Many of you know about the digital version of the Faithlife Study Bible. I contributed a good bit of content to it. A trimmed (for space, naturally) version of that study Bible is now available from Zondervan, editorially tailored to the NIV, the translation used in that publication.
I’m thrilled to have played a part in the creation of the NIV Faithlife Study Bible. I’m happy to help Zondervan alert this audience to its existence. My reasons are, to be honest, personal. A study Bible was one of the two items I bought early in my own journey as a new Christian (the other was a Strong’s Concordance). Both were crucial in helping me understand God’s Word as I grew as a believer.
Nearly forty years have passed since I came to the Lord. Providence led me to become a biblical scholar and gave me the blessing of being a biblical studies professor in the classroom and online. I’ve learned that there’s a lot about the Bible that people should know. My own journey in Bible knowledge has convinced me there’s one fundamental insight that, if faithfully observed, will help tremendously. It’s the best piece of advice I can give you—and an orienting point for many of the notes in the NIV Faithlife Study Bible:
Let the Bible be what it is.
That bit of advice may sound odd. But let’s unpack it a bit.
When I recommend letting the Bible be what it is, I’m suggesting that the path to real biblical understanding requires that we don’t make the Bible conform to denominational preferences. Our task as Bible students is not to filter the Bible through our traditions. That’s doing Bible study in an echo chamber and engaging Scripture from a deeply flawed assumption about its context. None of the biblical writers were members of our denominations!
Our task as Bible students is not to turn the Bible into something it isn’t. Just let it be what it is. Let me illustrate with an example (one familiar to many readers here).
Genesis 10 is known to Bible scholars as the “Table of Nations.” The chapter is a biblical explanation of what happened in the centuries after Noah and his family disembarked the ark, having survived the flood. The Table of Nations describes how the descendants of Noah’s three sons—Shem, Ham, and Japheth—repopulated the earth, forming the nations known in the rest of the Old Testament story. In terms of the unfolding narrative of Genesis, the chapter is a precursor to the Tower of Babel story (Gen. 11:1-9), where the nations were divided and dispersed by God.
There’s an obvious problem with the Table of Nations—or, for those who simply let the Bible be what it is, an obvious disconnect between the world of the biblical writers and the world we know in modern times. The Table of Nations shows no knowledge whatsoever of the geography belonging to North America, South American, Australia, China, India, and Scandinavia. The same is true of the knowledge of earth’s geography in the New Testament (cp. Acts 2). The known world in biblical times was a fraction of what it actually is.
This is no surprise if we let the Bible be what it is, and let the biblical writers be who they were. The biblical “world” is composed of seventy nations that are situated in what we now call the ancient Near East (or modern Middle East) and which are found on the land masses that surround the Mediterranean Sea. There is no hint in the Scriptures of any land mass beyond this region.
Attempts to make the Bible be something that it isn’t with respect to the true size of the world produced very unfortunate results that ought to be a lesson to us. Once Europeans achieved the ability to cross the Atlantic and circumnavigate the world, people immediately questioned where these other countries and the people who populated them came from. Most Europeans, well familiar with the Bible, presumed these peoples must have come from Adam—but how did the descendants of Noah produce these peoples?
All sorts of strange proposals were offered in answer to these questions from the 16th century onward. Those efforts in turn produced theories of race, including that non-European (non-White) races came from sub-humans or humans separate from, and inferior to, Adam. The rest is, sadly, history. Europeans believed that embracing these explanations, which are inherently flawed and racist, was necessary to preserving biblical authority. Despite their absence in the Table of Nations, the Bible had to speak to the discovery of these new lands and peoples. Such interpretive gymnastics institutionalized racial ideas that the Bible never actually endorses.
The lesson here is that it really does matter whether we are serious about interpreting the Bible in context or not. We can get into serious interpretive trouble if we don’t. If we want to pay more than lip service to the idea of interpretation in context, we must let the Bible be what it is. As one of the academic editors of the NIV Faithlife Study Bible, I can say that our editorial team kept this fundamental principle of context in mind throughout our work. My hope is that Lord will use this tool—and this orienting point of interpretation—to make your Bible study all it can be.
Have a look at the NIV Faithlife Study Bible for yourself!
Ugh. It’s posts like this that lead me to great promise but then fall short drastically of every confronting the large biblical elephant in the room. Here is the important paragraph:
There’s an obvious problem with the Table of Nations—or, for those who simply let the Bible be what it is, an obvious disconnect between the world of the biblical writers and the world we know in modern times. The Table of Nations shows no knowledge whatsoever of the geography belonging to North America, South American, Australia, China, India, and Scandinavia.
Exactly, but you never pick up on the OTHER disconnect which is, if the theology is BASED on this limited view of how the Bible views the origins of man, than how do we apply that theology today? If part of your theology that you talk about is based on the notion that God dispersed people when they built the tower, than what do you do with the fact that humanity was well dispersed long before a Mesopotamian culture existed? These people that settled the East, and into the America’s tens of thousands of years ago had nothing to do with a tower of babel. So how were they dispersed under the authority of other bnei Elohim because of it? And all this assumes the Tower of Babel story actually existed. Im not talking about the ziggurat. Im talking about how the actual story plays out in the Bible. And so if it didn’t actually happen as written than you can’t have an actual theology based on it. You cannot use words such as “restoration”as you do in your book if this pre Babel state of existence did not actually occur. This goes double when you use it to describe going “back” to an edenic reality. You just can’t use words like that.
When you say that inspiration worked within the context of the world they lived in, I could simply up the ante and say, if that is true, than biblical theology only works WITHIN that reality as well. As soon as other nations are discovered outside the seventy, as soon as more humanity is discovered, well then, everything collapses. And it collapses for the obvious reasons I stated above. Because again, humanity was long dispersed tens of thousands of years ago. Man knew tools and warfare too. When exactly did Watchers actually come down to earth? Did they scatter to all known inhabited continents? How do humans actually know of everything the Watchers supposedly taught humans unless they descended not just on Hermon, but everywhere else? Did they come down upon Mt Hermon tens of thousands of years ago first, and then go around everywhere? Did they first maybe go to Africa where supposedly man evolved and evolved methods of tools and weapons?
It’s a chain and here are the links (very loosely detailed)
Jesus comes to reclaim the nations BACK to God because they were dispersed from a single geographic point in the near east and RESTORE an Edenic existence. They were dispersed from this single geographic point due to them building a tower. They were also given under the authority of other gods. These people were originally the progeny of three people that survived a flood. The flood happened because angels rebelled against God. This happens after the fall in which an ACTUAL Eden existed somewhere in the Near East.
In order for your theology of RESTORATION, to be true, ALL these links must be HISTORICALLY accurate. If one didn’t actually happen the chain is broken. The story falls apart. We aren’t talking mystical visions here are we? These things either happened or they didn’t.
This theology worked WHEN these links all were thought to have actually happened within a geography that was limited to seventy nations. Now that the world and its origins are more accurately understand you have to redefine the theology more broadly.
If your only reason to believe in the theology, APART from its verifiable background is that it is a consistent story, than you pretty much have given the green light to hundreds of other religions in the world that have consistent theological messages but are based on verifiable bunk.
PS- Im only picking on your because I think you can take it and I respect your work. I just wish you would respond to this valid issue already.
Not sure how many times I have to answer this. Of course you’ll likely say I haven’t answered it. But I have. I’ve told you how I process this several times now. It’s fine if you don’t accept it, but the answer isn’t going to change.
It isn’t the: “The bible is not a scientific document”, is it? Because that is not the trajectory of the question.
I am having trouble parsing and taking in what I feel is a contradiction. How do I accept theology about history when not every part of said history happened? How do I use that theology for our present?
Any plans on different versions that you know of? Niv is my least favorite unfortunately. Esv, nasb, nkjv?
We don’t “pick” translations to marry the notes to, as each translation is owned by a publisher.
The publisher of this particular study Bible is Zondervan, and the NIV is their translation. Neither an editor (like me – and I’m just one of several) nor the publisher of the notes (Lexham) can tell Zondervan what to do.
Why did you chose the New International Version? I find it hard to believe that someone as knowledgable as you are, would even give this a consideration. I am not an adament KJV only person, but I would never own a NIV. Please explain.
Thank you
Valerie Mosso
I didn’t choose it. The publisher of the study Bible is Zondervan, and the NIV is their translation. Neither an editor (like me – and I’m just one of several) nor the publisher of the notes (Lexham) can tell Zondervan what to do. Other publishers didn’t take Lexham up on the idea. Zondervan did. I will say, though, that if you want material that exceeds any hard copy study Bible you need to get the free digital version of the FSB. It has a lot more content.