Mark 13: Second Coming or Something Else?

The Last Judgment, Jean Cousin. Source

Growing up as a pastor's kid, I read the Bible a lot. Not because I was forced to, nor because I was a radically committed Christian; rather, it was simply the one book that was available at all times, and I tended to reach for the nearest book whenever I got bored. (It was particularly helpful in enduring long church services when I lost track of the sermon. Sorry, Mom and Dad.¹)

Reading the Bible undirected is a tricky thing. Contrary to what a certain class of Christian might tell you, it's not always the case that any reasonably intelligent person can read the Bible in their own language and correctly understand the plain meaning of the text.² Sometimes the Bible's authors used cryptic language and obscure cultural references to get their points across. And sometimes it's not even actually clear to the reader that the authors are being obscure: often, when Christians read the Bible, their perception of the text can be altered by what they already know, or think they know, about the Bible and Christianity.

All that is to say that sometimes, while reading my Bible in church because I was bored, I would come across things that confused, disturbed, or frightened me. One text that did all three was Mark chapter 13. Here it is in full:

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.

“As for yourselves, beware; for they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them. And the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations. When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

“But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that it may not be in winter. For in those days there will be suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, no, and never will be. And if the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would be saved; but for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he has cut short those days. And if anyone says to you at that time, ‘Look! Here is the Messiah!’ or ‘Look! There he is!’ —do not believe it. False messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. But be alert; I have already told you everything.

“But in those days, after that suffering,

the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” (NRSV)

Here's what I found upsetting about this passage: it's clearly about the second coming of Jesus—we have a series of tribulations and catastrophes, and then a picture of Jesus riding on the clouds down to earth amid falling stars and darkened sun and moon. Trouble is, Jesus says very clearly that "this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place." So either (a) Jesus was wrong about when he was coming back and when the world was going to end, (b) the phrase "this generation will not pass away" doesn't mean what it clearly means, or (c) this passage is actually about something else altogether. Each of these options is its own particular flavor of disturbing and confusing, and the confluence of all three frightened me quite a bit when I encountered the Mark 13 on my own as a kid.

Christian interpretation in the last few centuries has typically either ignored this problem altogether or found some way to make answer (b) work. I've never found this approach satisfying; if you turn "generation" into a metaphor for the human race (the usual strategy for this interpretation) then Jesus is saying that, um, not all humans will be dead when the second coming happens. Which, I wasn't particularly worried about? And doesn't really seem necessary to say?

Approach (a) has been popular in a certain stream of New Testament scholarship since Albert Schweitzer wrote The Quest of the Historical Jesus in 1906. He believed that Jesus had predicted the imminent end of the world but was simply wrong, and that Jesus was therefore neither infallible nor divine. Schweitzer drew heavily on Mark 13 (and its parallels in Luke and Matthew) for his thesis, but also pointed out that the many of the first Christians seem to have expected the return of Christ within their lifetimes. (A different stream of New Testament scholarship has asserted that Jesus just didn't say this kind of stuff and that it was made up for him by later Christians.)

This approach has obvious drawbacks for orthodox Christians like me, but it's also not a particularly accurate vision of what's going on in Mark 13.

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So what exactly is going on in Mark 13? In a lot of translations, you'll get section headings like this:

Mark 13:1-2 -- Jesus Predicts the Destruction of the Temple
Mark 13:3+ -- The Signs of the Times and the End of the Age (NKJV)

Mark 13:1-2 -- The Destruction of the Temple
Mark 13:3+ -- Signs of the End of the Age (NET)

Mark 13:1-2 -- Jesus Foretells Destruction of the Temple
Mark 13:3+ -- Signs of the Close of the Age (ESV)

You get the picture: it's as if the first two sentences of the chapter are about one thing—Jesus predicting the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem—and the rest of the chapter is about something entirely separate—the "signs of the end of the age."

Let's imagine for a moment that we don't have those headings to guide us (they're not in the original text, after all). How does the text read all together? I'll tell you how: it reads like an Old Testament prophet's pronouncement of warning and judgment on a city.

What we have in Mark 13 is not a prediction of a far-off event centuries in the future, which would have been very untimely and weird if Jesus had uttered it when Mark says he did. Remember, in Mark 13, Jesus has already ridden triumphant into Jerusalem with crowds adoring, and set himself in opposition to the Temple system by overturning tables and driving out the functionaries necessary to get things done there.³ When the disciples gesture at the buildings around them, they do so in Jerusalem, and they include the Temple. When Jesus says that no stone will be left on another, he refers to Jerusalem and the Temple. When the disciples ask when these things will happen, Jesus continues to refer to the Jerusalem and the Temple. He doesn't switch subjects suddenly to the "end times" as we think of them: he answers their question about the thing he just said would happen.

Destruction of Jerusalem, Ercole de Roberti. Source

What follows is a series of warnings about what it will look like when Jerusalem falls to the Romans:⁴

“Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.

Jesus warns that there will be people claiming to be the messiah. That checks out: messianic claimants were a dime a dozen in this period.

When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs. 

The fall of Jerusalem will be preceded by various international conflicts and even natural disasters. Again, none of that is surprising; the Roman empire was a tumultuous place at times, and wars were common.

“As for yourselves, beware; for they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them. And the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations. When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 

Jesus' followers will be persecuted when Rome is besieging Jerusalem. This was an entirely reasonable prediction, given that Christians were a Jewish group that didn't want to fight Rome when nearly everyone else did.

“But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; the one on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; the one in the field must not turn back to get a coat. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that it may not be in winter. For in those days there will be suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now, no, and never will be. And if the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would be saved; but for the sake of the elect, whom he chose, he has cut short those days. And if anyone says to you at that time, ‘Look! Here is the Messiah!’ or ‘Look! There he is!’ —do not believe it. False messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. But be alert; I have already told you everything.

When the destruction of the city actually comes, Jesus' followers are to run: this is not their fight. Don't go back for your coat; just get out of there! Because it's going to be real, real bad.

What happens next in the text is what confuses people; even if you've followed me to this point, it's hard for modern, American Christians to read the sun going dark and the son of man riding on the clouds as anything but end-times, judgment day stuff:

“But in those days, after that suffering, 

the sun will be darkened,and the moon will not give its light,and the stars will be falling from heaven,and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 

The thing is, these are direct Old Testament quotes, and they already refer to specific ideas that are quite separate from later Christian end-times thinking.

The thing about the sun and moon going dark and the stars falling is cribbed from Isaiah; it's standard symbolic language in the Old Testament prophets for "what's about to happen is terrible, and it is of cosmic theological significance." What it doesn't mean is that the stars will literally fall from the sky or the sun literally go dark. It didn't mean that in Isaiah, where it's referring to the fall of Babylon, and it doesn't mean that here when it's about the fall of Jerusalem. This is the kind of event that's so significant, wondrous, and terrible that it can't be properly expressed in ordinary, prosaic terms.

The thing about the son of man coming on the clouds is a quote from Daniel 7:13-14. In the original text, the son of man figure is coming on the clouds up into heaven, not down to earth. It takes place after a series of terrible struggles on earth, and it symbolizes the son of man figure being vindicated over his enemies after that struggle. It's not about Jesus descending to earth; it's about Jesus' vindication after a period of strife.

What do we get when we put these two symbols together? Jerusalem is judged and destroyed, and Jesus is vindicated.

Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

The "angels" here is simply the Greek word for "messenger." This sentence is about the early Christians, Jesus' messengers, spreading the good news to the ends of the earth, gathering people to sit down and feast in the kingdom of God.⁵

One of Jesus' key themes was condemning the xenophobic, the anti-Roman, revolutionary spirit of his day throughout his ministry. The Jewish people wanted to be free from Roman rule, and they wanted God to rule them instead. Jesus said that God's kingdom was already breaking in upon them, but that it wouldn't look like a violent revolution at all. He predicted that many would reject his message and choose the way of violence instead, which would soon lead to national calamity. Jesus is saying in Mark 13 that the day Jerusalem is destroyed will be the day my words come fully true, the day you will know that what I told you was right, and that you, my disciples, chose the right path. And when this happens, they'll know that their mission to gather people into the kingdom from the ends of the earth is blessed by God.

Mark 13 is not the second coming. It's something else.

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American Christians often want to read the Bible as if it was written just for us. We want the Bible to tells us how to live our lives, so it's tempting to open it up and see a message that applies to us in each and every page, sentence, phrase, and word. But the Bible isn't like a handbook for life; it's not a map, or a book of rules. The Bible is stories. Some of the stories may have things we can pull out and apply to everyday life. Some may simply tell us what came before. All of the stories are connected, literally bound together, and, for Christians, all of them point us back to Jesus' life, ministry, message, and death.

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1. But really, how mad could they be? I was reading the Bible. In church. That's pretty much a win, right there.

2. This idea is part of an interconnected web of ideas about reading the Bible called biblicism. Biblicist thinking is pervasive in American Christianity. I've written some things about it here. A list of the tenets of biblicism can be found here.

3. The combination of the term "money changers" with Jesus' oracle about "a den of robbers" has often led interpreters to see this action as being about unscrupulous vendors screwing people out of their money in God's house. In fact, the money changers were quite necessary: they made sure you didn't bring sacrilegious, pagan coins bearing Caesar's image into the Temple, and the money they changed for you could then be used to buy an unblemished animal. If you were coming from far away, the chances of getting an animal to the Temple without injury or blemish were slim, and then you'd have an animal you couldn't sacrifice. There was no cheating or robbing going on in the traditional sense.
Rather than being about condemning greed, Jesus' Temple action seems to be about condemning the religious authorities and systems of his day, in particular their exclusivity and revolutionary ambitions against Rome. The word lestai, often translated "robbers," is better translated as "bandit" or even "revolutionary," and has a much more political bent to it then the usual translation allows. Barabbas and the two criminals crucified with Jesus were all lestai. In any case, the Temple action is an extension of a major theme of Jesus' whole ministry: he sets up himself and his followers as an alternative to the Temple system throughout the gospels, most plainly in his claim to offer forgiveness of sins, which was thought to only be available through sacrifice at the Temple.

4. Note that many scholars consider this stuff to be later Christian interpolation, describing as it does a historical event in 70 AD: the destruction of the Temple and the sack of Jerusalem. Given that (a) the actual details Jesus offers don't look much like the real life Temple destruction—e.g., a warning to flee to the mountains would have been moot when, in 70 AD, the mountains around Jerusalem were all occupied by Roman forces—(b) there are prominent details about the actual sack of Jerusalem, like cannibalism in the city during the siege, that we know about from historical accounts but which are missing from the account in Mark, and (c) the nationalistic, revolutionary course Israel was on made it not terribly difficult to predict the destruction of the Temple and city anyway, I'm disinclined to see this chapter as a later invention. It reads like the words of a thoughtful and theologically creative man, who had drunk deeply of the Old Testament prophets, delivering a warning to his followers about the likely political future.

5. I'll footnote the commentary on the rest of the chapter, since this post is getting quite long, and the rest is of lesser importance to my main point.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 

Jesus uses the image of the fig tree putting forth leaves in season as a poetic way of wrapping up his description of the signs and warnings. Just like the fig tree growing leaves means summer is coming soon, so these signs (wars and rumors of war, false messiahs, famines) will alert you that things are about to get even worse. What Jesus has said here will not be forgotten.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”

The exact time for this event has not been revealed to anyone. It's going to be unexpected, like the head of household leaving without telling his servants when he's coming back. Just like the servants need to be alert for his return, the disciples need to be alert for the coming catastrophe, so they can leave and continue the work of the kingdom.     

Reading the Bible in Translation

Above: Elihu just can't hold it in anymore.

Quick: which of these Job 32:18 translations is not like the others?

1. For I am full of words; the spirit within me constrains me.
2. For I am full of words, and the spirit within me compels me.
3. For I am full of pent-up words, and the spirit within me urges me on.
4. For I am full of words, the wind in my belly constrains me.
5. For I am full of matter, the spirit within me constraineth me.

If you answered #5 because it's clearly less contemporary than the others, you're right, but that's not what I was going for! The correct answer is #4. Take another look. 

The key thing that #4 has and the others are lacking is the word "wind." All the others translate the same term as "spirit."* Both are valid translations of the Hebrew word רוח (ruach), but the translation in #4 has a leg up on the others, and I'll tell you why: it's the best translation for helping the reader understand what this verse really is—a joke!

(Background info on Job if you need it: the book of Job is a theological debate, framed before and after by a folk story about the characters doing the debating. The main character is Job, a fundamentally good man who loses all he has, including his health. His friends come to visit and, in a series of poetic speeches, tell him that he is suffering because he sinned. Job, also in poetic speeches, insists he is guiltless and demands that God explain why he, Job, has been punished when he's done nothing wrong. Surprisingly, God shows up in the end and tells Job that he has no right to ask the master and creator of the universe such questions, and then God gives Job all his stuff back. It would be a way less satisfying ending if the speeches God gives weren't such dang fine poetry!)

Job chapters 32 through 38 are the last speeches by any of Job's friends. Up to this point, the author has stacked the deck subtly in Job's favor by giving Job all the best, most creative, insightful, and beautiful poetry, while his friends are mostly stuck with rather bland platitudes and hoary cliches. The speeches in 32-38 come from the young man Elihu, and they're probably the worst of the bunch.

Verse 18 of chapter 32 is a joke at Elihu's expense by the author of the story. Elihu is trying to say that he's gotten so tired of waiting to speak that he's filled to the breaking point with things to say, but he accidentally calls himself a windbag in the process! (Check out also the next verse, which has another comparison to a bag full to bursting. Note that this joke may also be about farting.) In having Elihu say this thing that ironically discredits him as a know-nothing blowhard, the author clues us in to the fact that we're not really supposed to take Elihu's ideas very seriously. And translation #4 is the only one among these that lets the English-speaking reader in on the joke!

Translation #4 is by a literary scholar and Bible translator named Robert Alter. For the last two decades, Alter has been working on a translation of the Hebrew Bible that's really, really worth checking out if you don't already know about it.

The translation (with commentary) so far: Pentateuch, Psalms, Wisdom Books, and Deuteronomistic History

In introducing his translation, Alter points out that we live in an age of many, many Bible translations, founded by and large on detailed scholarship and very advanced understanding of Hebrew based on current archaeology and other fields of study. When asked, "why add another?" he claims that, "[b]roadly speaking, one may say that in the case of the modern versions, the problem is a shaky sense of English and in the case of the King James Version, a shaky sense of Hebrew" (The Five Books of Moses, pg. xvi).

Alter accuses his fellow Bible translators of falling into what he calls the "heresy of explanation."** Bible translators, he claims, seem to feel afraid to translate much of the idiomatic, metaphorical language of the Hebrew into its most literal English equivalents, perhaps out of fear that readers will get confused. Instead, they tend to create translations that explain what the metaphors probably mean. Trouble is, many of the Hebrew Bible's important literary qualities—allusion, motifs, and as we've already seen, humor and irony—are bound quite tightly to these idioms and metaphors. Heck, Alter explains it better than I do—here's one of his examples:

The Hebrew noun [זרע] zera‘ has the general meaning of “seed,” which can be applied either in the agricultural sense or to human beings, as the term for semen. By metaphorical extension, semen becomes the established designation for what it produces, progeny. Modern translators, evidently unwilling to trust the ability of adult readers to understand that “seed”—as regularly in the King James Version—may mean progeny, repeatedly render it as offspring, descendants, heirs, progeny, posterity. But I think there is convincing evidence in the texts themselves that the biblical writers never entirely forgot that their term for offspring also meant semen and had a precise equivalent in the vegetable world. To cite a distinctly physical example, when Onan “knew that the seed would not be his,” that is, the progeny of his brother’s widow should he impregnate her, “he would waste his seed on the ground, so to give no seed to his brother” (Genesis 38:9). Modern translators, despite their discomfort with body terms, can scarcely avoid the wasted “seed” here because without it the representation of spilling semen on the ground in coitus interrupts becomes unintelligible. E. A. Speiser substitutes “offspring” for “seed” at the end of the verse, however, and the Revised English Bible goes him one better by putting “offspring” at the beginning as well (“Onan knew that the offspring would not count as his”) and introducing “seed” in the middle as object of the verb “to spill” and scuttling back to the decorousness of “offspring” at the end—a prime instance of explanation under the guise of translation. But the biblical writer is referring to “seed” as much at the end of the verse as at the beginning. Onan adopts the stratagem of coitus interruptus in order not to “give seed”—that is, semen—to Tamar, and, as a necessary consequence of this contraceptive act, he avoids providing her with offspring. The thematic point of this moment, anchored in sexual practice, law, and human interaction, is blunted by not preserving “seed” throughout.

Even in contexts not directly related to sexuality the concreteness of this term often amplifies the meaning of the utterance. When, for example, at the end of the story of the binding of Isaac, God reiterates His promise to Abraham, the multiplication of seed is strongly linked with cosmic imagery—harking back to the Creation story—of heaven and earth: “I will greatly bless you and will greatly multiply your seed, as the stars in the heavens and as the sand on the shore of the sea” (Genesis 22:17). If “seed” here is rendered as “offspring” or “descendants,” what we get are two essentially mathematical similes of numerical increase. That is, in fact, the primary burden of the language God addresses to Abraham, but as figurative language it also imposes itself visually on the retina of the imagination, and so underlying the idea of a single late-born son whose progeny will be countless millions is an image of human seed (perhaps reinforced by the shared white color of semen and stars) scattered across the vast expanses of the starry skies and through the innumerable particles of sand on the shore of the sea. To substitute “offspring” for “seed” here may not fundamentally alter the meaning but it diminishes the vividness of the statement, making it just a little harder for readers to sense why these ancient texts have been so compelling down through the ages. (The Five Books of Moses, pgs. xx-xxi, emphasis added)

If you skipped all that quoted text, know this: Alter's main point is that current translations of the Bible are ugly and clunky. I think he's pretty much right, but I actually want to take the argument a step further, and suggest that English translations of the Bible are, by themselves, completely inadequate when it comes to the needs of Christian interpreters.†

Think about it: if our usual translations of the Bible are missing something as cool, interesting, yet simple as a joke about Elihu being a windbag (golly, even his name sounds kind of like someone talking about nothing), how much other more important stuff isn't coming through in translation? How much important stuff is just impossible to effectively translate into English?

Christians read the Bible, by itself, in translation all the time, and while that's fine on occasion, it's not a really effective way to discover the meanings in the text, and it can lead to misinterpretation and simple misunderstanding far too easily. I wrote about this in a little more detail last week, but reading the Bible without someone or something to inform you about the historical and literary context seems foolish to me, and frankly, expecting to be able to interpret it without help amounts to magical thinking.

Put it another way: if we read the Bible in translation with no outside help, and expect to understand it, we are like the man in that old story: he's up on his roof, trying to get away from the rising water during a flood. He prays to God, "Save me!" Another man in a boat passes by and invites him in, but the man on the roof says, "No thanks, God will save me!" The man on the roof drowns; in heaven he confronts God, "Why didn't you save me?" God says, "I sent the boat, what more did you want?" If we read the Bible without all the help God has sent us—in the form of commentators, knowledgeable pastors, Biblical archaeology, and so forth—are we not the same as the drowned man who refused the help that he prayed for?

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*The other translations are: 1. NRSV, 2. NIV, 3. NLT, and 5. KJV. Note that The Message has an interesting, if slightly bonkers, take on this material that includes neither "wind" nor "spirit" but that does include "volcano," if that's what you're into.
**"Heresy" is of course a loaded term in Christian circles. Given that the technical definition of heresy, at least in Western Christianity, is "contradicting something declared in one of the ecumenical councils of the early church," I don't think this can be considered actual Christian heresy. Someone with extensive knowledge of the ecumenical councils: feel free to correct me!
†Which is not to say that you shouldn't buy Alter's translations. In fact, in no way did I mean to imply that; I'm clearly a huge fan of dude's work, and if you're interested in dipping a toe in to see how you like it, I recommend starting with his translation of Genesis, or better yet, 1 & 2 Samuel.

Photo sources:
1. http://www.gci.org/files/images/b6/index
2. Me! Them is my books. The second from the bottom was my birthday present from my parents this year. Thanks, guys!

What Does it Mean to Quote the Bible Out of Context?

The New Testament book of Hebrews says, "the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword." Growing up in the American evangelical culture, I heard this verse used a great deal to describe the Bible. The point was to demonstrate that the Bible is not some dusty, irrelevant ancient tome that cannot speak to modern experience, but a book that remains vital to the faith and experience of Christians to this very day. In its most extreme form, quoting this verse can amount to a promise that merely reading the Bible is enough to change your life, because God will use it to speak directly to your heart and change you.

The trouble is, that when you read that verse in context, it's clear that it means nothing of the kind:

Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account. (Hebrews 4:12-13, NRSV)

In Hebrews, the verse is referring not to the liveliness and potency of the Bible, but to God's personal ability to speak to and judge the human heart. The paragraphs that immediately precede this one make this more plain, as the "word of God" that is discussed in them is not a book but God's voice, speaking to David, Joshua, and others. There are places where Bible does speak directly about scripture (most notably, 2 Timothy 3:16), but this verse is not one of them.

Christians are almost equally fond of (1) quoting Bible verses while ignoring their context and (2) accusing others of quoting Bible verses while ignoring their context. One of the big reasons for this is that Christians—especially Protestants—see the Bible as the absolute best (and often only) source of proof that God agrees with them; when Christians get into arguments with each other, they resort to quoting the Bible as a prooftext to back up their claims.

A larger issue than this, however, is ignorance of and disagreement about what actually constitutes the context when it comes to a given Bible verse. Here are some examples of things that can count as "context," using American evangelicals' all-time favorite, John 3:16 as a case in point: 


Immediate Literary Context:

One of the more frequent meanings of "you took that out of context" when Christians hurl it at each other is the words right next to the quoted text in the Bible. The immediate literary context of John 3:16 is the story of the meeting of Jesus and Nicodemus in which it is embedded (John 3:1-21, NRSV). Placing the verse back into this context has the effect of changing how the hearer perceives it. The verse is transformed from a pat description of God's sending Jesus to earth (supposedly a sort of summary of the Gospel in a single sentence) into a small piece of a larger story and explanation of the nature of God, Jesus, and his mission. Instead of a rote phrase, we get a more lively bit of revelation, Jesus speaking about himself and his purpose to a confused and questioning stranger.

In some cases, putting a quote back into its immediate literary context can radically alter the perceived meaning of the verse, depending on whether the usual interpretation is contradicted by the words right next to the verse in the Bible. My earlier example, Hebrews 4:12, shows how the meaning can be altered substantially by placing a verse back in its immediate literary context.


Book-Level Context:

The next level of context is the level of the whole book that the quoted verse is a part of. We can look at a verse and think about its relation to the narrative, the messages, and the themes of the book it's embedded in. How does it fit in the narrative? Which messages does it support? What themes does it relate to? John 3:16 seems to relate to John's theme of Jesus' pre-existent divinity, and it's in keeping with John's picture of a self-confident Jesus who speaks in highly developed and often mysterious theological language.

If a verse seems to contradict one of the main messages or themes of the book it's in, or if it's out of sync with the narrative logic of the book, that may be grounds for examining it with greater scrutiny—is the verse sarcastic? Is it from a different literary source from the other content in the book? What does it mean if it is?


Testament-Level Context:

We can continue to telescope out the context of a verse by talking about its relationship with the major sections of the Bible it's in—how does it relate to other ideas in the Old/New Testament? With John 3:16, we can notice and ponder the fact that Jesus does not say anything particularly similar about himself in the other gospels, or we can compare it to the way Paul writes about Jesus' identity and mission in his letters.


Bible-Level Context:

Finally, we can zoom all the way out and ask how the verse relates to the whole book it's embedded in. If it's in the Old Testament, how does it complement or conflict with ideas in the New Testament? Does it point to an event or an idea that comes to fruition in the New Testament? If it's in the New Testament, how does it draw on or relate to ideas from the Old Testament? John 3:16, for example, draws on the Old Testament language of God's son, which would originally have referred to the king of Israel, and repurposes it to mean something more than simple kingship.


Cultural Context:

What we know about the cultures of the people who originally wrote and read the books of the Bible can radically alter how we read an individual verse.

John 3:16 speaks about people who believe in Jesus receiving "eternal life." Evangelicals have a tendency to equate this with life in Heaven with God after death, but in the first century CE, when Jesus spoke, the notion that after you die, your soul can go to Heaven, was not current. The closest concept to an afterlife at the time was the resurrection, in which people would be raised, body and soul, (or, have their souls given new resurrection bodies), to live again on Earth in God's new kingdom. Jesus could have said, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish forever but may be resurrected," but he didn't, which leaves us to wonder just what exactly he might have been talking about. Here's one interesting interpretation.

A more immediate example of the cultural context reversing our understanding of something is Matthew 5:45, when Jesus speaks about God who "sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous." American Christians might be tempted to quote this to mean, "bad things happen to everybody," but if we remember that Israel is a hot, dry climate, where rain is very desirable, we can realize it means something more like "good things happen to everybody." (The immediate literary context also helps clarify this.)*



Documentary Criticism:

One way in which laypeople are especially prone to take the Bible out of its context is to ignore the fact that many of the Bible's books are composed from multiple sources. (John is probably not such a book, but there are people who think that it is.)

Scholars have spent a great deal of effort attempting to pick apart the seams of the Bible and discern where the different parts come from.** Especially if the narrative that you're reading seems to contradict itself, paying attention to the details of the story in this way can be crucial to a full understanding of the text.


Church History: 

Finally, the historical teaching of the church is an important context. How the church has read the verse you're looking at down through the centuries can be key to fitting it into one's faith. (For example, even if the original meaning of John 3:16 might not have referred to the afterlife as we conceive of it, the fact that many Christians have long treated it as if it does bears.) Not only that, but it's important to read the Bible in the light of the basic creeds of the church, without which it can sometimes be easy to end up believing some heterodox things; the Arians knew their Bible just as well as orthodox Christians of their day, after all.

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These contexts are all worthy of attention when speaking of a passage in the Bible. Note, however, that paying attention to different contexts may lead to contradictory or more complicated interpretations: the interpretation from immediate context may be muddled by something in the Bible-level context,† and the context of the verse in church history may be very different from its context when seen from a documentary-critical perspective. In fact, it's almost always possible to accuse someone of taking a verse out of context, because there are so many contexts one can pay attention to, and interpreters are rarely able to incorporate them all in their interpretations.

Even so, if we aren't mindful of context when reading the Bible, we take some very significant risks: the risk of accidentally reading our own culture into the text, or worse, we risk setting aside real interpretation for mere prooftexting, a mindless search for verses to prop up our pre-formed ideas about the world. But keeping all of these contexts straight—literary, historical, or what have you—is next to impossible without help.

There's a notion abroad in American evangelicalism that the Bible by itself is sufficient for God's purposes. It's what people mean when they say "the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword;" they think they can just open up the Bible and it will speak to them, to their specific needs, right then, the things they need to hear. While I hesitate to suggest that God is incapable of reaching people in any fashion that God chooses, to expect that the Bible will operate this way is essentially magical thinking. When we read the Bible as if it's somehow written just for us, like there's a code there that just needs interpreting, we treat it more like a tool of divination—like a pack of tarot cards or tea leaves at the bottom of a cup—than a scripture.

The Bible deserves more respect than that. If it is to be, as it's described in 2 Timothy, "useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness," then Christians who read it must make every effort to examine what it means, and how that meaning fits into the larger picture of our faith. In practical terms, this should mean that when Christians study the Bible, they should do it with a study Bible, or a commentary, or a Bible history reference, or something to inform them of what is going on at a cultural, textual, or historical level around the text. To do anything less is to risk too much.

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*I could add some related categories here, like Genre and Authorial Intent, but this list is already getting very long. Suffice it to say that we can also take the Bible out of context by ignoring what literary genre we're reading—e.g., forget that Revelation is a piece of apocalyptic literature, which makes considerable use of certain kinds of metaphor and hyperbole, at your peril. And we ignore the context of authorial intent when we forget to combine our knowledge of genre, cultural context, and other factors to make educated guesses about what the author meant when they wrote the book. Here's a great example of this kind of investigation into the authorial intent behind Romans 1:26-27, which is often used as clear biblical proof that homosexuality is a sin, but which is more complicated than that.
**A while back, my dad put together this neat demonstration, picking apart the two Noah stories that are woven together into one big story in our Bibles today.
† For example, Paul's assertion in Romans that Christians are justified by faith alone is complicated by the letter of James, which points out that faith without works is dead.

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