Bible and Theology in culturalization

Apr 5, 2023 - 20:48
Feb 4, 2025 - 15:11
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Bible and Theology in culturalization

Culture is the expression of a people's individuality through beliefs, art forms, lifestyles, and social organizations. Each people has its own culture (eg: Tamils (Hindus, Christians), Muslims, Buddhists). It focuses on people's lifestyle. Acculturation is when a people live together with other peoples and adopt their culture. This is common among us today. The Bible is a good example of such culturalization. Because the early biblical peoples assimilated their culture while living with the Gentiles and easily united themselves with the Mothers. They did not see the Canaanite culture as separate in their public life. Because the people of Israel are those who left Canaan and settled back in Canaan due to various reasons. Although similar to the Canaanite culture, they contrasted with the Canaanite social system of lord-slave and socio-economic system. In their culturalization, worship, ceremonies, literature, system of authority, law and architecture can be examined.

Culture was evident in the worship of the people of Israel. That is, during their nomadic life, they first sacrificed a goat to pray for the protection and prosperity of the grazing goat. Later it became associated with the Passover ritual of the Israelites. After settling in Kann they adopted Canaanite culture. And when Jerusalem was made the political and religious capital during the reign of King David, the Jebusite shrine was protected from destruction and taken over by King David. For this, Israel should have built a place of worship at the Jebusite place of worship. Also, since the leader Zadok was from Jebuseya Pinnani, his cult must have had an impact here. When looking at the festivals of the people of Israel, they said, 'Three times a year you will celebrate me' (Deuteronomy 23:14), the festivals of Passover, Pentecost, and the Festival of Tabernacles were considered important, so they celebrated them for seven consecutive days. There is no doubt that these festivals are peculiar to the life of Israel, but that they belong to other nations. Because these festivals were originally celebrated by the Canaanites as harvest festivals based on plowing. This farmer's festival was later celebrated as Pascha Peru along with the Passover ritual of the goat and cow shepherds. This makes it clear that acculturation was natural to the people of Israel. The Bible says that God gave the festivals to the people of Israel through 'Your ancestors will know that when they brought the Israelites out of Egypt they pitched tents' (Leviticus 23:43). However, he does not give new festivals, rather he tells them to recognize and respect the festivals of other races without rejecting them, adapting them and celebrating them in connection with their religious events.

A great example of acculturation is the Bible, the great literature of Israel. It cannot be denied that it adapted the literature that came before it. In that way, the creation stories mentioned in the opening book include many elements of the Mozabatamian book 'Enuma Elish' as well as the Garden of Eden, the tree of life, the event where a man is deceived by a snake, and events such as the flood, which are adapted from the Mozabatamian book 'Gilgamesh'. Also, some of the laws mentioned in the Torah (Torah) of the people of Israel were borrowed from other nations. For example the Babylonian king Kammurabi could refer to 'an eye for an eye' and 'a tooth for a tooth'. It is God's will that people live together as equal citizens. Realizing this, Moses adapts the laws to fulfill this desire. Also the Gnostic texts adopted the Mozabatamian, Egyptian and Greek Gnostic traditions. Not only that, but the impact of culturalization can be seen in the New Testament as well. This is best exemplified by the plight of Saint Paul. He brought the Hebrew thought of the gospel to the people as a Greek thought. Greekizes the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is no exaggeration to say that Paul's culturalization paved the way for the spread of the gospel, which was thus paralyzed in the corner, to the world. Also, the family discipline mentioned in Colossians, Ephesians, and 1st Peter embraces the moral culture of the Stoics, but by introducing Christianity into it, adding the epithets 'for Christ' and 'in Christ', he Christianizes those morals and gives them as Christian family morals. So the Bible is a great example of culturalization. Because the impact of culturalization can be seen in every part of the Bible. The Lord reveals himself, his glory, and how people should live in various ways.

Acculturation is a human way of life. Its theology is seen as creation, incarnation, evangelical work, and the structure and nature of the Church. Wherever the gospel was preached, the culture became the Christian culture. When it comes to creation, 'in the beginning he created the heavens and the earth' (Nu 1:1), and the word God became man and 'in the beginning there was a promise; So it was with God; So was God; He, the Promise, was with God in the beginning. It is possible to observe that Jesus Christ fully reveals himself throughout history and creation in the biblical passage that says, "All things were made by him, and nothing was made that was made apart from him" (John 1:1-3). He elevated the world, which had lost its state of grace due to human sin, to the state of grace through the parable of His Calvary Sacrifice. Seeing that all creation is good (Nu 1: 1-25), God sent his son to this world to protect it. The Incarnation of God the Word is a culturally animated series.

‘The vote became human; Dwelt among us. We saw His Majesty. He who was full of grace and truth received this kingdom as the only Son of the Father' (Joh 1: 14) means that the Word has become subject to specific cultural norms in a certain period of time. A good example and concrete form of acculturation is the phenomenon of manu. Although Jesus immersed himself in the culture of the Jewish people and followed all the customs of the Jewish people honestly and completely, in some cases he did not blindly follow the customs and pointed out aspects that were irrelevant to his culture. Examples include the conversation with the Canaanite woman, the conversation with the Samaritan woman, the sinful woman caught in adultery, the meeting with the leper, the feast at Zacchaeus' house, and the anger when the temple was turned into a trading hall. Such actions of Jesus not only earned him opposition among the people but also endangered his life (Jesus' Calvary Sacrifice or Death). This is the theory of dehumanization.

It is in the kingdom that the Lord reveals himself and acts as the manifestation of Christ. It is a fact we know that today it has evolved into a broad society by adopting the traditions of the people. Thiruavai should maintain her power and respect the culture and traditions of the people. Through this, people should be spiritually enlivened in a spiritual way and should accept it and move forward according to today's changes. Jesus Christ taught the apostles through the symbols of the Jewish culture and lived for the culture of the people and created the church. The apostles and Saint Paul made this evangelistic mission a great church by going around the world. Today this church has been spreading the gospel in various ways of life in religious celebrations and faith groups (eg: Youth Union, Chigalvi, Balathu Sabha, Maria Koreti, Choir Group, Christian Life Union, Anbiyam, etc.) Also, the workers of Thiru Avaya carry out their evangelistic work by knowing the problems, customs, culture and tradition of the people. Thus we must accept that the culturalization helps us to remain completely in Christ and dedicate ourselves to him as today's evangelical work is seen to be united with the lifestyle of the people. Therefore, during our evangelistic work, we will do evangelistic work based on other people's family environment and their state of mind. Even today, when we look at our society, there is a need to live together with people of different religions. So it is observable that their culture and traditions influence us. Therefore, like Christ, we will respect their traditions, cultures and traditions without hating their religions, without mocking them, without disparaging them as superstitions, and will continue to carry out our evangelistic work.