3.3. How to Do It: Defining the Context

The rest of this chapter will be devoted to describing how you can and should act, taking into account the possible mistakes that we have already mentioned.

So we have some passage, maybe just one verse or even a difficult word, in which we have noticed (or just suspect) an exegetical problem or several problems. First of all, we should pay attention to the context of this passage, and connect all further reasoning with our idea of this very context. As it is easy to understand, almost all cases of the so-called "juggling of quotes" are associated with a complete disregard for the context from which these very quotes were taken.

However, context is not a completely unambiguous concept, we can talk about different contexts.

3.3.1. Immediate context

The immediate context is the immediate environment of our text. Sometimes it's not enough to even say "read the whole chapter"—maybe the situation described takes more than one chapter.

Then you should pay attention to the context of the passage under study: what are the boundaries of the passage, what place does it occupy in the work, what is its function, how it is related to other parts of this book. These things turn out to be much more complex than they seem at first glance. For example, the boundaries of a narrative passage are defined quite simply: the change of time, place of action or characters clearly indicates the boundary. But for the text of an epistle or psalm, this method is not suitable; moreover, we know that even the boundaries between the Psalms vary from tradition to tradition (hence the differences in their numbering between the Psalms and Western Bible translations). More details about the division of the text will be said in section 3.6.3., and at this stage of the analysis, you can limit yourself to looking at one or two editions, where the text is divided into semantic passages with separate headings. Such a division is often controversial, but to determine the immediate context, it is enough to read such a passage and see where it ranks among the neighboring ones.

3.3.2. Plot and situational context

Context also includes the situation in which the speaker and his audience are: the same words can mean quite different things depending on who says them and to whom, and in what situation they are spoken. We know this from the experience of everyday communication: what sounds like an innocent joke to one person turns out to be a grave insult to another. It is not always easy to recognize irony, or exaggeration, or some other rhetorical device, and the situational context (in particular, the reaction of the listeners) helps to understand them much better.

For example, in Acts 2:36, Peter concludes his sermon in Jerusalem by saying, "Know with certainty, all the house of Israel, therefore, that God has made this Jesus, whom you have crucified, Lord and Christ." Can this be considered a proclamation of the collective responsibility of the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Christ? Apparently, this would be a very big stretch: Peter is addressing people, many of whom were personally present in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion (including the pilgrims who came to Passover) and in one way or another, by their actions or inaction, approved of it. Peter's words are a bitter rebuke to these very people. The next verse clearly shows us that this is how they were received: people began to ask what they should do now.

But the situational context is not only for statements, it equally applies to actions. For example, Genesis 23:8-18 tells how Abraham, without haggling, bought a cave for the burial of his wife Sarah for the huge price of 400 shekels (about 5 kilograms) of silver, although at first he was offered this cave as a gift. Why such extravagance? But in the context of the entire OT, we understand that this cave is the first and only possession in the Promised Land during Abraham's lifetime, which will one day belong to his descendants in its entirety. He cannot accept it as a gift from a foreigner, and thereby make his possession of the land subject to his whims, but he must receive it on firm grounds, paying a price for it in the presence of many witnesses, which no one will ever consider too small.

3.3.3. Intertextual context

The concept of intertextuality (see also section 2.4.2.2.) is not always used; Quite often they speak simply of repetitions, quotations or allusions. This term appeared because the texts do not simply "retell" each other, but enter into a dialogue with each other; The meaning is not just repeated, but is reborn precisely in this juxtaposition of one text with another. An adequate understanding of texts or other cultural phenomena is impossible without knowledge of the previous texts or cultural phenomena on which they are based. However, this concept is not so new, because the traditional typological interpretation, which is already widely found in the NT Epistles, can also be considered a special case of intertextuality.

This is especially true of the way OTs are used in NTs. For example, Christ's words in Mark 15:34 ("My God! My god! why hast Thou forsaken Me?") will be understood by us much more deeply and fully if we perceive them as a direct quotation from the 21st Psalm. The psalm begins with these words, and then almost every verse of it finds a direct correspondence in the story of the crucifixion of Jesus. Thus, just one brief expression sets the context for the whole story.