The Earth is God's Tent

Hospitality is a cultural staple in the Middle East stretching back to time immemorial. Its roots are found in the need for protection and provision that arise due to travel. In other words, hospitality is a "cultural instinct" predicated on survival-especially in a hostile environment like the Middle East. Raiders and marauders have a penchant for claiming things that aren't theirs (kinda like the IRS).

Here's an excerpt from an Egyptian text (13th BCE) commenting on the necessity of a hospitable agent to prevent unfortunate events during travel:

     "You reach a halt in the evening, with your whole body crushed and battered, your members                 belabored...yourself in sleep...You awake, for it is the hour of starting in the sickly night. You are         alone for the harnessing; no brother comes for a brother. The sneak thieves have entered into the         camp, the horse untied, the...has been lost in the night, and your clothes have been stolen."

Without a generous host, a roaming traveler is in great peril of losing his possessions. FYI, David the great Biblical hero, participated in these exploits, raiding caravans for the Philistines in the Negev region. Joshua likely did the same thing once the Israelites infiltrated the land.

Certain protocols are followed by both host and stranger as a means to bestow honor upon the other.

Hosts:
     1. Fathers of households in their own village
     2. Offer an invitation, then repeat it
     3. Wash strangers' feet to signify they are guests
     4. Provide food and protection at all costs
     5. Do not question guests
     6. Anticipates and exceeds the needs/wants of guests (Job 31:31; Psalm 23)

Strangers:
     1. Refuse first invitation, accept the second
     2. Remain only for agreed upon time, which may be extended
     3. Do not ask for or covet their host's possessions
     4. Bless host's household upon departing (Genesis 18:10; Judges 13:15)

Several examples of hospitality occur in the Bible. Chief among them is Abraham's encounter with the 3 visitors in Genesis 18. Here are other passages you can research to synchronization the above protocols with the narratives:

Genesis 4:14-15
Genesis 28:11, 20-22
Leviticus 19:33-34
Judges 19:13-21
Deuteronomy 10:19
Matthew 25:35-46
Acts 28:2

The hosts/fathers play a crucial role and carry huge ramifications for us as Christians. The anthropomorphic description of God as our father feeds into the concept of hospitality and by extension a shocking reality of the relationship between God, Jesus, and us.

In the ancient world, fathers are symbols of kings and deities. In the Bible, David's royal reign is often referred to as "the House of David." He is acting as patriarch over his governmental jurisdiction. Many ancient Near Eastern kings absorbed the title of father over their people. Below are things fathers of households are authorized to do:

Protocols for fathers of households:
     1. Adopt or excommunicate sons or daughters (Ezekiel 16)
     2. Recruit workers and warriors (Genesis 14:14)
     3. Negotiate marriages and covenants (Genesis 12:6-8)
     4. Host strangers (Genesis 18)
     5. Designate heirs (Isaac with Jacob and Esau)

Actions of hospitality are primarily conducted under the shadow of a tent. I was afforded a tremendous opportunity to live with the Bedouin for three days in Wadi Rum in southern Jordan. No plumbing, electricity, or running water. A tent fashioned from goat hair was our HQ-we ate, lounged, and slept under it.

Goat hair is a malleable natural fabric that reacts with its environmental surroundings in a fascinating way. When it rains, the fibers shrink to prevent water from seeping into the tent. As the temperature increases, the fibers expand allowing minute waves of air to filter through, creating a cooling effect from the tortuous heat. If you peer up at the roof of the tent when the fibers expand, you see a black canvas of small white dots that looks something like this:

What does this picture remind you of? A night sky saturated with stars. What does a Bedouin tent representing the sky have to do with God?

 Isaiah 40:22
   
     "It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who                 stretches out the heaves like a curtain and spreads them like a TENT to dwell in."

Think back to the promise God made to Abraham. Under the night sky, God implored him to look up at the stars and witness his future descendants. In essence, Abraham was staring up at the roof of his tent. God used Bedouin tent imagery to communicate a message.

Think back to the protocols we established earlier with the hosts. Following this logic, God provides us with food, shelter, and protection at all costs, including his own Son. Let that sink in for a moment. According to traditional Christian doctrine, Jesus conquers Satan through the crucifixion. We are constantly battling our enemy and seeking refuge from the evil one. God ushers us into his tent to shield us from harm and sacrifices his Son to keep us safe.

God is the ultimate Bedouin sheikh. We live under God's tent as his strangers. He is our host and we are his guests here on the earth with the heavens above as our tent. Two New testament writers comment on our place on this earth as strangers: 1 Peter 2:11 and Hebrews 11:13.

The idea of hospitality was deeply embedded in the national consciousness from ancient Israel down to the New Testament era and still holds true today.

Inspiration

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.- 2 Timothy 3:16

What does this phrase "breathed out by God" mean? How is the Bible a divinely inspired text? What is the minimum criteria in order to bestow sanctity upon an ancient written document? How do we define "inspired"? Since Paul wrote this verse during an era when the New Testament books were non-existent and the Old Testament the only corpus of sacred text (of which Paul was referencing), does this render Paul's writings "uninspired texts"? Does this, heaven forbid, present all of the New Testament as "uninspired" texts? The present volume of New Testament writings were not canonized until the 300's A.D. With this logic, certain texts can be annexed into sacred literature over the course of time. With that being said, why haven't more books been added to the Christian canon? Did the divine inspiration committee tap out all of it's reserves making creative insight an extinct idea from the Council of Nicaea up to 2014?    

These are some of the questions that have surfaced over the course of the last semester here at JUC. Growing up, I was indoctrinated into a systematic method of approaching scripture by automatically assuming every word in the Bible was written by God. If the Bible is "God-breathed", then He must have verbally dictated every word, down to the smallest iota, to the authors of the Biblical text, right?
Often times I hear congregants from Western Christian sects blindly hide behind the cliche phrase "God's word" or "The Word" to project a theological presupposition they deem as Biblical truth. But what is Biblical truth and how does this truth trickle down to our present age?

The Bible was not written in a vacuum. Real people who experienced real events expressed their world view through words. Inciting retribution against Babylon, the writer of Psalm 137 recalls the events surrounding the exile and implores the avenger of Israel to take violent action against innocent children.

"O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!"

That is a tough pill to swallow if we accept God inspired this writer to encourage recompense by throwing babies against rocks.

Here is another. How is it that Moses says God will drive out various nations before Israel upon entering the land, yet we still see Canaanites still living in the land when Israel arrives? According to Joshua 16:10 and 17:12, Ephraim and Manasseh were commissioned to expel them but didn't. But if God was to drive them out, why was it the tribe's responsibility to do so? Joshua 17:13 indicates that Israel grew strong but they still could not kick them out. The Jebusites mentioned in Deuteronomy 7 weren't conquered until David's era. Depending upon your Exodus dating, David's conquest of Jebus was ~200 or ~400 years after the conquest.

Then we have extra-Biblical literary works with language that sounds awfully similar to Biblical platitudes. The Mesha Stele remarks the god Kemosh prompted Mesha King of Moab to "Go! Seize Naboh against Israel...but Kemosh drove him out before me." YHWH also gives consent to David to take out the Philistines.

Granted, these are only two examples. However, we must never lose sight of the humanistic emotions, thought patterns, attitudes, and personalities unique to each author despite the ugliness.

Stories must stand on their own despite the cognitive dissonance they may elicit.  

If we fall into the commonly employed interpretative method of hyper-spiritual analytics for every verse of the Bible (i.e., what does this mean for my spiritual life?) we run the risk of dehumanizing the writer and thereby obscure his/her original intent. We effectively strip the author of the concreteness of the reality they were immersed in and in so many words say, "I don't care about your world, my spirituality surpasses your reality." I'd be willing to bet the farm American yearnings for spiritual meaning did not influence Biblical author's content. If anything, this egocentric interpretive method only promulgates a self-serving bias by reducing a time and culturally conditioned text to a consumerist pathway for self-improvement. In other words, what I can get from the Bible to enhance my spiritual walk with Jesus? Through an understanding of the author's background we pay homage and give honor to his/her unique experience with God.

Heschel once remarked the Bible is God's word to man but also man's word back to God. Discerning the difference impacts how we interpret our sacred text, for better or for worse.