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Cultural and Historical Background of the New Testament
Conceptually, through knowing the cultural and historical context of the New Testament, Christian Believers grasp the aspect of background information. Indeed, the information seems to enrich the understanding of individual passages or scripture, which results to more vivid and precise conceptualization (Keener 45). Therefore, the history of the New Testament is very crucial in ensuring that Christian understand the scripts with virtual clarity. As such, the current readers can be able to relate on how they understand the Bible to how the ancient readers did. All said; both the historical and cultural contexts are crucial and make a difference in how the New Testament is read and understood.
For instance, the cultural background provides the information about the ancient exorcists who employed pain compliance techniques or magic spells to drive out the demons. Notably, this helps the current readers to understand that Jesus Christ has his weapon too to drive out the demons; the Word of God that is seen as impressive (Keener 78). Also, the need to recognize the setting of the writers of the Bible in order to acknowledge the fact of contextual paradigm shifts. As a result, readers can appreciate that text validity relates to circumstances or time. For example, in order to understand the works of the missionaries like Paul, Luke, and Mathew, it is imperative to know their times of mission and cultural settings (Keener 112-124).
In sum, ancient history and culture are essential to understanding the New Testament. It helps in the conceptualization, knowing the writers’ settings, and relating validity of the texts to time. Surely, different Bible texts address different situations; for example, getting saved, call to missions, helping the unprivileged and so forth. Before Christians apply the passages, they should understand what situations the texts originally addressed. Work Cited
Keener, Craig S. The Ivp Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. , 2014. Print.
