Keeping the Context Meaningful

Finding balance can be difficult. Research can help us find the personal application from someone else's situation. When studying a topic, I want to know how it will impact or change me. When visiting somewhere, I enjoy understanding how the location is connected to my own history and circumstances. In other words,

I like to put things into context.

For me, the context provides a connection or a relationship that adds meaning or value to something. I tend to distrust extremism, for example if the context is made to familiar or too remote. The relationship between location, circumstance and purpose should make sense and be believable without becoming pompous or grandiose. Sometimes in an effort to communicate a point, we exaggerate to one extreme or the other.

An example of the familiar is when a pastor continually refers to Jesus feeding the five thousand as a fish taco takeout. This tends to diminish the value of the miraculous by making too familiar. On the other hand we might inflate context in an effort to emphasize the magnitude, to make it more impressive. This process actually reduces the details to a few key components, then polishes them to a gleaming luster. The Christmas season is great at this, distilling the entire context of Christ's birth into a picturesque creche.

And so, as our pastor began a brand new series on the patriarch Abraham, I found myself immediately exploring the context. Abraham is easily elevated to a status beyond our reach or granted modern problems to solve through his ancient example. I wanted to know more than the fact that Abram came from Ur. What was Ur like? How did they dress? What did they eat?

I want an authentic Abraham.

So I began to research. First I needed to put Abraham into the flow of history. Would the memories of the linguistic dispersion from Babel still taint his world? Was the geopolitical climate one of prosperity or constant concern? Are there contemporary records that would help illuminate the cultural mood or needs?

One resource I found very helpful in placing Abram into a historical timeline is Matt McClellan's article "Abraham and the Chronology of Ancient Mesopotamia." As a scholarly research article, it presents multiple viewpoints, compares them, and presents a logical response. I actually enjoy digging through the details and mapping them into visual patterns. By placing Abram into an archaeological record, he becomes more real, more tangible and less removed.

I was also enjoyed reading Joshua J Mark's Ancient History Encyclopedia article "Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia." Too often those who lived thousands of years before us are assumed to be drooling idiots living simple lives of hunting and gathering. But instead Mark paints a picture of a civilization full of culture, value and meaning. His descriptions of lower caste society, trades, diet and political aspirations provides a colorful backdrop to Abraham.

While living in ancient Mesopotamia would have been different without electronics and our modern conveniences, I feel like their daily choices would have been very similar to ours. Through my research, I'm beginning to build an understanding of Abraham's world. Our points of commonality are growing as I become more familiar with his context. And isn't that the point of research, to make knowledge memorable?