The Bible is full of little details and comments that don’t seem to mean very much. You can feel all at sea and wonder what’s going on.
Perhaps it’s tempting to think ‘this is a cultural reference I don’t understand.’ That could be true. However, I’d like to suggest a different approach to Bible reading. Maybe we could allow the Bible to interpret the Bible.
Skulls
I got into a discussion recently about a piece I’d written four years ago exploring why Golgotha is called ‘the place of the skull.’ I argued that it’s because this is where David placed Goliath’s skull outside of Jerusalem (1 Samuel 17) so that Jesus is crucified ‘above’ Goliath’s skull. Since Goliath is a typological snake (look at his armour) I pointed to the image of Jesus with his heel above the snake’s head (Genesis 3).
A friend recently pointed out that since Goliath is, we assume, one of the Anakim (Numbers 13.33) and that they seem to be descendants of the Nephilim (how that works post-Flood is a good question, of course), Jesus is also positioned to symbolically defeat the Nephilim in his death. Whether you understand them to be the result of inappropriate mixing between the people of God and those who followed other gods, or the giant-sized offspring of the powers and human women, there’s an extra typological element here picturing something that we know happens in the atonement from elsewhere in the New Testament. Since I think the, admittedly strange, suggestion that the Nephilim are the offspring of actual demonic powers is more textually plausible (though not without difficulties), we have here Jesus dying at the site of the defeat of the powers. It’s the Colossian hymn from chapter one acted out.
But is this right? How can I prove that it’s the place of Goliath’s skull? I explored my arguments in the original post, but the principle is this: we’re told it’s the place of the skull.
Perspicacity
Christian theology confesses that the Bible is perspicacious. Essentially, it’s ‘clear.’ Not necessarily that it’s easy to understand—much of the Bible is wisdom literature and requires considered meditation and time to absorb—but that it is understandable. You don’t need lots of extra-biblical information to understand what’s going on.
This doesn’t mean that extra-biblical information isn’t useful or that it doesn’t add nuance to what we’re reading. We should use the work of godly scholars when we can. It does mean that when someone suggests an interpretation which rests on a series of pieces of extra-biblical evidence and couldn’t be got to without them, we should be suspicious. You can read the Bible for yourself. Some parts are hard to understand. The central message is clear and simple: trust Jesus.
This also means that when we notice the refined and beautiful literary artistry of the Bible—and we should!—we need to make sure that our interpretations are echoes and ‘deepenings’ of what is clear and apparent. If our flights of speculative interpretation take us away from the clear and apparent meaning rather than enhancing it, we need to be careful. That doesn’t always mean that ‘what everyone thinks it means is right,’ as there are some common misconceptions, but they mostly come from not reading the text closely enough.
A deeper principle
As an extension of the doctrine of the clarity of the scriptures we should therefore make this assumption: if the Bible says something we should initially assume we can understand it using just the Bible. This is the word of God, written by diverse people over a huge period of time but also written by the Spirit of Jesus through those people’s words. It’s deliberate and will explain itself.
Therefore, when I read a comment that Golgotha is the place of skull, I want to ask ‘what skull?’ If the point is that it just looked like a skull, I want to consider why the Lord included that. My default position is that it’s unlikely to be a spooky detail to make the death of God slightly more metal. It doesn’t need it.
Instead, I should ask if there’s any way I could know what that is referring to. What skulls does the Bible discuss? Then I notice that David puts Goliath’s head outside of the walls of Jerusalem and I think ‘perhaps.’
These sorts of arguments remain speculative. I should present it as ‘perhaps.’ Nevertheless, I think that this is the way we’re supposed to read the Bible: what connections make sense and fit within the whole?
We should allow the Bible to interpret the Bible. Which requires that we know our Bible’s pretty well.
Know the whole
The hardest part of this is that we need to become students of the whole Bible, and in that we need to follow experienced readers of the Bible in our local contexts who can induct us into reading the whole. We need to read the words of the word of God often and in depth. We need to submit ourselves to the authority of Jesus in paying attention to his words. We need to read in prayer, because the Spirit is the one who reveals the truth of the Bible to us, not as some revelation others can’t follow but as written down black-and-white revelation that we can then explain to others.
There is gifting and skill in reading the Bible. The Lord has given this gifting and skill widely. I’d argue it’s the gifting we’re looking for in those who have the character to be appointed elders. Sit at their feet as they sit at Jesus’ feet. Read with them. See what Jesus’ says.
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nuakh 