itself has become an allegory where all we have to say now is, golly, I feel like I'm in the Matrix. Yeah. I mean, obviously it came from that movie and to what we're getting at is that we were trying to think of an example of something that you view in layers, you know, that you can see through different lenses.

And The Matrix is a great example because now we actually use that as shorthand for, you know, I feel like I'm in this alternative universe living this alternative life. And yeah, that's what that movie did because of the [00:03:00] multiple layers about culture, about religion. Yeah, about, science fiction, all that stuff.

David: And a good movie does that. I was trying to think another one In the mid nineties or late nineties was Fight Club, you know that?

J.R.: Oh, yeah.

David: That was just kind of a fiction story. It wasn't even sci-fi, it was just fiction. Yeah. But that was the first movie I remember going to and seeing, and then everyone was talking about, and so you'd sit down and talk with friends and everyone was talking about what the different things meant.

Yeah. Right. In the beginning, I forget what Ed Norton's character's name was. It wasn't Tyler Durden. But, you know, there was this scene where his whole apartment is just Ikea furniture, right? <Right.> And even that just symbolized something. Yeah. The, the emptiness and the staleness of modern life, right?

J.R.: Yeah.

David: And then Tyler Durden is his alternative. Yeah. His alter ego. But that also symbolizes what the desire in each one of us to break out of the confines of this world, right?

J.R.: Yeah.

David: And so there's so many different layers of meaning to a good movie. 

J.R.: Yeah. And the [00:04:00] cool thing about that is that if you're a middle school boy, you can still go see The Matrix and it's an awesome movie.

David: Yeah.

J.R.: Or Jurassic Park. And it's just an awesome movie. Oh. You know, one movie that did this to me was Signs. In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine about the movie Signs, and he goes, this is the alien movie, Mel Gibson. Yeah. I don't know when that was. We were talking about it and he says, man, I hated that movie.

And I'm like, dude, that is like one of the greatest movies. And I started talking to him about how, it's a metaphor for losing your faith. And I mean, actually he literally loses his faith in the movie and then comes back to it. And the last scene he's back in that Catholic collar thing, you know, that says he's back to being a priest. But anyway, he was in middle school when that came out and he goes, no, I hate that movie because when I was in middle school I went expecting to see an awesome alien movie.

Yeah. And it wasn't about that. And I was like, yeah, no. If you think Signs is about aliens, it is about something completely different under the guise, under the thin veil of being an alien movie. So he was ticked off about it, and after we talked [00:05:00] about it, he is, yeah, I'll have to go back and rewatch it.

But that's the cool thing about these movies is that as a kid, you can go see it and it's just a cool, has cool scenes, it has dinosaurs, it has aliens, whatever. But, as an adult you enjoy the subtlety of it. You know, when my kids were younger, I loved taking 'em to Pixar movies, because there was some kind of nod to adult humor without being obviously <Yeah.> inappropriate. There were nod to adult things and you would just laugh thinking this is a kid's cartoon movie, but there's adult, inside jokes about it. And I'm like, this is great. So anyway, what we're getting in today is about viewing how to read the Bible.

We're continuing this series on different ways to understand and helpful ideas to kind of decode what the Bible's saying. And this episode we're gonna talk about layers of meaning and seeing it through different layers, not picking one particular layer and fixating on that and building your biblical worldview around that one lens.[00:06:00]

David: Yeah. So last episode we talked about understanding the genre and if you want to use our movie example, you might think, okay, you've gotta go into a movie or you don't have to, but it helps to understand is this a science fiction movie. Is this historical? Is this a historical fiction? And you and I have talked about that before where you go see a historical fiction, but it has a lot of references to actual events. And so you go, okay, Right. I don't wanna miss the historical references, even though it's a A fictional story. So it's understanding that. But then, today we're gonna talk about those layers of meaning, like what we've been talking about, that you can watch a movie and you can watch a movie from many different angles.

J.R.: Right.

David: You were talking about Signs and I was thinking about M. Night Shyamalan, who always, I think in that movie Signs, whenever there was a cross in the scene and there was frequently in fact, in his house, there was a shadow of a cross on a wall where he had taken it down.

J.R.: Yeah. Where it'd clearly been hanging for years and years. Yeah. But then he'd [00:07:00] taken it down. 

David: But every now and then a cross would appear on a scene and that was like a trigger that something was about to happen. 

J.R.: Oh, okay. Cool.

David: And he drops little hints like that, right? I remember in one of his other movies, the color purple always represented something.

J.R.: Oh yeah. That was the comic book. 

David: It was the comic book one. What was that?

J.R.: Unbreakable.

David: I didn't like that one as much, but I did read where the color purple represented something. In that movie. And he usually drops something like that in well, in his early movies. 

J.R.: Right. And a good movie. Sometimes the best movies, the credits are rolling at the end and you're like, I've gotta rewatch this. Whether it's a reveal movie like Sixth Sense where, okay, now I gotta go back with this new information that he's been dead the whole time. Now I gotta watch the whole movie again. So sometimes the layer sort of makes itself known and then you want to go back and start it over again. Well, in a lot of ways, what you and I talk about on this podcast is sort of opening up the idea of a layer and how to [00:08:00] interpret maybe your particular passage or a book of the Bible, like Judges we did on our Judges series.

David: Yeah.

J.R.: And once you do that through this new layer, it opens up a whole new world of understanding. It's like watching the movie again, knowing what the end is and saying, okay, now I'm gonna start looking for all these little subtleties. And then you find out confirmation that they're there. That the color purple really does mean something.

David: Yeah.

J.R.: That the cross and the scene really does mean something. <Yeah.> Well, a lot of these books of the Bible, they're the same way. 

David: Yeah, you can see this throughout the Bible as well. I guess to start it out, we'll start out the conversation. I think we tend to look at just you might say the historical factual layer, right?

And we've said this before, but if that's all you're looking for in a Bible story, then you're missing a lot of these subtle things. You're missing, well, the shadow of a cross, right? <Right.> You're missing what that color means. What that is alluding to. And so there's a lot of different ways you can read one passage of scripture.

And I guess the trap we fall into is sometimes it makes [00:09:00] people uncomfortable to say that this story means this. You and I were meeting, actually, we're sitting here, in our mother's house. Yeah. So we're both here on the weekend and it was another one of those weekends where we were meeting family.

We were all meeting here and you and I had just listened to a podcast, I think, and we started talking about the meaning of Jonah and the Whale.

J.R.: Yeah.

David: And I said something about if you see the whale as the leviathan that dragged Jonah to the underworld, and I remember someone else sitting at the table I remember the look they were giving me, they were just staring at me like, yeah, what story are you reading?

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: That's not what that means. 

J.R.: And, it was funny 'cause it was a little bit of skepticism, but also a little bit of it made sense. Things were kind of clicking, when you looked at it through that way. Yeah, you're right. I remember that.

And it was kind of neat seeing this person maybe the light bulb going off like thinking, man, that does make sense. And again, I like the fact that you brought up the thing about the cross in signs because you can go back now and, you know, I could be skeptical and it's like, ah, I [00:10:00] don't know if that's true or not, but when you go back and watch the movie, you're like, yeah, he's right.

And again, it's not coincidence. At that point you're saying, yeah, that was clearly done as a reference or a precursor to something else and it was sort of that same kind of feeling where, you know, when you know a story so well, but somebody adds a new layer to it. You look at it and think. You know what? I'll be daggum, I think he might be right. Because everything lines up and again, it's just probably not coincidence that this lines up that way. And so yeah, if you open up new layers, it really does open up. I don't know. It's like a cheat code to another level. You see it in a different way.

David: Yeah.

J.R.: And to go back what you said earlier, the mistake we make in reading the Bible is insisting that we read it all the same way. And to go back to the previous episode, well, first of all, you gotta have the genre right. You know, you can't read, yeah, Song of Solomon like you would read the historical account of the lineages in 

David: Kings or <Right.> anywhere in the Bible.

J.R.: Yeah, yeah. You know, and so you gotta read that a different way. And [00:11:00] that's sort of a given. I mean, I think that's not difficult to talk somebody into, but I think unconsciously that's what we do, it's like we just sit down and read it like we're reading a paperback novel and saying, okay, I'm just gonna try to absorb it that way.

And there's some advantage to a kind of a low resolution way of reading it. Like, lemme just get the gist of the story. I'm not gonna get bogged down in the details right now. Lemme just read through this entire book with this high level 10,000 foot view.

So there's an advantage to that. But yeah, so the last episode, we said it's about the genre, so you gotta get that figured out first. But today we're gonna talk about, once you have the genre figured out and you kind of get in that frame of mind, like you're sitting down and I'm watching a historical documentary, or I'm watching a rom-com, or, you know, once I get that in my mind, now I can unpack the layers of meaning and we can kind of go through it and maybe put on different glasses as we read this and pull something different out.

So how are we gonna go about doing that today as far as breaking these down? 

David: So a common way to break this down is that there's four [00:12:00] traditional ways of reading scripture. And we're gonna add a fifth one today, just because, 'cause I'm not gonna go strictly by those categories. 

J.R.: I was about to say, because we don't like staying on script.

David: Yeah. But there have been different ways that people have read scripture. So, you know, again, these are not our categories, although we're gonna , maybe tweak one or two and then throw another one in there. So we're gonna stick with that as a way, because that's been a legitimate way of reading scripture for the last 2000 years.

J.R.: Right.

David: Again, you go back to some of the early church fathers, and they're the ones who will say something like, well, Jonah represents the soul's descent, you know? And sometimes you read a church father talking about one of these stories and you go, man, where did he get that? Yeah. What's going on there, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, and he's more mystical than a modern preacher, you know? Yeah. A modern pastor. 

David: Yeah, that's right. So we know these were legitimate ways of reading scripture all throughout history. But I would say maybe since the enlightenment, we have tended to focus on this first [00:13:00] layer, which is the literal and historical meaning.

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: Right. And that's probably always a good place to start in the Bible. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: Is the literal and historical meaning. 

J.R.: There's a book that I'm reading and I won't get into it, but he used the term, we've gotten away from pre rational thinking. And I thought that's a cool way to say it, because since the enlightenment, we kind of have this rational way of laying out ideas.

And the ancients were pre rational. Not that they were irrational, but they were pre this formulaic way of thinking, A equals B equals C, you know, one leads to the other. Yeah. You know, kind of a scientific way of thinking, and we've talked about this in other episodes, we often say that the Bible is true, the same way we say gravity is true. But that's not exactly the same thing. Scientifically and objectively, yes, there's truth, but scripture's truth it's more personal and it actually invites it to participate. So it's a much more layered understanding of truth, but we tend to oversimplify [00:14:00]the idea.

David: Yeah. And we've defended the truthfulness of the Bible, and I think in our rational, modern age, that means that the things that the Bible is saying in this story have to be provable, right? Like gravity. True equals provable in our modern, rational mind. <Yeah.> And so when I read a Bible story, whether that's, Moses crossing over the Red Sea, or we use the example of Jonah the whale.

J.R.: Yeah.

David: Or even going all the way back to Genesis chapter one, right? The story of creation. If we are saying that it's true, that in our minds that must mean that it's provable, that it's telling a literal story, and that if we had the ability in every case, we would be able to uncover enough facts that would show <Right.> that this is the way this actually went down. Something like that. 

J.R.: Yeah. And without realizing it, that's a very post-enlightenment, rational way of approaching the story. And we just have to remember that the authors of these, books were pre rational. They thought , much more metaphor.[00:15:00]

Yeah. You know we talked about this last episode. It was originally oral tradition, and so there's a lot to unpack here. So it's gonna be helpful to read the biblical stories and the biblical accounts through different layers and see what kind of emerges from those layers.

David: Yeah. But the literal historical layer is not a bad place to start. And again, you have to understand what genre of literature you're reading, right? Because, it could be the best place to start. Right. So when First and Second Kings are giving these accounts of kings, you know, this person ruled the northern kingdom, this person ruled the southern kingdom.

That's not a bad place to start to say, okay, I wonder if we can find references to these kings in other sources, right? <Right.> And putting together a timeline. Perfectly legitimate. That's not what we're saying. And in a lot of cases, you know, we have, we found little seals and inscriptions that refers to one of the biblical kings.

J.R.: Yeah. Well, one of the neatest experiences on our trips is going through Hezekiah's Tunnel, [00:16:00] and I never realized it was there. First of all, it was just kind of cool you're going through, if it's not for the claustrophobic I think you're a little claustrophobic and you kind of freaked out a little bit.

You know, you're in water up to your knees. <Oh gosh.> And, and I mean, your shoulders are hitting each side of this. It was like a mile long right? Or half mile long. I mean, you're just, oh, yeah. I mean, so you're walking through this tiny tunnel.

But in any case, that discovery was made because, the archeologist who made the discovery, but he read in the Bible that during a particular siege, the Israelites were essentially captured in their own city, right? So the enemy is completely surrounded. And they knew the enemy was coming. And so it records, in the Bible where King Hezekiah knew this army was coming and so he ordered to connect the pool of Shalom with the spring of Gihon, I think. yeah,

David: I think that's right. Yeah.

J.R.: So there's fresh water coming into the city because they knew the siege was about to be upon them.

And so this archeologist looked and he said, well, we know [00:17:00] where the spring of Gihon is. We know where the pool of Shalom is. We've exposed this stuff. He said, it says right here in the Bible that there's gotta be a tunnel that connects it. And so they did kind of this ground penetrating modern radar type thing and they found it.

It's just there plain as day. And so it's exposed and now you can walk through it as a tourist, you know? And it's kind of wild. Oh yeah. The best part of the story is there's an in inscription. An inscription, kind of halfway through where it says something. I'm paraphrasing this, something like, we're at day 55 of digging this tunnel and we hear the other workers, 'cause they dug from two directions.

That was another crazy thing. And it was essentially a straight line until you got to the middle and it does a 90 degree turn for about 10 feet. 

David: And there was some curves. Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah. And then it goes back 90 degrees and goes straight again. But it was where the two teams of workers were digging from either end and they met in the middle and they're like, Hey, we can hear the other guys on the other side. And so they kind of turned sideways and dug toward each other and made the tunnel connection. So it's just this wild story. But to your point about the historical [00:18:00] layer, the literal layer, this archeologist looks at it and says, well, it's right here in the Bible.

It's gotta be there. Right. And then lo and behold, it's actually there. So you're right. That's the best place to start, is to assume that we're talking about a literal historical event and to explore <Yeah.> the possibilities in that fashion. 

David: And to see what we can learn about that event, right?

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: I was thinking about that because that was such a fun experience of walking through that tunnel. But yeah, initially, and look, this isn't Walt Disney World where everything's well lit and guardrails. 'cause I remember you go way down to this almost cave system and there's this little hole in the ground and just this sign that said, you know, Hezekiah's tunnel this way.

And it was just, it was pitch black and there's water running through it. Yeah. And I remember looking back at you going, we're supposed to just crawl in this hole and walk through this tunnel? 

J.R.: Yeah. We were the only ones there. It's not like anybody told us what to do. I think you actually,

David: We had to bring flashlights.

J.R.: Yeah. Bring flashlights. You're gonna be in water. 

David: You're [00:19:00] gonna be in water. Yeah. Like up to your knees 

J.R.: But from what I remember, it's like we threw a few coins in a box that said entry fee here and then you just walked in.

Yeah, it was kinda wild. Edward Robinson, I looked that up. That's the archeologist Robinson. 

David: I was thinking Warren or Robinson. 'cause Robinson's arch is one of the famous things there. And then Warren's Shaft is another well-known. 

J.R.: Yeah, yeah. Two super famous archeologists when it comes to those.

David: Good, Robinson then. Alright, we gave him credit there. Yeah, so that's a good place to start, the literal, historical figure. I wrote down that I don't know, NT Wright was a great example for me, probably in the nineties or early two thousands of starting to be exposed to his work where he wrote a lot about the New Testament and about how there's a lot in the New Testament that draws off the culture at the time.

J.R.: Mm-hmm.

David: And so he wrote in such a way that would take any passage description in the New Testament, the gospels, some of Paul's letters, and he would start to recreate this whole [00:20:00] Greco-Roman culture and what all these different things meant. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: And so that's that very historical, literal meaning, right?

J.R.: Right, 

David: I think last time I also mentioned Bruce Feiler, Walking the Bible. <Yeah.> He's another journalist, he started in Genesis, and said, what if I went to these places? 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: And he travels around to these places and it's like, here's what I learned from being here.

J.R.: Yeah.

David: And I thought, man, that's incredible. And that kind of prompted my love of saying, man, let's go to these places, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. I mean, and it's worth taking a second if you have the opportunity to go to these places, it really does open up. We're talking about layers. It does open up a new layer just being in the place, and it's hard to explain.

Some of it is scale. We came into Israel through Eilat, which is the very southern border. And then we go all the way up to Jerusalem. Now, I didn't, on that particular trip, we didn't get up to the northern part Galilee and things like that, but we did get up to Jerusalem and it, what blew me away was like, it seemed like a half hour car drive, but you know, it was probably more like an hour.

And you, and it puts it [00:21:00] all in scale and you're thinking, man, this whole life of Jesus was walked in an area about the size of the county that I live in. Maybe a little bit bigger. And it just kind of, I don't know, it puts it in a new light.

And then of course, just seeing the landscape. It's not like West Tennessee. There's not big trees everywhere, or it's not fertile ground. I mean, it's this scrubby rocky ground. So metaphors about the vine and the branches. When you talk about olives or you talk about wine or grapes, that just pops out because that's really all that can grow there. So it's not like, yeah, there aren't any metaphors about growing corn or cotton or soybeans like I see in West Tennessee.

It's in that area. And so yeah, setting foot on it really opens up a whole new way of looking at it, and it's so helpful. So if you have the chance, man, I can't encourage that enough. 

David: Well, the other day, we were talking about the hyrax.

J.R.: Yeah. Right.

David: And we were in En Gedi and we were remembered that we'd seen these little creatures running around. 

J.R.: Yeah. They're like little gopher type things. 

David: [00:22:00] Yeah. Yeah. And these were hyrax. It's what the Bible calls a rock badger. But when, we were talking about, because, our brother lives in Uganda, and if you go to Uganda, they have hyrax that are terrifying. These little fuzzy creatures scream like a woman is being murdered in the middle of the night. 

J.R.: Oh yeah. And they're off in the woods. So you're just looking at this dark tree line, hearing women and children screaming, just blood curling, screaming. It's the craziest thing.

David: And the locals are like, oh, those are just hyrax. 

J.R.: Yeah. And I'm like, well, I can't sleep. You know, that's that for the first couple nights, you know, until just exhaustion takes over. My goodness. 

David: So even that little context of being in, En Gedi and David's hiding from King Saul, right?

Yeah. And there's probably screaming hyrax in the middle of the night where he's hiding out. Or when the Bible just innocently mentions the rock badger man, there's a whole layer of meaning to that, right? 

J.R.: That's right. Yeah. And you wonder why soldiers go awol, you know, you're chasing after something that's screaming off in the middle of the night, like a horror movie, and it's like, yeah, okay, I'm done. I'm headed back home. 

David: [00:23:00] Yeah. So you get all those nuances by traveling and that's a great place to start to read the Bible.

You know, archeology has proved a lot, right? <Sure.> Archeology has so much about where cities were, and look, there's so many places where in the past people have said, well, we don't know where this place is. The Bible probably just made that up. And then lo and behold, archeologists say, Hey, we found something here, right?

J.R.: Right.

David: And so there is that meaning. Probably the danger though is assuming that the entire Bible was written in a way that can be dug up, that can be proven right?

J.R.: Yeah. Historically verified.

David: Yeah. Historically verifiable, like you said, like gravity. It's something that we can prove and therefore we can trust the Bible because the Bible is true.

J.R.: Right, Well, there are parts of the Bible that are obviously historically accurate. They're describing battles. They're layering out lineages and kings. But the ancient writer's aim was to reveal meaning through these historical accounts, right? And so the primary [00:24:00] goal was to reveal meaning.

And if meaning came through the history of these kings or the lineage that led up to Jesus, then that's what they laid out. And that is historically accurate. But their goal was not to record data. Their goal was to capture meaning. And so ancient history was theological storytelling, right, through pattern.

And the point was not to have this peer reviewed data that's easily verifiable. Yeah. And you can go check this out for yourself, you know? But at least not the entire Bible. There are aspects of it, obviously. And so insisting on the entire Bible being that way we've said it before, paints you in a corner and actually sets you up for skeptics being able to expose things where maybe the timelines don't work out. <Yeah.> Where a skeptic can get a hold of it and say, well, you know, this doesn't make any sense. This is a thousand years too much if you add it all together. And so it does, it kind of unnecessarily paints you in a corner.

And so there's gotta be other layers that we gotta be able to jump into to know how to understand these books. 

David: Yeah. So the next layer, I guess we can move on [00:25:00] is this is historically being called the theological or allegorical layer. Okay. So, beyond what we just talked about, this idea of every story having an allegorical, or you might, thinking a theological layer to it, means that there's a theological meaning to every story that's in the Bible beyond just the event itself, right? Like the event itself means something in the larger scope of the history of Israel and then the history of Christianity.

Right. And if you can understand that meaning then you're understanding a little bit of a larger narrative arc throughout the whole Bible. 

J.R.: Right. Well, we've talked before about water, wilderness, mountain. There's another episode where we kind of talked about this idea, water, wilderness, mountain. You see this pattern over and over and over. You cross water, you go through the wilderness, and then you go to the top of the mountain and then meet God and then come down the mountain and bring that back to the people. That pattern is over and over and so yes, there is a historical component to crossing the Red [00:26:00]Sea or Noah's Flood or the Jonah story. There's a historical component to all that stuff, but you can also see that it was worked into a pattern that you cross water, you go through the 40 days or 40 years of wilderness testing, and then you climb the mountain, you meet God and you come back down and bring that down to the people.

You see that over and over. I think we found that pattern, what, 15, 16 times? Over and over. You see it. And so when you recognize that there's a pattern to it, then you tie that to the historical event. Then you can better appreciate the theological, the allegorical layer to it because you realize, oh, this is telling this same pattern over and over to point me back to the first time we noticed this pattern back in Genesis maybe. And so that's where you really appreciate the allegorical layer of the repetitiveness of the pattern.

David: Yeah. And the way that people use allegory is the way it's historically been used is when you see the Bible as one story, right? God creates the world, but then [00:27:00] his creation rebels from him, and then God draws his creation back to him. Ultimately, God sends his Messiah. And the whole point of the gospel message is that he is bringing all of this created world back under the reign of Christ.

When you see that story, then you can go back to all these little individual stories and say, okay, now how does this fit into the larger overarching narrative, right? <Right.> And , that's where you get into people talking about crossing the Red Sea, right, as baptism.

J.R.: Yeah.

David: Well that's a symbol of the baptism of his people and bringing them back under the reign of Christ.

J.R.: Right.

David: And you might hear that initially, and by the way, that's somewhat what the early church fathers talk about. And you might hear that initially and say, well, isn't that reading too much into this historical event where Moses crosses the Red Sea? Right. I mean, Jesus and baptism doesn't even come for thousands and thousands of years, right?

Yeah. And they would say, no, but if you see the pattern of the larger story, [00:28:00] then all these other stories support that pattern. 

J.R.: Right, yeah. And the fear is, I think, or the knee jerk reaction is so are you saying that this didn't really happen? 

David: Yeah, exactly.

J.R.: You know, and then there's the fear that you've opened the door to saying, well, this is a metaphor. This whole thing is a metaphor. And allegory is a good word. We need to rehabilitate allegory. You know what I mean? Because it's fallen out of favor. It's a little unfairly dismissed, kind of in modern times.

And I think it goes back to the oral tradition, like we said earlier, that allegorical stories are more readily remembered when they're packaged in that way. So allegory is insight. It's more than just kind of, I'm making up a story as escapism.

It's packaging a story in a way that can easily be remembered orally and can also be passed along to mirror this overall pattern. 

David: Yeah, and I do think that's the fear is that if you're saying this is an allegory of baptism, right? Or something like that, then there's a fear that you're discounting the first [00:29:00] layer that we talked about.

J.R.: The literal layer.

David: The literal historical layer, right? And in fairness, because there was a time period, 19th century into the 20th century, where people actually we're saying, oh look, the Bible is just an allegory, right? None of this ever happened. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: Right? Yeah. And so it's almost a reaction against that.

But we can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Right. We can't say, no, we can't read scripture allegorical because we have to preserve this one layer. Yeah. Because some people are saying, no, the allegory is the only meaning of the Bible. Right? Yeah. And it's like, no, no, no. That's not what's going on here.

We have to be able to keep both in tension. 

J.R.: Yeah. I was just about to use that word tension again. I love it.

David: I stole your word.

J.R.: Yeah. Well, you just have to have it, you know? Because if you go too far on the literal meaning, then the story loses its mystery. And if you go too hard on the allegorical meaning then the story just becomes flat, right? It loses its historical significance sometimes, right? And so you gotta hold both of those ideas in tension.

And listen, when you [00:30:00] tell stories, if I told a story about my life, I'm not gonna go through day to day, and this was my favorite breakfast, and these are the type of shoes I wore. This is how I dress. You're just not going to get bogged down in the actual, literal details of your life unless it ties into an overall idea about, here's the story I'm trying to tell you about my life, right? This is what made me who I am. And so you're gonna weave some of those literal elements in to try to paint a picture of I grew up, whatever.

I'm reading a story right now about a guy who grew up, his mother died, his father's gone, so he grew up an orphan. But behind those literal elements, he's using that to say, this is how I became who I am. This is where my story starts.

David: Yeah.

J.R.: And, so yeah. there's meaning behind the story. And so again, if you just hang on to that literal layer and miss the meaning, then you've just got a flat story, that obviously puts you in some of these quandaries where somebody can test the idea and you can't get out of it [00:31:00] because you're so stuck on that way of reading it.

David: Yeah, that's right. And by the way, you don't even have to go to the church fathers. A lot of times when you understand this layer of meaning, the allegory, you realize that New Testament writers themselves actually thought this way, right? They would refer to Old Testament events.

It's why I think it's Peter that talks about how the flood, the washing of water is a symbol of baptism. Right? And you can see this in what Paul's writing and even what Jesus is doing, that he's actually looking some of these Old Testament events and he's seeing the theme of the overarching narrative.

J.R.: Sure.

David: And so he's pulling out the allegorical meaning of what the exodus from Egypt represents. 

J.R.: What was it? Even as the snake in the wilderness was lifted up, so shall the son of man be lifted up? He pointed back to the Exodus where they had to lift up the snake.

David: He puts up the bronze serpent.

J.R.: Yeah. Puts up the bronze serpent. Mm-hmm. You know, because of the snakes in the camp. But in any case, yes, you're right. Jesus himself [00:32:00] references these Old Testament stories as an allegory toward what's about to happen. And of course, through our hindsight 2020 lens, it's easy to say, oh, Jesus is foreshadowing his own crucifixion. I'm gonna be lifted up on the cross.

David: Yeah.

J.R.: And so it's easy to see that. But in the moment, you don't realize, yeah, Jesus is doing exactly what we're talking about, going back to the Old Testament stories and saying, this pattern's about to emerge again. Here we go. Are you ready for this? And so he's pointing out the theological, the allegorical layer of the Old Testament. 

David: Yeah. The New Testament writers had no problem talking about, this is the history of our people. This is what our forefathers did. And at the same time saying, oh, by the way, this is what this represents.

J.R.: Right.

David: So they actually held that tension very well. And I think sometimes we can forget that, they wove this into their interpretation of the Old Testament, and yet they were the ones that vigorously defended the historicity of their people. 

J.R.: Yeah, sure. Okay. So that's the [00:33:00] allegorical layer, that's the theological layer.

And I think most people kind of understand what we're talking about, and there's not gonna be much problem understanding the Bible that way because we tend to, we've mentioned before, we tend to read it like, what does this mean for me now? And that's not always the best way either, but there is that aspect of it.

So yeah, there's the theological layer. So what's the next layer we go to? 

David: Well, you said this is what it means to me now, which is a good segue way because it really brings in the moral layer, right? The ethical or moral layer.

J.R.: Okay. Yeah.

David: Which is this idea that the Bible in all these stories teaches us how to live, how to develop virtue, how to be just, how to bring about repentance. What is a good way to live my life. 

J.R.: Right, yeah, how should I live and how can I take these stories and transfer that into how I should live? So how do we do that in, let's take an Old Testament story, you know? 'cause it's easy to do it in Paul's writings. 'Cause basically he's saying, this is how you should live. 

David: Yeah. Again, you go back to episode one, the genre of scripture, Some places in scripture, this is explicitly what they're doing. Here's how you should [00:34:00] live. 

J.R.: Right. So are there examples where we might overstep this? How I should live in particular stories?

Or can you do this kind of throughout?

David: I think you can do it throughout. So I think in almost every story it invites you to say, okay, what does this mean for me? Use that phrase, right? But I would almost say too, the danger is, at least in today's church, we tend to go to this first, almost.

J.R.: Right.

David: And there's a danger in that, right? 

J.R.: We've joked around you know, David and Goliath. What are the giants in your life that you need to slay?

David: Exactly. Yeah.

J.R.: You know, it's a little bit too simplistic and kind of therapeutic, you know? 

David: Yeah. But yeah, you can take any story. Abraham was called to sacrifice Isaac. Mm-hmm. And you can step back from that and say, okay, what is it in my life that I might need to give over to God? <Right.> That's perfectly valid. 

J.R.: Right, if you look at that story and say, yeah, of course we ought to give our best to God, but then you read the story of Abraham Isaac, and you're like, well, our kid, you know, our literal children?

David: Yeah.

J.R.: You're right. And that is a way to interpret that. The [00:35:00] answer is yes. Maybe not on the sacrificial stone with the knife. Let's not give anybody ideas here. But at the same time, yes, you have to be willing to sacrifice the most important thing in your life and offer it up to God.

So again, that sort of ties together the metaphoric, allegorical reading of that story along with the moral, ethical way to view it.

David: Yeah. And even talking about the, okay, this is a good example. So go back to the last one. We talk about the theological layer, right?

J.R.: Yeah.

David: So what is Abraham sacrificing Isaac? How does that tie into the story? Well, that's prefiguring God being willing to sacrifice his own son, right? So in the case of Abraham and Isaac, of course, the angel intervenes and says. No, no, no. I'm not calling you to sacrifice your son. Right? And we believe that that happened

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: But it also prefigures God saying, but I will be willing to sacrifice my son. Right. And then it raises the question, if we bring it into this layer, okay, so what are you willing [00:36:00] to sacrifice? Yeah. Is there anything you're holding back from God?

J.R.: Right. And I think we know to go to the 10 Commandments and read that moralistically, right? Okay. I'm assuming that it was good enough for them. It's good enough for me, so there's some that are really obvious. But I guess the danger of this layer being that you can take an overly moralistic reading. And that's fine to do. 'cause this is the layer we're talking about, right? To take a moralistic understanding of it. But you can overdo that. And if it's not grounded in the other layers that we're talking about, yeah, you become this kind of legalist, you become a Pharisee and you're overly moralizing every small aspect.

And that's the mistake they did. They saw keep the Sabbath holy, and they turn around to getting it so granular, literally down to grains of wheat. You know, you can't pick grains of wheat. You can do one grain, but you can't do an entire stalk or something like that. Some kind of crazy nonsense, right?

And so you need to have this moralistic layer, but there's a difference between a moralistic reading and a [00:37:00] transformational reading, right? The first tells you what to do, and the second tells you what you're becoming. Right? 'cause it's a transformational process. Both have their place, but the second is unlocking a deeper understanding that goes beyond simplistic morality.

David: Yeah. Okay. And I would say the other danger is if we always go, you know, I'm picking on modern culture, but if we always go, here's what the Bible means to me, then the Bible becomes this relativistic book that simply bends to what I want to hear out of the Bible. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: And not to take us down a rabbit trail, but you and I were talking last night how the algorithms of modern social media 

J.R.: Yeah.

David: Right? They just start to appeal to our own sense of I'm right. Right. My,

J.R.: Yeah, that's a good way to look at this.

David: It becomes my echo chamber. <Yes.> And we can do that with the Bible sometimes when we go, well, here's what it means to me.

J.R.: Right. Yeah.

David: Right? And that becomes top of the hierarchy. And so the Bible is just this book that [00:38:00] confirms that, man, I'm doing all right and all my beliefs are okay. And pats me on the head and said, good job. Just keep doing what you're doing. 

J.R.: Right. 

David: You know? Right. 'cause we actually lose the. I've heard people say, here's what the Bible means to me in a certain passage, and I'm going, man, when you understand that passage, that's not at all what it's saying. 

J.R.: Right. 

David: I don't care what it means to you. Right. That's not what the Bible's saying, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. Well go back to our layers of truth. It may matter what it means to you. But as long as that's the lowest on the hierarchy. <Yeah.> You know that you have to put it in this broader context. I like that you said that about the algorithm, because that's so true.

If you like hunting videos, then the algorithm figures that out and it's gonna start feeding you not only hunting videos, but maybe bow shooting videos or something that's associated with hunting. And it reinforces you down that trail.

When you insist on reading the Bible through a singular layer, you're going to be reinforced because those layers are there. What we're pointing out is the layers matter and they're there.

David: Yeah, yeah.

J.R.: But it's also gonna pull you [00:39:00] down this moralistic, legalistic, you know, you can see how people become legalistic because they insist on reading the Bible only in this one way.

And it's there, you know? And I think what the pattern we're seeing as we're talking about these layers is we're trying to point out the need to see the Bible through this layer, but also kind of the danger of insisting that this is the only layer. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Right? As we go through these, that's what I'm seeing that we're doing. The need to have the ethical layer, but here's the danger of insisting on too much of the ethical layer. 

David: I was thinking examples of Paul talks about head coverings for women and how men should not wear long hair.

J.R.: Yeah.

David: Well, there's all kinds of places you can take that. 

J.R.: Your hair is on your shoulders right now. Dude, if you don't understand, have you not read the Bible? It's a little, but yeah. 

David: Like if you don't understand the cultural background of that, you could take that to a lot of different places of here's what it means to me, right? You can over literalize that.

J.R.: Yeah.

David: And then, the other direction is you can say, well, here's what that [00:40:00] means to me, that, any guy with long hair is an apostate of God, you know? Right. Or something. You can run with all kinds of things. Oh, sure. All different if you don't understand what Paul was originally saying.

J.R.: Right. Paul clearly said off the ears. 'cause that's what was insisted in school. That's what our mom always Yeah. Has to be off the be ears. Tap him back off the ears.

David: Yeah. Mom would take us to the barber and I wanted, I remember the time, I think we all reached a time where we said, I want to tell the barber what kind of haircut.

And mom said, okay. Tapered in back and off the ears. That's what you say. Repeat after me, you know, tapered in back and off, so, you know, sit in the barber chair and tapered in back and off the ears. And now I'm like, why did I ever say that? 

J.R.: Right. Well, you were older than me and you went in one time and said short block in back and off the ears.

And I was like, what? Whoa. 

David: What is this? 

J.R.: Yeah, what is this? That's something else. 

David: What is this independent streak he has developed? 

J.R.: Yeah. And I think I insisted on the short block. I don't know what that is. A barber could tell us, but I remember you saying that short block in back. I was like, oh wow.

Something different. But [00:41:00] yeah, to stay on track. Yeah, reading the Bible, reading small verses or small passages of the Bible, very specifically targeted to particular church situations, right? Reading those passages and applying it broadly and saying, okay, therefore long hair must be of the devil or women without their head coverings or speaking in church.

David: Yeah. Yeah.

J.R.: It must be completely not allowed. Their are entire denominations, essentially based on some of these 

David: Yeah, that's right. 

J.R.: Obscure passages. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: Alright. So that's the ethical, moral, and probably are starting to pick up that some of these overlap, like sometimes there's not a clear delineation, but these are all different ways that we've probably heard people interpret the Bible without considering how it intermingles with all the other layers. The next layer, and this is gonna be related to the last one too, is the eschatological layer or the mystical layer. So this is reading the Bible, how it ultimately points to fulfillment.

So heaven, resurrection, the coming of Christ. It's a [00:42:00] little bit theological, but there's a little bit of more of this, like apocalyptic, all the Bible is pointing to this one event, right? 

J.R.: Right, Well, it goes back to that overarching theme. The Bible does have an overarching theme throughout the entire thing. So it's reading the Bible through that lens. And you can read the Bible obviously with that overarching theme, but you can also take that theme and kind of fractally, bring it down to the specific passage that you are reading. For instance, how does this play into the overall theme of the resurrection fulfillment, right? Redemption. Is that what you're talking about? Taking the individual stories and how does that apply to the bigger pattern? Is that what escatological? 

David: Yeah, it's a little bit like the, theological meaning, but eschatological kind of refers to how it all ends specifically.

Okay. But also another way to think about this bringing in the mystical layer is that the Bible is teaching us an aspect of the spiritual realm or the kingdom of God that we can't see. And of [00:43:00]course, that's also you bring in that layer, then you're talking about a layer that you can't prove historically.

Right, right. But when the Bible talks about angels, or when the Bible talks about a miracle, that that's actually giving us an insight into an unseen realm. <Right.> But it's actually teaching us something about that realm <Yes.> as well. 

J.R.: Yeah. So ushering in the kingdom of God.

David: Yeah, yeah.

J.R.: Seeing it that, yeah. What is the word teleological, doesn't that mean toward the end focusing on the end? 

David: It means the culmination. Yeah. 

J.R.: The culmination. Yeah. Okay. So biblical prophecy is telic. It's aimed toward the end. 

David: Telos. 

J.R.: Telos. Okay.

David: It's the completion, the fulfillment of something.

J.R.: Right. Right. Okay. Yeah. Right. Which is important to know because it's the completion of it rather than the timed event predicting when, because a lot of people look at biblical prophecy, revelation specifically and try to use that to say, okay, this is when the world ends.

We talked about this in the end of the world episode. And so the teleological way of viewing it, it's about direction. It's not [00:44:00] about trying to discover or decipher some cryptic date. 

David: Yeah.

J.R.: Right. So there, it's the direction end. Right. Okay. Yeah.

David: And so there are people and certain denominations even that can become obsessed with, we call this series, Decoding the Bible. They can become obsessed with decoding the Bible. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: As a means of interpreting the timing and how the world is going to end, right? So everything becomes a clue as to Okay, another piece of the puzzle. So we're getting closer. We recorded something, about a month ago and what was the date where someone got it in their head that the world was gonna end on that day?

J.R.: Oh yeah. No, it just passed.

David: It just passed. 

J.R.: Yeah. A few weeks ago. That's right. 

David: And I forget what the significance of it was. 

J.R.: I know, and I'm usually a sucker for conspiracy theories, so I'm all about that stuff. I'm surprised I didn't get a book on it or something, but anyway.

Yeah. 88 reasons why in 88. You remember that? 

David: Oh, yeah. 

J.R.: Yeah. But you're right. You fixate on the actual date or the actual time of the end of the world as opposed to [00:45:00] saying, no, there is a direction to the end of the world. That's the way to read this. 

David: Yeah, I'm reading some of the apocryphal books right now. I'm in 2 Esdras. Ezra is having this conversation with God and he says, it stood out to me in light of recent events, but he says, you know, God, when will all this take place? God's response to Ezra in that moment was, I need you to pay attention to the people on Earth. You don't need to know. 

J.R.: Oh, that's cool. 

David: When. <Yeah.> And that's this reoccurring theme. We become obsessed with the when, you know?

J.R.: Right. Right.

David: What date can I circle on my calendar? And God's like, no, I need you to focus on the kingdom. I need to focus on the people around you, right? Don't worry about when.

J.R.: Yeah.

David: That's what we can do with this layer. If I could just decode everything, right?

J.R.: Right.

David: I could figure out what it's really trying to say. 

J.R.: Right, right. Focus on the ultimate fulfillment instead of the specific date. And that's What we've mentioned in our strangers things, episodes.

It feels like we're coming to the end of something and we need to be wise and actually see the signs that show [00:46:00] that we're coming to the end of something. Now, I'm not necessarily claiming the second coming of Christ or anything like that, but it does feel like we're at the end of something in our culture, and that's an important way to read the Bible with that ultimate fulfillment in mind.

But again, not to try to pinpoint a date and say, it's gonna be this year, or it's gonna be even in my lifetime, you know? I think we insist on doing that even though we kind of recognize that, man, something's going on. It wouldn't surprise me if it's in my lifetime. But, read the Bible through the lens of fulfillment of the kingdom of God coming as opposed to trying to figure out time and place.

David: Yeah. What does it mean to live in the kingdom of God now? What will it mean when God's kingdom is fully brought under the reign of Christ, but not focus on when that might happen. And if I could pinpoint a date, what does that mean for my life? Because whatever date passed, I read about a lot of people who quit their jobs and golly, I can't believe people still fall for that.

But anyway, that's Yeah. Really that's the way some people, you know, the Bible is nothing more than a [00:47:00] mystical book that pointed them to that date. And they were sorely disappointed. 

J.R.: Yeah. Yeah. This cosmic Sudoku puzzle that can be figured out if you just know how to arrange the numbers.

David: Alright. So the last layer that I'll add in, because we talk about it a lot, and this could tie into some of the others, it could tie into the allegorical, but I would say specifically the symbolic or the mythic layer. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: Yeah. And that's something that I think people have been more recently exploring. You and I have done a lot of reading on it. <Mm-hmm.> But this idea that the Bible is describing a pattern of reality. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: And if you can see the patterns and all throughout the Bible, things mean something higher, right? And if you can see those patterns, you can see not just an overarching theological story, but you can see a pattern of reality.

And it plays out over and over and over again in the Bible, right? 

J.R.: Yeah. And we both feel like it's been lost in maybe our generation that we've lost that mythic layer of looking at things that way. [00:48:00] <Yeah.> So that's kind of what we're trying to revive in one of the layers to decode the Bible.

Again, this is not the only layer, and this is the problem we run into, is when you start saying mythic, other people hear, oh, so it's a myth. This is all just some big story, has meaning to it. Fine. But you know, it never really happened. And of course we're not saying that, but it is one of the important layers that I think is very much overlooked in modern times, specifically tied to the scientific revolution.

The scientific revolution came along and said, look, we can explain things like gravity and physics and the heavenly bodies move in a predictable way, and we can lay all this stuff and science has explained everything. And I think there was a little bit of a church cultural reaction to say, okay, we need to align the Bible through this scientific lens so that we don't wanna get caught in this Galileo type trap where you know, this scientist is saying, no, the earth orbits the sun not the other way round.

And we insist, no, no, no. It could only be this way. It could only be [00:49:00] the sun orbiting the earth. 'cause the earth is the most important of God's creation, right? You don't wanna get caught in this Galileo trap. And so we tried to, I think over scientificized. Is that a good word? There you go. We've tried to overly enforce the scientific narrative of the Bible, and we've lost this symbolic narrative.

We've lost this mythic layer. And to what you were saying earlier, the early church fathers, they completely adopted this mythic layer. They adopted the spiritual realm and broke down the different ranks of angels and all these things that we've kind of gotten away from because it's not really scientific because it's not really material.

And so we're trying to recapture that a little bit. 

David: Yeah. And I would say maybe at the height of the enlightenment, CS Lewis and Tolkien as well, guys like that. Chesterton. But CS Lewis specifically has this phrase where he says, Christianity is the place where the myth becomes fact. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: And that was kind of a bold thing for him to say at that time, right?

J.R.: Yeah.

David: That even [00:50:00] introducing this idea that there is a strong mythic component to the Bible, but Christianity is the place where that aligns with the first layer we talked about, right? The historical. So he was one who brought in all these mythic meanings, but at the same time he was saying, I'm not saying that means it's not true.

In fact, he was saying this is the place where myth becomes fact. 

J.R.: Yeah. Well we mentioned that in our Judges series, that this is where the Bible doesn't just tell the truth. It enacts it, it plays it out. Right? And each story replays the pattern of the fall, the exile, the redemption, right. That pattern that we saw through Judges and renewal. And if you want the perfect example of a mythic narrative in the Bible, read Judges because it,

David: Yeah. They're strong.

J.R.: It constantly has that mythic pattern. Right? <Yeah.> And so, go back and listen to that series, 'cause that's a great way to understand this symbolic, mythic layer.

You know, and I like that CS Lewis quote, that this is a place where myth becomes fact. And the Book of Judges is a fantastic place to recognize [00:51:00] that intersection. 

David: Yeah. And the Book of Judges really a case study then of how do we start to pull all these together. Even going to last episode, so are you reading history? Yeah, it's within the historical genre. But what was the intent of the author? Well, the author was retelling, you might say, in mythic form, the story of how they ended up out of Egypt and into the king ships and in exile. Right. So there's all these layers of meaning in the book of Judges. And that's why you can't read.

I'm reading a book now that points out what numbers mean in Judges. Every number means something.

J.R.: Oh yeah.

David: And at first you start to go, ah, really? That seems like a reach. But then about the fifth time the author says, okay, here's what this number means. You're like, okay, yeah, I think he's onto something here.

J.R.: Yeah. Well you just can't avoid it. We've talked about the number 40. <Yeah.> We talked about in Judges, the Samson progression of three 30, or I think it was 3,300.

3003. Yeah. 3000, you know, and it's like, [00:52:00] I mean, did they count it exactly, or is this trying to tell you that there's a exponential progression to this pattern, right? And that's what it's laying out. And I think you had said earlier that if you take the timeline of the Judges, it doesn't quite add up.

And again, if you insist on this strictly historical reading of it, then the skeptic comes in and says, well, this is too much time. This doesn't work. And I think it's interesting that if you look at the way critical historians view, like the Egyptian Kings list, right?

Egyptian history records the kings in these different writings, that ruled and sometimes they ruled for a thousand years, right? But you don't hear this wholesale criticism of all of Egyptian history in general, right? Because they found this obvious 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: discrepancy or metaphorical reign of a thousand years, right? They work with what they have and they try to piece together a more historically accurate narrative. And I was thinking about that the other day. Again, you kind of come into this mythic element of the Bible [00:53:00] specifically in Judges. And it's like, that's the way you're supposed to read it.

You're supposed to work with what you have and piece together a historically accurate narrative, if you want to, if that's the purpose, but recognize that they're trying to say something different than a specific history of this is how long this guy reigned. And read it like the Egyptians Kings list. And it's just funny that critical historians will give leeway to Egyptian history, but to the Bible, it's just this huge red flag that, yeah, we can now dismiss the whole thing. 

David: Yeah. I've often said the Bible's held to a different standard than every other piece of literature because sometimes the critics will point to one thing in the Bible that doesn't make sense to them and throw their arms up and say, well, can we trust anything this book says?

And yet they'll turn around and read Roman history where maybe Heroditus has clearly got something wrong, But they don't go, well, was there even a Rome? It's got, does Rome even exists, what you're talking about. I don't even believe there's a place called Greece, right? 

J.R.: Right. Yeah, [00:54:00] exactly. 

David: And it is just a different standard.

And in some sense you go, well, it should be held to a higher standard. <Yeah.> And the great thing I think about Christianity is and I've seen other people say this, is we've actually been willing to let the Bible stand up to your hardest scrutiny. 

J.R.: Right. Yeah. We welcome the criticism, so to speak.

David: Yeah. But at the same time, we need to insist that it's read in a way that's true to the genre, to the layer of meaning to the author's intent. And not always force our own agenda onto it.

J.R.: Yeah, exactly.

Okay. So those are the five layers and we've generally obviously been talking this entire time why this is an important way to view it.

But are there any final thoughts about how do you wrap this up in a bow and view the importance of reading the Bible in this way?

David: Well, the first thing I would say is, it lets the Bible be all the things it was meant to be. 

J.R.: Yes. 

David: Sometimes I think we reduce the Bible down to something manageable, right? If we only see it as this is a moral [00:55:00] book to teach you how to be a good person. Or if you only see this is a literal book telling you the history of everything.

J.R.: Right. 

David: The problem with that is it's selling the Bible short because it's all of these things. Sure. It's all of these things. I think last episode we talked about how you and I have both had times where we came to appreciate the Bible in a different layer, right? And a different meaning.

We've read a story that we've read since we were a kid and all of a sudden it explodes off the page and you go, oh my gosh. I think this is part of what it's saying, right? 

J.R.: Right. No, it opens up a whole new layer. And yes, you're right. It allows the Bible to speak for itself, and sometimes we don't let it do that. We impose our ideas on what the Bible's saying. That's just classic fundamentalism in a way. If you're a fundamentalist, you insist that the Bible reinforces your particular narrative, your particular idea. And that's what a fundamentalist does.

David: Yeah.

J.R.: And, this kind of sheds that a little bit. We also talked about how if you get [00:56:00] too mythical, it kind of, I don't know. Fundamentalism flattens everything to a literal layer. And mysticism kind of dissolves the whole story into metaphor. And so when you let the Bible speak for itself, there are aspects of it that are obviously literal and aspects of it that are obviously metaphorical.

And it lets it speak in its own voice, so to speak. 

David: Yeah. 

J.R.: Look, you know, you're a, what is your title? 

David: Business Analyst Consultant. 

J.R.: Business Analyst. Yeah. That's what you'd call yourself. You know, David is a business analyst. That's what he does.

And if I flatten your life to, you are a business analyst, I'm gonna miss the fact that you are my brother or that you're a husband or that, you know what I mean? You can't flatten your life down to one particular layer. And so when you choose to insist that, you are your career or you are your job, or you are merely a husband, or you are merely a father, yeah.

When you flatten it down, you lose so much depth and meaning. And we know that intuitively in our own lives. Nobody wants to say, yeah, you're just a carpenter or you're just an [00:57:00] engineer. Nobody wants to be simplified that way, but yet we do it to the Bible. And so I think when you open up these layers, you allow the Bible to speak in its own voice.

David: Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about the example you just read because sometimes I feel like at work, oh, you're a business analyst. Okay, what business books are you reading? And I'm thinking, man, I don't read business books. That stuff's boring, right? Yeah. If you just saw me as a business analyst, you would actually miss probably the largest part of who I am.

Right? That my friends know. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: Right. 

J.R.: Yeah. You got a rewarding job. That's fine. But I don't bring it home, you know? I've got more going on in my life than to worry about business analytics and people's opinion on that, right? 

David: Yeah. And we do that, I think with the Bible. 

J.R.: Well, you know, just like we were talking about individuals, the Bible and truth isn't one dimensional. It's like a symphony, you know? And the Bible's beauty is that each layer plays a part in this overall symphony, but if you insist on focusing in, on just the horn or just the drums or [00:58:00]whatever, right?

David: Yeah.

J.R.: To draw this metaphor out, you're gonna miss the entire symphony. And so I think what we're trying to say to kind of put a bow on this is recognize the Bible for the symphony that it is, and try to hear it all together. 

David: Yeah. Another way to say this is that, if you're a person of faith, you probably hold that The Bible is the inspired word of God. We've come to think that means that we have to defend everything as literal. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: When you come to understand the genres, the layers of meaning you talk about today, you come to understand that the Bible being the inspired word of God actually means something much deeper.

J.R.: Yeah.

David: Right? That it's this book that you can read over and over and over again and continue to get new insights. And see the pattern of reality and see the theological implications. <Yeah.> And see the historical reality. But it becomes this amazing thing. That's the thing that I guess that strikes me is like, what does it mean that the Bible's the inspired word of God?

And I look at this book [00:59:00] and I go, no one could have written all this intentionally into it. 

J.R.: Yeah. 

David: But it's there if you're paying attention. 

J.R.: Yeah. With all these layered meanings, yeah, I'm glad you said that. 'Cause you're right, we sort of take the inspired word of God, like, man, these facts must be dead on accurate.

I mean, you know, down to the millimeter. Yeah. You know, like an engineer would look at something and say, man, this is the exact measurement of this. 

David: It's, it's off a quarter inch. No, no, no, no. It's the inspired word of God. 

J.R.: Yeah, you're right. And looking at it again in that post rational mindset.

But no, it makes so much more sense to say the inspired word of God has so many layers of meaning that all point to an overall truth. And listen, the greatest novels that are ever written, To Kill a Mockingbird?

David: Brothers Karamazov. 

J.R.: And Brothers Karamazov. Right? All those books are fantastic books. Not because of the descriptive writing or they really put you in time and place. They do do that, but it's that there's layers to it. There's this metaphoric layer and there's this realistic layer that captures the [01:00:00]historicity. And all these things are quote unquote fiction, right?

David: Yeah. I was just gonna say, yeah, is Crime and Punishment, true? Yeah. And you'd say, man, it's one of the truest books that's ever been written. 

J.R.: Yes. Right, right. And then you insist on, okay, where's this guy buried? Or where's this, you know, it's like, no, it's not.

David: No, you're missing the point.

J.R.: You Right. You're, you're insisting that it's literal, not that it's true. And it's absolutely true. But that makes perfect sense. When you say something is the inspired word of God, that it would have that feel to it. It would have this way of connecting to each other that only someone outside of time and space could fabricate, right? No human could write this stuff. And make it gel and connect like it does. 

David: Yeah, that's right. And sometimes a movie captures this where you'll say, did the director really mean to inject all that meaning? And the answer is a lot of times no, he didn't even intend it.

<Yeah.> But he hit on a pattern or she hit on a pattern so that one scene means so much more than even what the director intended. Yeah. Right? 

J.R.: Yeah. [01:01:00]

David: And so maybe a good way to wrap this up is to just to say maybe try this at home. Like you listen to this. Go back to one of these stories, write down these layers and you know, take, I don't know. What's a story that The Tower of Babel or Jonah and the whale, right? 

J.R.: Yeah, yeah. The prodigal son. 

David: The Prodigal son. And think about what are all the different ways that you might be able to interpret a story like that?

J.R.: Yeah.

David: And maybe we should start next episode by taking an example of that. Yeah. Let's, that we talked about Jonah and the whale. 

J.R.: Yeah. Let's do that. That'll be a good exercise to kick off. And we won't drag around and go down all the rabbit trails, but yeah, kind of do a high level understanding of applying the layers to a particular story.

David: Yeah.

J.R.: Okay.

David: Alright. That'll be next episode. We'll start off with that.

J.R.: There we go. 

David: Take a journey into the world of the New Testament with my book series, A journey through Ephesus, a journey through Philippi, and a journey through Colossi. Each book weaves together the historical context of these ancient cities with my personal experience of walking their streets and [01:02:00] exploring their ruins.

Whether you wanna see Paul's letters come alive in their original setting or deepen your understanding of scripture, this series is for you. All three books are available on Amazon, in print, and in ebook, and anywhere else where you download eBooks.