Made Male and Female

Symbolic Reflections on Bridal Symbolism in Scripture and Antiquity (1)

The world of Scriptural symbolism is more than simply Scriptural symbolism. A symbolic view of reality is the common inheritance of the human race- it is that basic habit of thought which belongs to the wiring of creation itself and was given by God to Adam in his apprehension of the logoi of the world. We are all the children of Adam and Noah. Rather than conceiving this as a theological abstraction, we should consider this as a concrete fact of human history. Families are shaped through the centuries by the facts of their lineage. A grown man cannot help but be deeply influenced by the culture and habits with which he was raised, whether for good or for ill. As such, he will transmit many of those same qualities to his children, who will do the same for theirs. Even if we do not know the names or stories of our great-grandparents, their lives continue to exert a deep influence on our own. Appreciating this fact is essential for grasping the true nature of human history. In studying biblical scholarship, one often encounters an unstated (and frequently unrecognized) assumption that a convergence between Near Eastern civilizations and Scripture suggests influence by the Near East on Scripture. An assumption that lays even more deep in the writings of many biblical scholars is the idea that the quality being transmitted by the Near Eastern world to scripture is an accidental quality- it is a cultural assumption that developed more or less through chance and circumstance, and the idea that such an assumption might reflect the deeper nature of reality is not so much rejected as it is utterly unconsidered.