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 ZONDERVAN

The Bible and the Land

Copyright © 2009 by Gary M. Burge

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Burge, Gary M.
The Bible and the land / Gary M. Burge.
p. cm. — (Ancient context, ancient faith)
ISBN 978-0-310-28044-6 (softcover)
1. Bible — Geography. 2. Bible — Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.
BS630.B87 2008
220.9’1 — dc22 2 008026352

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, Today’s New International Version™. TNIV®. Copy-
right © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All
rights reserved.

Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers printed in this book
are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement
by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for
the life of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy,
recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior
permission of the publisher.

Interior design by Kirk DouPonce, www.DogEaredDesign.com

Maps by International Mapping

Printed in the United States of America

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 For my parents
Who have always brought wisdom
to the wilderness

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 Contents
i

SERIES INTRODUCTION 9
Ancient Context, Ancient Faith

INTRODUCTION 15
1 Life, Holy Land, Pilgrimage, and Deserts

THE L AND 25
2
WILDERNESS 37
3 Deuteronomy 6 – 8; Matthew 4

SHEPHERDS 49
4 Psalm 23; Ezekiel 34; John 10

ROCK 61
5 Deuteronomy 32; Joshua 4; Luke 6:46 – 49

WATER 75
6 Deuteronomy 11:10; John 4:1 – 30; 7:37 – 39

BREAD 87
7 Exodus 16:1 – 21; John 6:1 – 58

NAMES 99
8 Exodus 3:13 – 15; Isaiah 43:1 – 7; Revelation 3:5

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 Ser ies Introduction:

Ancient Context,
Ancient Faith
i

EVERY COMMUNITY of Christians throughout history has

framed its understanding of spiritual life within the context
of its own culture. Byzantine Christians living in the fifth
century and Puritan Christians living over a thousand years
later used the world in which they lived to work out the prin-
ciples of Christian faith, life, and identity. The reflex to build
house churches, monastic communities, medieval cathedrals,
steeple-graced and village-centered churches, or auditoriums
with theater seating will always spring from the dominant cul-
tural forces around us.
Even the way we understand “faith in Christ” is to some
degree shaped by these cultural forces. For instance, in the
last three hundred years, Western Christians have abandoned
seeing faith as a chiefly communal exercise (although this is
not true in Africa or Asia). Among the many endowments of
the European Enlightenment, individualism reigns supreme:
Christian faith is a personal, private endeavor. We prefer to say,
“I have accepted Christ,” rather than define ourselves through
a community that follows Christ. Likewise (again, thanks to
the Enlightenment) we have elevated rationalism as a premier
value. Among many Christians faith is a construct of the mind,

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 an effort at knowledge gained through study, an assent to a set
of theological propositions. Sometimes even knowing what you
believe trumps belief itself.
To be sure, many Christians today are challenging these
Enlightenment assumptions and are seeking to chart a new
path. Nevertheless, this new path is as much a by-product of
modern cultural trends than any other. For example, we live
today in a highly therapeutic society. Even if we are unaware of
the discipline of psychology, we are still being shaped by the
values it has brought to our culture over the last hundred years.
Faith today has an emotional, feeling-centered basis. Wor-
ship is measured by the emotive responses and the heart. “Felt
needs” of a congregation shape many sermons.
Therefore, defining Christian faith as a personal choice
based on well-informed convictions and inspired by emotion-
ally engaging worship is a formula for spiritual formation that
may be natural to us — but it may have elements that are foreign
to the experience of other Christians in other cultures or other
centuries. I imagine that fifth-century Christians would feel
utterly lost in a modern church with its worship band and the-
ater seating where lighting, sound, refreshments, and visual
media are closely monitored. They might wonder if this modern
church was chiefly indebted to entertainment, like a tamed,
baptized version of Rome’s public arenas. They might also
wonder how 10,000 people can gain any sense of shared life
or community when each family comes and goes by car, lives
a long distance away, and barely recognizes the person sitting
next to them.

TH E A N C I E N T L A N D S C A P E
If it is true that every culture provides a framework in which
the spiritual life is understood, the same must be said about
the ancient world. The setting of Jesus and Paul in the Roman
Empire was likewise shaped by cultural forces quite different
from our own. If we fail to understand these cultural forces,
we will fail to understand many of the things Jesus and Paul
taught.
This does not mean that the culture of the biblical world
enjoys some sort of divine approval or endorsement. We do

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 not need to imitate the biblical world in order to live a more
biblical life. This was a culture that had its own preferences
for dress, speech, diet, music, intellectual thought, religious
expression, and personal identity. And its cultural values were
no more significant than are our own. Modesty in antiquity
was expressed in a way we may not understand. The arrange-
ment of marriage partners is foreign to our world of personal
dating. Even how one prays (seated or standing, arms upraised
or folded, aloud or silent) has norms dictated by culture.
But if this is true — if cultural values are presupposed
within every faithful community, both now and two thousand
years ago — then the stories we read in the Bible may presup-
pose themes that are completely obscure to us. Moreover, when
we read the Bible, we may misrepresent its message because
we simply do not understand the cultural instincts of the first
century. We live two thousand years distant; we live in the West
and the ancient Middle East is not native territory for us.

IN T E R PR E T I N G FR O M A FA R
This means we must be cautious interpreters of the Bible. We
must be careful lest we presuppose that our cultural instincts are
the same as those represented in the Bible. We must be cultur-
ally aware of our own place in time — and we must work to com-
prehend the cultural context of the Scriptures that we wish to
understand. Too often interpreters have lacked cultural aware-
ness when reading the Scriptures. We have failed to recognize
the gulf that exists between who we are today and the context of
the Bible. We have forgotten that we read the Bible as foreign-
ers, as visitors who have traveled not only to a new geography
but a new century. We are literary tourists who are deeply in
need of a guide.
The goal of this series is to be such a guide — to explore
themes from the biblical world that are often misunderstood.
In what sense, for instance, did the physical geography of Israel
shape its people’s sense of spirituality? How did the story-
telling of Jesus presuppose cultural themes now lost to us?
What celebrations did Jesus know intimately (such as a child’s
birth, a wedding, or a burial)? What agricultural or religious
festivals did he attend? How did he use common images of

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 labor or village life or social hierarchy when he taught? Did he
use humor or allude to politics? In many cases — just as in our
world — the more delicate matters are handled indirectly, and it
takes expert guidance to revisit their correct meaning.
In a word, this series employs cultural anthropology, archae-
ology, and contextual backgrounds to open up new vistas for the
Christian reader. If the average reader suddenly sees a story or
an idea in a new way, if a familiar passage is suddenly opened
for new meaning and application, this effort has succeeded.
I am indebted to many experiences and people who awak-
ened my sense of urgency about this interpretive method. My
first encounter came as a student at Beirut’s Near East School
of Theology in the 1970s. Since then, scholars such as David
Daube, J. D. M. Derrett, S. Safrai, M. Stern, E. P. Sanders,
Charles Kraft, James Strange, Kenneth Bailey, Bruce Malina, I.
Howard Marshall, and a host of others have contributed to how
I read the New Testament. Bailey’s many books in particular as
well as his long friendship have been prominent in inspiring
my efforts into the cultural anthropology of the ancient world.
In addition, I have been welcomed many times by the Arabic-
speaking church in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine,
and Egypt and there became attuned to the way that cultural
setting influences how we read texts. To them and their great
and historic faith, I owe a considerable debt.
Finally, special thanks are due to Katya Covrett and Verlyn
Verbrugge at Zondervan Publishing. Verlyn’s expert editing
and Katya’s creativity improved the book enormously. Eliza-
beth Dias, my research assistant, also edited the manuscript
and found weaknesses even Verlyn missed. And last (and most
important), my wife, Carol, read and critiqued the manuscript
during our last sabbatical in Cambridge, England. Her insight
and wisdom appear in every chapter.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Gary M. Burge
Wheaton, Illinois

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 Chapter 1

Introduction
Life, Holy Land, Pilgrimage, and Deserts

MY LIFE is a life lived alongside the wilderness. Perhaps there

was a time (maybe in my early twenties) when I thought that
most of life would be akin to a fine day at a southern California
beach: low sixties in the morning with a cool, foggy marine
layer, bright sun by 11:00 a.m. with good waves forming, palm
trees along beachside cliffs, the smell of salt and sand, and no
cares other than finding lunch. The perfect burrito no doubt
joined to perfect health, outstanding waves, beach music on
K-Earth 101, and no cares whatsoever.
To use a biblical metaphor, life was to be all Promised Land
and no wilderness, always in Jerusalem without entering the
Judean desert.
But it didn’t take long for the fantasy to break down. A new
picture eventually emerged (maybe in my late twenties), when I
began to view life with a very different metaphor: it was Israel’s
sojourn from Egypt to the Promised Land, a trek out of captiv-
ity and through the desert. Even when we arrived at our desti-
nation of promise, there were still difficulties with Canaanites
and drought and war. And the desert — just east of every
city — always remained the same, reminding me of the original
pilgrimage and the prospect of going there again.

View of Temple Mount in Jerusalem

Copyright 1995-2009 Phoenix Data Systems

15

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 Todd Bolen/www.BiblePlaces.com

Camels in the Judean Wilderness

It comes as no surprise to me that over the centuries

Christians have used the juxtaposition of Promised Land
and wilderness as the supreme metaphor for life. On occa-
sion there are moments of genuine wonder, joy, and celebra-
tion. On other occasions, there are experiences in the desert
wilderness — wildernesses formed through crises of various
kinds — and life takes on a confusing, even disturbing, quality.
Ironically, it has been in the wilderness where I’ve learned
most of what I know about God, myself, and the people with
whom I live. It was a great discovery when I learned (maybe in
my late thirties) that this was a truth held not only by char-
acters throughout the Bible, but by thousands of Christian
pilgrims, mystics, and monks who used the wilderness as a
metaphor for their own lives — and, in some cases, chose to live
in a wilderness (often in Middle Eastern deserts) in order to
learn things more deeply.

TH E L A N D A N D P I L G R I M A G E
From the beginning, Christians have believed that the land
of the Bible held promise for their own spiritual growth,
that simply going there and seeing the context of the bibli-
cal stories, perhaps recreating experiences known to David or
Jesus, might in some way bring renewal or inspiration. This is
still true today. Tour buses that cross the Jordan River south of

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 Todd Bolen/www.BiblePlaces.com

Jordan River
J R

Galilee almost always make the required stop to baptize travel-

ers who wonder if these waters are different than other waters.
They wonder if perhaps being baptized where Jesus was bap-
tized might help them understand their Bible or even give them
something they’ve missed their entire lives.
The first Christian of record to do this was the “Pilgrim of
Bordeaux,” who came to Jerusalem in about AD 333. His notes
circulated widely and by the mid – 300s, Christian visitors
began arriving in the Holy Land regularly. Travel was danger-
ous and unforgiving, but the rewards outweighed all dangers.
Besides, a Christian community
was there and hospices would
extend welcome. The Christian
pilgrimage industry had begun.
Today two million tourists make
the same trip annually.
But this travel was not merely
for the sake of curiosity. Fourth-
century Christian theologians
Kean Collection/Getty Images

reflected on the theological

meaning of the incarnation (the
full entry of God into human life),
and this led them to thoughts
Portrait of S
P St. C
Cyril
of Jerusalem about the place of this incarnation.

CHAPTER ONE, INTRODUCTION 17

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 Todd Bolen/www.BiblePlaces.com
Church of the Holy Sepulcher

St. Cyril was bishop of Jerusalem from 349 to 384 and so had the
privilege of presiding over the magnificent new church built
above Christ’s tomb by the Christian emperor Constantine. He
preached a series of sermons just steps from the tomb and there
declared the difference of being in the Holy Land. “Others only
hear, but we both see and touch.” For Cyril, the land itself was a
living source of witness to our faith (Catechetical Lectures 14.23).
For him, the land virtually had become a “fifth” gospel.
Jerome (345 – 420), liv-
ing in Bethlehem, urged the
same: “Here in Bethlehem he
was wrapped in swaddling
clothes; here he was seen
by shepherds, here he was
pointed out by the star, here
he was adored by wise men.”
This is the beginning of a sacred
geography. Jerome wrote a
letter in 386 trying to compel
A rtt
e Art

a woman named Marcella to

aanet
Planet
Plan
lan
Pla

join his pilgrim community

Pl

A1 15th
5 c
century portrait
o
in the Holy Land. In it he of St. Jerome

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 describes, perhaps with some exaggeration, the pious flooding to
Jerusalem:
Every person of note in Gaul hastens here. The Briton, “sundered from
our world,” no sooner makes progress in religion than he leaves the set-
ting sun in quest of a spot of which he knows only through Scripture and
common report. Need we recall the Armenians, the Persians, the peoples
of India and Arabia? Or those of our neighbor, Egypt, so rich in monks;
of Pontus and Cappadocia; of Syria and Mesopotamia and the teeming
east? In fulfillment of the Savior’s words, “Wherever the body is, there
will the eagles be gathered together,” they all assemble here and exhibit in
this one city the most varied virtues. Differing in speech, they are one in
religion, and almost every nation has a choir of its own. (Letters 46:10).

Notes about the early pilgrims are few. But we do have one
account from the first-known woman pilgrim named Ege-
ria. She lived in the late 300s and came from a town along the
European Atlantic coast, perhaps France or Spain. Clearly
Egeria was on a quest to understand her Christian faith. And
as she moved closer to the Holy Land, her narrative filled with
expansive descriptions and hopes for inspiration. She wanted
to see holy sites — but more than this, she was eager to learn
about the local church, its liturgies, and its history.
She arrived in Jerusalem in 381 and spent three years
recording carefully all of the worship liturgies she witnessed

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 for her “sisters”
who lived at home
in Europe. She also
made numerous
trips to Egypt, Sinai,
Galilee, even Mount
Nebo (where Moses
was buried). Then she
traveled north, head-
ing for the famous

Copyright 1995-2009 Phoenix Data Systems

city of Antioch on the
Orontes River. From
there she went east to
ancient Hierapolis (“a
city of great plenty,
rich and very beauti-
ful,” Egeria’s Travels St. Catherine’s monastery
18:1), crossing the located at the base of Mt. Sinai

Euphrates River (“We

had to cross in ships, big ones, and that meant I spent a half
day there,” 18:2), and came to the ancient city of Edessa (mod-
ern Turkish Sanli Urfa). Here the bishop greeted her warmly.
Egeria wrote:

The holy bishop of the city was a truly devout man, both monk and
confessor. He welcomed me and said, “My daughter, I can see what
a long journey this is on which your faith has brought you — right to
the other end of the earth. So now please let us show you all the places
Christians should visit here.” I gave thanks to God, and eagerly accepted
the bishop’s invitation. (Egeria’s Travels 19:5)

What instincts drove Egeria? Why did she think that visiting
the Holy Land would be instructive and beneficial? Why did
monks begin migrating to this part of the world to build desert
communities and cave dwellings within the same century? A
visitor to Syria, Egypt, or even the deserts east of Jerusalem can
still find the remains of their monasteries. West of Cairo the
monasteries of Wadi Natrun are home to a community of six
hundred monks.
What does this land have to teach?

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 TH E L A N D A N D S P I R I T U A L P R O M I S E
Countless pilgrims have followed in Egeria’s footsteps every
year, coming to the Holy Land in search of some inspiration
or understanding that they cannot gain at home. For most
Protestants, it is a quest to recover the historical locations of
past events. There is a “pilgrim trail” that takes Christians from
Caesarea to Nazareth, Capernaum to Jericho, and Jerusalem to
Bethlehem. At each stop, they hear stories recounting the great
things that happened there: where David hid from Saul, where
Sarah was buried, where Jesus grew up, where he died, and where
he ascended. Historical reminiscence has always been central
to the Christian tradition; therefore contextualizing this history
on site has likewise become a regular part of Christian activity.
Thus the trade of guiding pilgrims has been a Middle Eastern
profession almost as old as the sites themselves.
The land, however, also serves a wider purpose. The land is
the cultural stage-setting of the Bible. Biblical stories assume we
know something about altars, sheepfolds, cistern water, and
the significance if the wind blows west out of the desert. To
project European or American notions of farming (seed dis-
tribution) or fishing (cast and trammel nets) or travel (at night
Gary M. Burge

Bedouin tent in Wadi

B W Rum,
R Jordan
J

CHAPTER ONE, INTRODUCTION 21

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 or day) onto the Bible is to immediately distance oneself from
what the Bible may have intended to say.
All literature is born from within a cultural landscape. It
will pick up themes and images from within that landscape,
use them generously, and build a framework from which stories
can be told. This is no less true for the Bible. The land and its
culture, not merely the history that happened there, are an
indispensable aspect of the biblical story.
This book will explore how the motifs of land and culture
give rise to important and overlooked lessons in the bibli-
cal story. These are themes that every biblical writer simply
assumes we understand. They are ideas such as the wilder-
ness and water and shepherding that are picked up in biblical
stories and convey messages that have been lost to us in the
Western world for centuries. But the greater interest of each of
these biblical writers is life: how we survive and flourish even
when life is lived alongside the wilderness, even when consid-
erable years are spent in the desert and all hope seems lost.
Each chapter will explore a motif that centers on the life
of faith as it is experienced alongside the wilderness. What
we will discover is that the Holy Land — or better, the biblical
worldview — has already supplied us with rich metaphors that
help us interpret the wilderness and succeed in it.

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