New Testament Readers’ Bias
Bias among readers of the New Testament can be caused by ignorance and the cultural framework that many people generate to the study of the bible. Without knowing it, many readers bring the historical and cultural frameworks of their world to the New Testament text (Burge et al., pg. 17). However, this understandable since people only make sense of things they see or on concepts that are registering with something in their own experience. For instance, when Jesus talks about the “Sower”, the notion of western farming and seed distribution comes into our mind (Matthew 13: 1-23, NIV).
How can readers cope with this bias? First, understanding our context must be given the top priority. In this context, any interpreter of the New Testament must be suspicious of his or her preferences (Burge et al., pg. 18). For instance, someone comes from an individualistic western culture where the church emphasizes private salvation; he or she may experience difficulty to understand the biblical idea of corporate sin. On the other side, if someone comes from a community where government and religion are highly separated, he may have difficulties understanding how the kingdom of Jesus bears down on structures of politics.
Second, readers must cope with bias in understanding the New Testament by embracing cultural context in the world of the bible. In this context, it is difficult to understand more about New Testament if someone doesn’t know the problems of Jews and Gentiles who were living side by side during the first-century churches (Burge et al., pg. 19). Therefore, for people to create an understanding of the New Testament effectively, they must rebuild the careful context of its words.
However, the proposed methods of understanding the New Testament may come with difficulties to many readers across the world. Looking at how John the Baptist introduced Jesus, “The Lamb of God” (John, 1:36, NIV); many readers may create different interpretations when trying to understand the context. For instance, some readers may think that John meant that Jesus was helpless, meek or others say that Jesus was the sacrificial lamb in the Jerusalem temple. Such a situation means that phrase “Lamb of Gods” has no meaning without an understanding of the context.
Work Cited
Burge, Gary M., Lynn H. Cohick, and Gene L. Green. The New Testament in Antiquity. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.