Oral Tradition and the Bible

Vincent Krivda holds a Master of Contracts Management from American Graduate University and a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Liberty University.

He is the author of The Greatest Story Never Told: Oral Tradition and the Development of Messages in the Book of Genesis.

Today we discuss how to find the deeper meaning in Genesis from examining it through the lens of the Torah and looking at the questions asked in order to make more sense of the passages.

Vincent shares his profound journey through various religious backgrounds, from Catholic to evangelical, and his exploration of Jewish traditions. 

Vincent discusses his fascinating dive into the Hebrew language and Torah to understand the eternal truths appealing to Christians today. 

The duo delves into the historical complexities of Egyptian pharaohs and their portrayal in the Book of Exodus, ultimately exploring the timeless question, 'Who is Yahweh?' This episode intertwines ancient stories and modern faith considerations, igniting thought-provoking discussions.

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Transcript

Jan: Welcome to Just Talking About Jesus. I'm Jan Johnson, a seasoned believer who loves relationships and, you know, just talking about Jesus.

Vincent: So if we perceive that someone across from us or on the other side of town from us is a certain way, how do we treat that person? Because ultimately, aren't we really asking the ultimate question? How should we live in this present world?

And that's what the Bible guides us to do.

Jan: Well, my guest today is Vincent Kryvda. Welcome, Vincent.

Vincent: Jan. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the invitation. I look forward to meeting with you and your audience.

Jan: Yeah, this is gonna be fun. And this is gonna be a little. Maybe a little deeper than some of the conversations I've had too, but.

Vincent: Okay.

Jan: Yeah, so let's go.

So I see that you were lots of different faith backgrounds, exploring different things. So you were Catholic Church of God, Presbyterian, Baptist Seminary, and even a little bit of Jewish Shabbat.

Vincent: There you go. So, yeah, so I was born and raised Catholic. On July 17, 1976, I gave my heart to Christ, and he revealed himself to me. And I was on my way into the military.

And while I was in the military, I became acquainted with a lot of evangelical brothers like myself that we were interested in praising the Lord and figuring out who we were,

why God had placed us overseas, you know, during the 70s in Germany. Wow, that was an easy one because we enlisted.

Jan: Where you were going to go, God knew.

Vincent: Yeah,

but, you know, so I. After that, I attended Lee University, which is a Church of God school. I married the girl of my dreams, Cody Sanchez. I met her on August 28, 1980, on the second step of the south exit out of the Lee University Student Center.

And that moment changed my life as much as God changing my life on July 17, four years earlier.

Jan: A divine encounter.

Vincent: Yes. So, you know, during those years,

I began to work, obviously, after school, and I would read the Bible every day. And I was curious, you know, why were some of the sermons not as interesting to me as the stories that I was reading the Bible?

So somewhere around the age of 50, I thought, you know what? I've got to go into a seminary program and figure out what's missing, because I thought, like, I could have something to offer,

but I just didn't know. I didn't want it to be the same old thing. And instead of taking seminary Hebrew, I thought, why not go to a Jewish synagogue and sign up for Hebrew, Torah studies and Hebrew classes, which I did for years and about 10 years or more.

And just to study not just the language, because I don't speak it, but I read the Hebrew Torah. But look at the way the rabbis talk about the stories in the Old Testament, or, you know, what I call Tanakh.

I don't like calling it the Old Testament because if you have a old bicycle and it's in the garage and you also have a new bicycle, you know, you don't go for the old bicycle that much.

You know, what I was really looking for was that question, what are the eternal truths that are contained in the Torah that appeal to Christians today? What are these stories?

And as I began to read in the original Hebrew language, by the way, Hebrew is a consonantal language, which means there's no vowels. The vowels were added. And by the way, also, it was a language that was really developed in the 7th or 8th century BCE we know, about 600 years after Moses lived.

So it was a much later language, and the vowels were added so that it would preserve the way the story sounded. And for me, that was fascinating because what I wanted to do and what I like to do is when I read it, I don't read the Torah as an instruction or a compliance manual.

I listen for the messages that are inside the questions contained.

And so when I wrote my first book, the Greatest Story Never Told, it was really just introducing oral tradition. What is oral tradition? How did it come about? And then when I wrote the second book, actually a Pharaoh's Power,

Historical fiction in the Bible, I didn't.

I wanted to. To ask that deeper question, are there messages in this, in the Book of Exodus that really would appeal to people today? And Jan, I did what I didn't really want to do.

I didn't want to go in and look at 3,000 years of pharaohs, but I had to. So I did a deep dive into 3,000 years of Pharaohs and asked, ultimately asked the question, what do we know about pharaoh that helps us understand the Book of Exodus?

And I think I latched on to an important key that we often overlook. For example,

there was always. There was, there was, there was more than once where there were multiple pharaohs who operated at the same time in Egypt. Now, I'm going to give you a little time period that is probably around the time period of Moses, for example, 1550 BCE in the north,

in the Goshen region, you have a pharaoh who is a bearded Asiatic Semitic that nobody in the south liked, but he had the power.

Now, in the south, about 300 miles south, in the area of Thebes, the traditional regnal pharaoh was there, but he didn't have much Power.

And then there was also operating in what we identify in history as the 16th Dynasty, maybe about 19 different pharaohs operating at the same time in different gnomes or different counties or regions, if you want to call it like that.

Now the fascinating part was before that 1550 time period,

Pharaohs were considered deified upon their death.

But the guy in the south at around 1550 said, wait a minute, I have to have an authority to rule.

And the only way that I'm going to have the authority to rule is if I'm Amun Ra incarnate in the flesh.

So they did a policy change, if you will. They created this fiction that the night of the lovey dovey be when the new pharaoh would be, you know, conceived.

That Pharaoh became Amun Ra, and the baby that resulted, if it was a boy,would be the incarnate Amun Ra at his birth.

Now you've got to understand that when you read the book of Exodus for this reason, I want to quickly go over it, because what do we have in the book of Exodus?

In the first chapter we have well over 30 names and pronouns, never the name of Pharaoh. In the second chapter, we have Moses who gets adopted by Pharaoh's daughter.

Now, ostensibly in the book of Exodus, it says that she wanted to adopt him so that he would be able to one day take over for daddy. But that would have been impossible according to the regal rules in Egypt at that time.

It just wouldn't have happened.

So we get to the third chapter, the burning bush, one of our favorites, where God visited Moses. And Moses says, lord,

why me?

I got a lot of sheep, goats. The father-in-law is getting around along in years. I got a wife now. I haven't been in Egypt in 40 years. Why me?

He's really conviction. And. But in the 13th verse of that chapter,

Moses asked a very important question, which is why I think it's important to read the questions in the Torah in these books. Moses says, when I come to the children of Israel and they say, what is his name?

Who am I supposed to tell him your name is?

That's where we have that famous I am who I am.

Now, in the fifth chapter,

Moses knocks on the door of Pharaoh and he says, let my people go. Now keep in mind,

if you were in the ancient audience in 450 BCE, you would have made the connection that Amun Ra was Pharaoh in the flesh during that time period. Today we don't have that connector.

And Pharaoh says,

I don't know who Jehovah is. I don't know who Yahweh is.

And oh, by the way, you know, he says it with this puffed up chest.

I'm Amun. Ra. You know, who is Yahweh? And by the way, no, I'm not going to let anyone go.

Now, that is the most important point, because he asked this question,

who is Yahweh? 

That I should obey his voice and let Israel go. And I'm going to submit to your audience that. Isn't that the ultimate question when we're finally confronted by our Creator?

Who is Yahweh that I should obey his voice? What's the authority for me to obey the voice of Yahweh? And Pharaoh concludes this. No, I'm not going to let him go.

Now we go quickly to the sixth chapter. And in the second verse,

God says this to Moses, I'm Yahweh, but I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob not as Yahweh, but as El Shaddai and by my name, Yahweh. I was not made known to them.

Now, Jan, I negotiated contracts for 40 years.

Let me just be a little impolite here. Even though we're talking about God, if I would have been in that meeting, and I would have been Moses, I would have said, God,

Now's not the best time for you to tell me this information. Why didn't you tell me before you sent me?

Jan: Yeah, I need a little thing to go on, a little bit of something to go on, Right?

Vincent: Yeah. But it really escalates that first message, who is Yahweh? That I should obey him. And I think when we talk about these messages in the Torah, these have to come alive within the context and the culture.

And with Pharaoh's power, what I've really done is I think I've demythologized Pharaoh in favor of asking the more relevant questions about how we understand who God is and under what authority do we obey him.

Jan: No small task,

right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And I am absolutely understanding. And having been able to read the Torah in Hebrews, got to have just been a. Whoa. You know, such a deeper understanding of things,

I think.

Vincent: Well, in regard to the deeper part, but kind of. Because one thing that's beautiful about the Hebrew language is. And just like in any communication. So I'm going to use this as an example.

You have a young married couple. Okay. There are meanings inside of words with the way we twist our tongue, with the way we form our lips, with how we look at a person.

In my first book, the Greatest Story, never Told I give this example.

You have a young man who just got married. And after the first week of marriage, he tells his wife at 6 o'clock in the evening, dearest, I'm going to go bowling tonight.

And she looks at him and says, let me know how that works out for you. Now, he could go and bowl a 300 game and come home and think, oh, boy, my wife is going to be really excited because I bought a 300.

She even told me that she wanted me to let her know how it worked out, when you and I both know that's not the real message. And so what I often say is,

you listen to the stories despite the facts around it, because in the stories, you'll hear the messages. And I give this other example. Abraham, on two occasions, he surrendered his wife.

Once he surrendered her to Pharaoh, the other to the Philistine king, Abimelech.

And we accept that because we think, well, okay, God didn't complain. So, you know, Abraham's a holy man. Must have been, okay? And what I say is, no in. There's 21 recorded episodes of Abraham in the book of Genesis, okay?

What you have to do is take each one of those stories separately, because in some cases he's not the hero, some cases he's the villain. And in the case of Abimelech, the Philistine king, the most important question in that episode resides in what he asked Abraham.

What made you think about my character and who I am that something like this was even acceptable?

And that tells me all I need to know about that episode. So why does the Bible record the episodes like this? I think because what we have to really begin to explore is to read these stories and then ask these important questions.

Maybe the important questions with Abraham are, what role do we have to protect our wives?

What role do we have to make sure that there's safety and that there's provision and that there's love and that there's care?

Well, the giveaway, I think, was when Abraham said, hey, tell him you're my sister in order for me to live.

Now, if you're five or six or seven years old, and you're sitting around the table, 450 BCE, and your favorite uncle is telling this story,

you're going to say, wait a minute,

is that right? Is that what we should do? And then everybody would discuss this so that we could come to what the moral lesson and meaning was. Because keep in mind they didn't have it in a written format.

This was the oral tradition. And I think that this is how stories evolved.

Jan: I started reading the through the Bible again with a friend this time and going through Moses and the ten Commandments and whatever. And this thought occurs to me like he knew how to write and you know, I mean it's just because he obviously wrote down things and says so was he educated then?

Was that because he lived with Pharaoh when he was young? Was that in thousand? I don't know. It's a curious question.

Vincent: No, it is a curious question, especially since we don't have Hebrew until the 8th century BC.

So if he would have written it would have been in a pre-Hebrew, but more importantly, it probably would have been written in some kind of an Egyptian hieroglyphic type or cuneiform script, but it certainly wouldn't have been in Hebrew.

So that tells me as a scholar, what we have is a final written version of stories that circulated perhaps for thousands of years and in this case at least 600.

Jan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fascinating.

Vincent: It is.

Jan: Can go through all kinds of rabbit holes right where you are. But I think you're right. The bottom-line question is, you know, who is God and why do we obey him and why do we, you know, not just because he's doing some miracles or whatever, but it's also, you know,

where is his authority come from and you know, all of being the.

Vincent: Creator and think and think of it this way. So you're on the west coast, I'm in central U.S.

there's a lot of, a lot of evidence that says that we have similar values but yet we have different ways of looking at the world. So who's right?

Am I right? Are you right? And, but you know, and I was on a podcast the other day with someone from India. He wanted to get me to say, you know, certain things about that the, you know, the Christian God was, was number one, which, you know, I, I,

I, I said look, at the end of the day,

which religion says we're supposed to go out and kill people,

engage in adulterous affairs,

steal so you can name all of the ten Commandments? There's no religion that does that. Yeah, and I don't know anything about the Indian culture, but I said I would dare say that the stories that you were told were focused on how you're going to live a moral life,

not an immoral life. And I think the Torah is magnificent in what it has done, is it has taken and putting into a written format forever.

Those stories that have been told, maybe the best of the stories because they all didn't make it in there. But even more so, is it a compliance manual or does it guide us to ask the questions, who is Yahweh, that I should obey him?

Jan: Yeah, yeah. So how do. How do people. How do we as people extract oral tradition from the scriptures in order to dialogue with them more with small groups or in Bible studies or things?

Vincent: So a very good question. So in my book, and you know, the. The Greatest Story Never Told, I break out all 21 episodes of Abraham.

So I don't think that you can say we're going to read all of them together. I think that they're all separate. But you look for the questions that are in those episodes, because the Torah has the questions.

And one of the questions, like for example, with Abimelech in the 20th chapter of Genesis,

what about my character told you that this is something that would be acceptable? So we open up a discussion in Sunday school, if you will, or a women's Bible group.

We have coffee, we have donuts, and we ask that very type of question.

What about our character tells people who we are?

How do we portray the righteousness that we know is inside of us? Does it always portray. Because there obviously was something that Abimelech wasn't doing,

or perhaps Abraham perceived in his bias that Abimelech was a certain way. So if we perceive that someone across from us or on the other side of town from us is a certain way,

how do we treat that person? Because ultimately,

aren't we really asking the ultimate question, how should we live in this present world?

And that's what the Bible guides us to do.

Jan: And isn't that what most of the Old Testament was, you know, going into when. When Israelites are going into other lands and whatever, you're supposed to act a certain way so that everyone around you knows that you're different?

Vincent: Yeah.

Jan: And not in a bad way.

Vincent: Not in a bad way.

Jan: Yeah.

Vincent: So I often. I often say, despite the story,

forget the story that you're reading, but look for the questions because they're there. Trust me, they are there. And when you isolate into that question and you let it explode inside of the story, the story becomes more profound.

And it's just like. It's like this. You know, I think you and I are of a same age where certain point in time we would turn on the TV on Sunday night in order to watch Murder She Wrote,

but it was never about the murder. Was.

Was always about how the situation was resolved. And so rather than look in the book of Exodus for an Exodus,

break it up into different segments and look and ask your what the questions? Because they do have question marks. And then say, aha.

How is this question relevant to the story?

And when you discuss it in a group,

I think it makes these elements much more relatable.

Jan: Yeah, yeah, it is. It's just, you know, I think that's just interesting to hear people's perspectives on things or what they, you know, what they know and how. How things are going to be for that.

Vincent: Yes.

Jan: So tell me, what are your thoughts about our unchurched friends and neighbors, about what they say Christianity is about or what they think it is and whatever. And how could we use storytelling more to be able to connect with them?

Vincent: So very good question, because, you know, is there a course correction, if you will? Look, what do we do on Sunday morning? We wake up, we brush our hair, you know, take our showers, eat our breakfast, we rush off to church, and then we sit in a pew, we sing a song,

and then the pastor tells us the sermon and he tells us what the Bible means. And then we shake people's hands and then we go home and we, you know, that for us, that is what our neighbors are seeing.

Are our neighbors seeing the freshness, the dynamics that would be of interest to them. And sometimes it's not just in the worship service,

it's in those outreaches that we have that where we form bonds because.

And some churches make innovations with these small group activities.

Excuse me, but I think what we've got to do is look at how we transform the small group activities from teaching to discussions. Because, look, I'm a teacher.

Students don't listen.

You know, they don't listen if it's on the exam.

But if you engage them, what my students always tell me invariably is they love it when I say, okay, guys, everybody pull your chair in a circle and we're going to talk.

I'm obviously, you know, manipulating the situation because I'm teaching a point,

but we've got to hear from our neighbors. You know, why do we do the things that we do and figure out what would be appealing? Because if I'm unchurched, I don't know that you coming over and knocking on my door saying, hey, we have church 10 o'clock on Sunday morning.

I'd love for you to come with me. And I'm going to say, you know, if I'm unchurched,

I don't think I can make it. I got something, you know, my dad and, you know, he needs me.

So is it outside of that hour that we really have these deeper, meaningful discussions.

What does our Lord expect of us? What do we do? Are there things in the community where we outreach to people and figure out who they are and develop those bonds and those friendships?

Jan: Yeah,

you see like in your class, do you see.

Well, with your class or wherever, you know, that you're other settings that are. Do you see a common theme of questions that people ask?

Vincent: Well, I actually have a unique situation in that, where I teach, for example, I teach an Old Testament literature course and there's a, an LDS student, a Catholic, an evangelical, and then there's someone who hasn't really made up their mind.

They're just there because it's a three-hour college credit course. Okay. And they know that I'm easy because I love to have discussions.

But what I do is the focus that I have with these kids especially. So let me do what then I won't say which one. You know, I say, look, I have no expectation that you're going to think like me.

First of all, I'm a 66-year-old man and you're a 19 year old kid. If you start thinking like a 66-year-old man, it's over for you before you even begin.

I'm not expecting you to change churches. What I'm expecting you to do is know what you believe and why you believe it. And because in many cases,

Saturday night, if they're on a college campus, they're going to be invited to go to a party and there'll be alcohol there and the next morning they'll wake up and say, oh, I'm too tired to go to church.

The first time they're going to feel a little bit bad about it. Then the second time, not so much. And then the third time there's no consequences.

So what I really want to instill in them where we have our discussions is along that same line, who is Yahweh and under what authority should I obey him? And by the way, he hasn't spoken my heart, so what do I do?

Jan: Right.

Vincent: And those, those types of questions really become significant when you get a group of kids together because one will look at the other and say, what do you mean you haven't heard from God?

You know, and, and so it's a relatable, relatable circumstance.

Jan: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're almost out of time, so tell us where people can reach you and, and your books and more information.

Vincent: About you@vincentcribda.com and if you'd like so on Instagram, it's author Vincent KRIVDA. And I do typically a daily dad joke with either one of the other teachers or some of my favorite students that react appropriately.

Some of them don't want to react appropriately. But then I also link in some information. But if you went to vincentgrivda.com I've got some blogs, I've got recordings of other podcasts and other interviews that explain oral tradition.

And oral tradition is this unique phase that very few people talk about, but I do.

Jan: Yeah. Awesome. And then you're on Instagram.

Vincent: Yes.

Jan: Yep. Okay.

Vincent: @Authorvincentcrivda@Insight G. So yeah.

Jan: Okay. I'll put links in the show notes for those too.

Vincent: Okay.

Jan: Any last words for our audience?

Vincent: Thank you very much for having me.  I'm going to say prayers privately once we conclude that this goes out and touches people's hearts and that we begin to have these kinds of discussions.

Jan: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much.

Vincent: Thank you, Jan. Look forward to talking soon.