The people who wrote the New Testament (NT) were not, in their day, like those of us living today. They lived and wrote in the latter half of the first-century CE, many centuries before the Enlightenment of the eighteenth-century CE. The Enlightenment was an intellectual awakening in Europe and America that witnessed the birth of the critical method, the rejection of the hegemony of Christian belief, and the rise of reliance on human reason.
Hence, first-century people generally, by definition, were prescientific in their approach to the world. What things people generally today commonly assume about the world, would have seemed strange to them. For example, occasionally in the pages of the NT, the authors write as if they conceived the earth being flat, not globular, in shape. Hence, most people, who likely shared this view, upon hearing Rev 1:7 being read aloud (most people could not read), might not be surprised by John’s description of the imminent return of Jesus to the earth in judgment:
Look, he is coming with the clouds; every eye shall see him, even those who pierced him. (Rev 1:7; see also Rev 2:1, 20:8; Matt 4:8)
In the twenty-first century, however, the words, “every eye shall see him,” jump off the page for the careful reader. How can it be that from a globular surface every eye will see anything hovering over a point on its surface? And “even those who pierced him” suggests the event would occur in the lifetime of the writer, but it has been over 2000 years now and “those who pierced him” have long since died. Even the later author of Second Peter (3:3-11) recognized the problem and found a way to mitigate the immediacy of the return.
They knew nothing of unseen microorganisms, like germs that can cause disease. The world only became aware of germs that cause sickness in 1860 through the work of Louis Pasteur.1 They also did not understand that such physical ailments as muteness and deafness (Mark 9:37-43), blindness Matt 12:22-24), epilepsy (Matt 17:14-21), leprosy (Mark 1:40-45), and mental illnesses (Mark 5:1-17) are biologically induced. They, on the other hand, believed them to be caused by demons or evil spirits. They thought such difficulties required the services of a faith healer or thaumaturge to exorcise the spirit forces that caused such abnormalities, rather than treatment by a physician. Medicine was not very advanced in those days. Some health issues, people imagined, could even be cured by a kind of religious magic.
And God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them. (Acts 19:11-12 RSV)
Of course, the spirit of science was alive before and during the first century, but it was not the view of the general population and is not represented among the thoughts of NT writers, much less those of the Old Testament. For example, Aristotle (4th century BCE) knew that the earth was spherical because in an eclipse, the earth’s shadow on the surface of the moon was always circular. Some years later, Eratosthenes (3rd century BCE) is credited with proving that the earth was spherical in shape.2
Readers of the NT must remember that they are traveling back in time some two thousand years when they delve into its pages. There were bright spots, sure enough, but in general, the world was as dark as it was in the Dark Ages.3 What little scientific progress there was did not benefit the welfare of the general population of the world. Hence, do not read the NT as if it provides an accurate description of the nature of the world and how to get along in it. When reading the NT in the 21st century, one must exercise a willing suspension of disbelief and aim not to inculcate its views on how the world works. To do so, would be to risk losing the world in which you now live with its scientific achievements and medical advances.
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University
1https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Pasteur
2Eric M. Rogers, “The Triumph of a Theory,” pp. 111-116 in Louise B. Young, ed., Exploring the Universe (2nd edition; Oxford: Oxford university, 1971). And Aristotle, “The Shape of Heaven and Earth (4th Century B.C.),” Young, Exploring the Universe, 116-121. Carl Sagen, Cosmos (New York: Wings Books, 1980), 12-16.
3The Dark Ages consist of the centuries (ca. 500-1500) following the fall of the Roman Empire.
