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Geography.
The seeker after truth should study Bible geography. Most Bibles have maps at the
end, but how often are they used? Geography is, as it were, the spatial background of
Scripture as history is its temporal one. In order to understand properly the journey of the
Israelites from Egypt to Canaan or, let us say, Paul's missionary journeys, we obviously
cannot ignore geography if we are to appreciate fully their importance. We read in the
Bible of Tyre, Sidon, Chittim, Hamath, Anathoth and a host of other places. If we know
nothing of Bible geography, how can we correctly understand the passages where these
are used? And moreover, these places must be taken literally. If the Egypt of Bible times
is not the literal land, what is it? Who can be sure of what it represents? Once one has
left the normal literal meaning of a word, the door is thrown wide open to any idea,
however far-fetched, and uncertainty and error can only result. God's revelation is set in
an historical and geographical context, and involves historic personages and events.
H. H. Rowley writes:
"A religion which is rooted and grounded in history, cannot ignore history. A
historical understanding of the Bible is not a superfluity which can be dispensed with in
Biblical interpretation, leaving a body of ideas and principles divorced from the process
out of which they were born" (Relevance of Biblical Interpretation).
Moreover, not only the understanding of the Scriptures, but their truth, is bound up
with history. If it could be proved that Pontius Pilate was not a historic personage, the
truth of the Bible falls to the ground. Another thing must be stressed in the matter of
interpretation and that is, the priority of the original languages of Hebrew, Chaldee and
Greek. Inspiration in the Biblical sense applies only to these, and does not extend to the
hundreds of translations that have been made, however good they may be. Consequently
it is useless to base any argument on a translation without verifying the original.
The Accommodation of Revelation.
It must be constantly borne in mind that the Scriptures are the truth of God
accommodated to the human mind for its instruction and assimilation. This must be so,
because God, infinite and limitless, is seeking to reveal Himself to man, circumscribed
and finite. Humanity cannot reach up to Him, but He can, in His goodness and love stoop
down to us, and this is what He has done in His Word. To have any meaning to us,
God's revelation had to come in human language and human thought forms, referring to
objects of human experience.
Revelation for us must of necessity have an
anthropomorphic character.
Anthropomorphism simply means ascribing human
characteristics to God. The understanding of God and the spiritual world is by this means
and by analogy. So we have God's almightiness spoken of in terms of a right arm,
because among men, the right arm is the symbol of strength and power. Similarly the
glory of heavenly things is described in the Bible in terms of human experience, such as
gold, silver and jewels. Such is the description of the heavenly New Jerusalem in the
book of the Revelation. Seisenberger, in his Practical Handbook for the study of the
Bible, puts it this way: