The Lost World of Scripture: Ancient Literary Culture and Biblical Authority
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
From John H. Walton, author of the bestselling Lost World of Genesis One, and D. Brent Sandy, author of Plowshares and Pruning Hooks, comes a detailed look at the origins of scriptural authority in ancient oral cultures and how they inform our understanding of the Old and New Testaments today. Stemming from questions about scriptural inerrancy, inspiration and oral transmission of ideas, The Lost World of Scripture examines the process by which the Bible has come to be what it is today. From the reasons why specific words were used to convey certain ideas to how oral tradition impacted the transmission of biblical texts, the authors seek to uncover how these issues might affect our current doctrine on the authority of Scripture. “In this book we are exploring ways God chose to reveal his word in light of discoveries about ancient literary culture,” write Walton and Sandy. “Our specific objective is to understand better how both the Old and New Testaments were spoken, written and passed on, especially with an eye to possible implications for the Bible?s inspiration and authority.”
Top Highlights
“We do need to recognize that even the development of the language itself (let alone the date of the Hebrew represented in our texts) is later than some of the traditions that are incorporated in the text. Abraham did not speak Hebrew. It is even questionable whether what Moses spoke could be properly called Hebrew or whether we should identify it as a Canaanite precursor. It would not have been the Hebrew that we find throughout the Hebrew Bible that we possess.” (Pages 32–33)
“Authority is not dependent on an original autograph or on an author writing a book. Recognition of authority is identifiable in the beliefs of a community of faith (of whom we are heirs) that God’s communications through authoritative figures and traditions have been captured and preserved through a long process of transmission and composition in the literature that has come to be accepted as canonical.” (Page 68)
“The communicator uses locutions (words, sentences, rhetorical structures, genres) to embody an illocution (the intention to do something with those locutions—bless, promise, instruct, assert) with a perlocution that anticipates a certain sort of response from the audience (obedience, trust, belief).” (Page 41)
“Our conclusion is that even with all the literary accomplishments of the Greeks and Romans, the cognitive environment—except perhaps for the authors themselves and others in highly educated circles—remained hearing dominant. Oral ways of thinking and communicating, which existed before literature was written, continued long after literature was inscribed.” (Pages 84–85)
- Title: The Lost World of Scripture: Ancient Literary Culture and Biblical Authority
- Authors: John H. Walton, D. Brent Sandy
- Publisher: IVP Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2013
- Logos Release Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Bible › Evidences, authority, etc; Bible and tradition; Oral communication
- ISBNs: 9780830864980, 9780830840328, 0830864989, 083084032X
- Resource ID: LLS:LSTWRLDSCRPTR
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T01:22:14Z